@AlexTzone
Hi Alex
I hope you are enjoying January. Now that the Kickstarter has finished and that the design seems to be more or less finalized the silence is almost eerie! I look forward to seeing who won the prize draw soon (I was surprised to see that Sweden now allows prize draws, pretty sure it wasn't the case a few years ago!). Hoping that things in the background are working well.
I just thought I'd take the opportunity to summarize the things that happened in the PeakDesign Travel Tripod Kickstarter after funding. There were some notable rocky events that happened and the reaction of the backers were interesting so I thought maybe it may be beneficial for you too.
Generally speaking at least 1 update per month were provided, including photos from the factory, photos of production models which were very encouraging to see as a backer.
3 months after the Kickstarter campaign a major change in the final product was necessary, the carbon fiber tripod was not to be all carbon fiber (the center column needed to be replaced for aluminium). This was a major change that was met with an equal amount of upset and noise. PeakDesign posted 1 update and 1 YouTube video dedicated to the reasoning as to why this change was necessary. However not all people were convinced and PeakDesign did allow
for those people to refund their pledges. This would be equivalent if for example down the line it turns out Unibody would not be possible, and I think it was the right thing to do to allow those unhappy people to get their money back. Now that Mjolnir has a lot of new part and features, it would be really great if you keep this in mind for when and if the time comes.
In December (the initial estimated shipping month) it became apparant that not all tripods would be making it to people in that month. This was met with absolute fury and since December the comments of the Kickstarter has been filled with "Where's my tripod" "Why have some people got it and not me" blah blah blah, it is honestly completely unbearable to read and brings the mental age of photography enthusiasts into question. I'm not sure what could have been done to avoid this except for perhaps when the delay became apparant, instead of saying they will ship by January, for them to estimate much further so that people won't be so pushy now that it is the end of January.
A PeakDesign employee pretty much has to give an update (in the comments section) every 2-3 days as to what percentage of tripods in each country has been dispatched so that the people are somewhat satisfied. In this particular campaign US backers got their tripods first and then now slowly the rest of the world is getting theirs (EU and Canada seems to be getting theirs last).
