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...
Apologies if this writeup seems short. it has been an insane month of work, accumulating multiple 70 hour work weeks back to back. More than half of that work is comprised of plastic projects I have in the pipeline for 2023. So although it has been non-stop, it is work I have been enjoying quite a lot. Im trying to get stuff buttoned up before I leave Canada, so things have been all over the place. Back in December when the Fulvia hit the stores, this Triple zero was already in development. In fact - this was supposed to be the first yoyo released until I changed my mind in mid 2022.
December was such an insane month, it almost burnt me out. The amount of yoyos I had to ship out for the Fulvia release was insane, but on top of that being just a single person running Luftverk, it meant I was also dealing with invoicing stores all around the world and making sure the factory got paid in advance for shipments. All in all it was a slurry of spreadsheets and staying up late to pack orders every day.
I dont know where to start with the project. It has been the most expensive yoyo by multiple magnitudes to create. Not only was this project costly due to injection molding, but my persistence on a machining operation meant the R&D for this yoyo took forever. I started designing this yoyo over 2 years ago - and it has slowly snowballed into this proof-of-concept initial release based on the beloved Fulvia design.
