>As previously stated, we misjudged demand for this product. Having too many people wanting to buy your product is a good problem to have, but it’s still a problem. Our original method for assembling and shipping devices simply wasn’t scalable in terms of cost and time. It was no longer good enough to get easily accessible parts, buy a few hundred or a thousand of them, and pay somebody to assemble them; time and expense would be too much.
But <20% of the preorders paid $5 for the product (source: OP). Couldn't they have assembled at least those and shipped them out by now?
Or, to state it another way, didn't they wake up one morning and realize they had enough preorders? It would be a lot easier to convert the preorder form to "Sign up for more info when we have more units available!" than to convert it to GCheckout, another way of preordering, which is what they did.
I'm confident that Craig could have spent all his time soldering, but then we'd have a far inferior product right now. Obviously the initial delivery estimates were way off but we have a much better product for Craig's efforts sans soldering.
don't get me wrong...I am proud of my ability to solder surface mount chips by hand. that said, certain SMT packages (FBGAs, LGAs) are pretty much impossible to solder by hand with a conventional iron.
its great for the "first 1000 or so" - if something gets popular i can send it off for manufacture - but only because i can bridge manufacture thru the never-ending-leadtimes. having trouble getting a fantastic oven tho. the apsgold's look nice but we dont have 220 :( had great luck with some common reflow plates if you can deal with single sided
This brings to mind the wider discussion of DIY fabrication (MakerBot et al) and while it has been dismissed by many "experts" there are distinct advantages for companies who can benefit from the added agility it provides(in this case, delivering your product on-time vs. wrangling with external companies, who probably don't consider you important in comparison to "big" companies).
Perhaps having your own "pick-and-place" wouldn't scale up to Wal-Mart levels of demand but having a small end-to-end factory of your own gives you the ability to satisfy early-adopters who are willing to pay a little more to be "first"; and usually drive mass purchasing down-the-road.
It may be a little more costly, but you know what they say, undercommit & overdeliver.