Hey everyone,
In today’s update, we’ve got some long-awaited news. Some of it is really good, some of it is not so good, depending on which model you’ve ordered. There’s been a lot of activity around Spectrum of late, and everyone on the team is hard at work to make sure everything continues to go according to plan. Let’s have a look at the project status!
Awesome 4K experiences are on the way
Eve Spectrum ES07D03, our first monitor, is a real thing now. It’s being manufactured, tested, packaged, and being transported to customers even as we speak. The team is simultaneously nervous and excited: We know that we have an amazing product for you, but at this crucial stage, more than ever we are on the lookout to keep any potential wrenches out of our gears.
But so far, everything is going smoothly. The first units left the factory on schedule, and shipping proceeds according to plan. As monitors are manufactured, we’ll ship more out with every truck we fill.
We showed some photos from the factory warehouse earlier this week. But now that the truck driver has given us back our Grant, he was able to give us a whole video!
Customers will, as always, be updated by direct e-mail about their order progress. Please keep in mind that tracking numbers don’t show up until the unit either leaves the Hong Kong warehouse for express shipping, or the local warehouse for normal shipping.
240Hz supply issue
In past updates, we’ve touched on the restrictions on engineering- and other resources caused by the Covid pandemic. For us, this mainly meant that our manufacturing partner could only tackle one of our projects at a time. As we have said before, the electronics, housing, mechanical testing, and much of the firmware development, are examples of development progress that carries over from 4K to 240Hz. As a result, we were well on schedule to begin testing and production of the second model.
With the development of our first monitor completed, our manufacturing partner has now officially started the new project on their end, and this is where a major issue popped up. Though we have provided continuous sales forecasts based on the reservations placed by our customers, we learned that the factory never stocked the panel used for our 240Hz model. As we are a new player on the monitor market, our sales contact doubted our ability to sell the numbers we projected and decided to ‘play it safe’ by only ordering panels for the ongoing project. When we were informed that the panels we forecast were in the warehouse, our contact left out the detail that this only applied to the 4K version.
This would not have caused a big issue under normal circumstances, as the panels could simply be sourced at a later date. With the ongoing worldwide component shortage however, suppliers are not only delayed but even actively canceling previously agreed shipments, and this includes major players in the industry like our panel supplier. Having the 4K panels on hand early meant that we are able to produce thousands of monitors at a time when other manufacturers are struggling to source panels. The same should have applied to our other models.
As a result, we have almost everything in place to start production of our second monitor. But without the actual display panel, we can’t manufacture any 240Hz models yet. Based on the latest forecasts from our suppliers, we expect production to begin in October. Of course we are continuously exploring ways to make this happen sooner. After the momentum we’ve built up bringing our initial model to market, this is the last thing we wanted to announce – especially this close to the target shipping date. We will remain committed to bringing you the best monitors on the market, as soon as we can.
We understand that this announcement is coming very close to the scheduled release of this model, and we apologize for the last-minute notice. The situation was unexpected for us, and when we found out we wanted to make sure we could tell you more than “no panels now, we don’t know when”. Of course, in addition to these community posts, affected customers are also being kept informed by direct e-mail.
