All I know is that my DE1 wakes up a helluva lot quicker than I do

biforcate wrote:Hmm, good point about the sales tax. However, now I'm curious as to why you don't slow boat some stock over to warehouse in the US and Europe, and then ship to customers from there. You could still combine the freight shipping with the domestic shipping for one total when someone checks out. Only people in the state where the warehouse would be located would need to pay sales tax.

First problem: inventory.

We've never been able to stay far ahead of the "demand curve". Namely, machines sell as fast as we build them, with us having had "wait times" for most of our history, for only recently did we manage 3 months of inventory. That's been blasted back to 1 month, due to the COVID wave in Hong Kong. So, that's a big reason, we don't have enough machines to store them.

Second problem: aging inventory. We do a new DE1 version every 9 months.

Third problem: it's never that simple. For instance, we retest and recalibrate each machine, for the owner, right before it ships. People want to customize their order. And you need staff. And we have a lot of product variations (and more coming soon).

4th: it's slower inside the USA. We're averaging 2.3 days from HK to the USA. Historically, it cost $130 to send it from HK, vs about $90 inside the USA, it'd take longer. Now, shipping is more expensive, but it's more expensive inside the USA too. For maybe $150 more per machine, I can avoid all the hell of a remote office.

5th: returned machines and repairs. I don't have any repair staff/parts in the US, I'd need to build that out. We previously had outposts in 6 countries, and they all failed in different, important ways, and we've shut them all down. Remote outposts don't have the knowledge/parts/support/activity to be good.

Also, one of the reasons the DE1 has become reliable, is because the repair guy sits in the same area as the mechanical engineers and lead assembly engineers. I don't want to change that.

-john

jxyz wrote:I'm still researching the Decent, but can the Decent series be scheduled to turn on and off at specific times? My goal is to have the machine as close to "ready to go" in the morning and afternoon as possible, then in power save/sleep mode the other times of the day and night.

The built in scheduler has wake/sleep times, which is "always on", as well as a 'inactivity screen saver' that powers off the machine, and you can set that time. That satisfied most people.

But if you want different wake/sleep times for each day (say, during the weekend) there's an app extension that does that.

John - what a fantastic event! Thanks for putting this together. Great time meeting everyone and talking shop out at CoRo.

We were out in the parking lot pulling shots from the "decent rv"

The turnout was so "insanely great", that I'm looking to set up some infrastructure to create "DUM" (Decent User's Meetup) setups a bit all over. Lots of Decent owners have expressed a desire to be able to meet up, more intimately (fewer people).

The Berkeley-area one will be called BDUM, so naturally the SoCal one will be called SODUM.

I'll be working on the IT support to make this happen.

-john

Beauty in the flaws

Our order of 500 wood handles made from reclaimed end-of-life Italian olive trees, is finished and my staff went to the maker to do their quality check.

Used to a world of industrial perfection, my staff rejected half the batch as imperfect.

Now, I've done some woodworking in my life, building electric guitars and helping build a renaissance lute.

As such, I'm a big fan of *character* in wood.

Signs of aging, struggle, natural forces; I love seeing that in the wood.

Thus, where my staff see flaws, I see beauty.

Look closely at that wood handles above. The one on the right has amazing swirls of dense color variation. There's so much drama in there. The left one looks almost like marble. As long as that natural crack doesn't weaken the wood or feel bad in the hand, I see no problem.

Not everyone might agree with me, of course.

What I'm thinking of doing, is photographing every single handle we get, and letting the buyer pick the exact one they wand. Because this is very old wood, each handle is very much unique, gnarled, defective, twisted, in its own particular way.

What do you think?

decent_espresso wrote:

Beauty in the flaws

Our order of 500 wood handles made from reclaimed end-of-life Italian olive trees, is finished and my staff went to the maker to do their quality check.

Used to a world of industrial perfection, my staff rejected half the batch as imperfect.

Now, I've done some woodworking in my life, building electric guitars and helping build a renaissance lute.

As such, I'm a big fan of *character* in wood.

Signs of aging, struggle, natural forces; I love seeing that in the wood.

Thus, where my staff see flaws, I see beauty.

Look closely at that wood handles above. The one on the right has amazing swirls of dense color variation. There's so much drama in there. The left one looks almost like marble. As long as that natural crack doesn't weaken the wood or feel bad in the hand, I see no problem.

Not everyone might agree with me, of course.

What I'm thinking of doing, is photographing every single handle we get, and letting the buyer pick the exact one they wand. Because this is very old wood, each handle is very much unique, gnarled, defective, twisted, in its own particular way.

What do you think?

How about the best of both...stabilize the wood and fill the "imperfections" with epoxy? Perfect flaws.

decent_espresso wrote:image




What I'm thinking of doing, is photographing every single handle we get, and letting the buyer pick the exact one they wand. Because this is very old wood, each handle is very much unique, gnarled, defective, twisted, in its own particular way.

What do you think?

Had I the option when I bought, I would have chosen the old olive wood turned handles and modified the stabilizer bit to shorten it. I would not have needed a photograph to help me choose. I like wood with grain (perfect or not) better than paint and bake-lite.

Great idea John! I'd prob order even without seeing the specific piece but agree that it would be very cool to be able to pick out one that really resonates with you after seeing it.