Crossed 550k! Progress report and introduction of "Wave 2" rewards

Day by day, more backers are coming. It's amazing to see your support, thanks for that!

Production location

We made the final decision that we want to assemble the Office Walkers locally in Berlin, Germany. We considered outsourcing everything to China. But I'd like to be in charge of the final quality control to ensure that we deliver on our promises. Outsourcing this last step would be too risky at this stage.

So in the past week, I started looking for a production site in Berlin and likely found a founder-friendly location. The manager was impressed by the product and has a few rooms available next year. Perfect timing for us.

Production Optimizations

While I'm waiting for new side elements after a few design optimizations, we also looked into optimizing the production process. Since the demand is unexpectedly high we need to ensure that we can produce as efficiently as possible.

Our main supplier for the soft-touch slats offered to pre-assemble the walking area. This will speed up assembly here in Berlin a lot and increase our throughput.

New "Wave 2" rewards

But even with these optimizations, our production capacity is limited. With new backers joining us every day, we realized that we need to split production into two batches to be able to meet the original timeline.

That's why there are new reward tiers named "Wave 2". These rewards have a new shipping estimate of September 2026 instead of the original estimate of July 2026.

But I'm still confident that we'll be able to start shipping in July and meet the timeline for the backers with the original rewards.

Protective covers

One of the frequently requested features is a safety cover for the front and back. Many people were concerned that their children or pets could get their fingers in between the slats. So we're in the process of creating the CAD drawings, deciding on the material, and then ordering the first test parts.

Patents

Today I also talked to the patent attorney who filed the provisional patent application earlier this year. We'll start the process of filing the non-provisional patent application in a few weeks. There's also another provisional patent application and a design patent coming. More on that in a few weeks.

That's it for now. There are many things to do and there'll be even more things to do after the campaign ends. But things are progressing fast. I'll keep you updated.