The first minute was an insane rush of 20 orders. 90% of Octavias were sold within the first 3 days. And in just over a week, they were all gone. A few incredible milestones were achieved last week - I blew through 500 likes on both Instagram and Facebook which I was so preoccupied I didn't even notice. And as well as the biggest achievement - crossing the 100th order mark. Im just one dude doing literally almost everything with this project so it is very, very humbling that I have the support and understanding that I do from the community.
If I said this was easy - I would be lying. Seems like with the Evora, everything went so swimmingly. Beginners luck perhaps? But it was completely opposite for the Octavia. Prototyping was a slur of problems. Especially experimenting with the super short 6mm axle and corresponding bearing seat which we are still further learning and refining for the future. Such few shops are actually willing to turn titanium yoyos, so new techniques are still being developed. When it came to assembly, it was a nightmare to match halves to find those that played well. The time consuming stickers were applied to the box by hand. It has always been in the details but this was next level and pushed my sanity.
Vashek was nice enough to let me use his shop, Slusny, as my workspace during off hours. Generally Id come at 9pm, and stay until 4am. It felt like a nightshift of assembly, testing and packaging. On the day of the release, I arrived at 1am, and stayed until 1pm the next day. It was brutal. Running off of 3 hours of sleep, doing design, communications, marketing, assembly, testing, shipping and customer service is a sure way to burn out really quick - and I definitely still feel it.
I felt very determined to make every order perfect, but of course shit happens. I had some hick-ups, with a mistake in a shipping address being the biggest one. And although it has been resolved already - its something that shouldn't happen with a 300 dollar product. It really ruins the purchase experience. It would ruin mine for sure.
These aren't things that go unnoticed. New challenges and mistakes provide an amazing platform to learn, and to grow. Its easy to let the sucess go to your head but remembering that perfection is a moving target is so crucial. With 2016 just around the corner, there are some pretty insane plans as far as products go including a few new models and even some with different materials - but thats a story for another day.
Thank you for everyone who placed an order, shared our page or liked a picture. Its what keeps me going - and allows me to do more awesome things. This run of Octavias was completely exhausting and a break is definitely needed but come 2016 Ill be back with full fighting force and it will be full speed ahead. Stay tuned...
Its wild to think that the Fulvia design is now 8 years old - originally released in 2016. This design was developed in titanium with the pursuit of rim weight and stability. So much has changed since then. 2024 was an interesting year with the challenges of moving to a new country while maintaining releases. Not many people realize but I often prototype yoyos for myself and they just never get released. Often they join the rotation of throws I have on the shelf, which never make it to production. The monometal 000 and Fulvia was exactly that - prototypes that I submited earlier this year that just never ended up making it to production.
Been a long time since I released much. A lot of things have been going on behind the scenes but a lot of it has to due with either financial or business legal stuff. Both that are not as interesting as I would hope but is definitely necessary going forward. I actually prototyped the initial plastic Stelvia design way earlier on in 2023, but only picked up working on it again at the start of this year.
It has been a while since Ive written much - the second half of 2023 was insanely busy with project management. Since the release of the plastic lineup, I had very little time to focus on the roots of what made Luftverk so exciting. I realized this was a huge problem - I needed to guide Luftverk back to it's roots of exploring new materials and build product lineups that told a story stemmed from exploration. I had done this with plastics last year but in 2024 I would like to also focus back onto some more products that use exotic materials. While being incredibly late to the party this recent project is Luftverk's first Magnesium ever, which was at first canceled and almost never released.
Jeffrey Pang
Author