Has Office Walker production started?
This update went out to our Kickstarter backers on 18 September 2026. If you're on the waitlist, nothing here needs action from you. From mid November the waitlist can lock in an order below the price the store will later charge, and the store opens to everyone in early January.
TL;DR:
- The survey goes out in the next few days (most likely via Kickstarter): color choice + shipping address - and yes, mixed color combinations will be available for backers
- In a second step, we'll collect taxes and shipping costs in batches, shortly before your unit ships
- Production has officially started: 12 finished Office Walkers, around 10 more frames ready, shipping hopefully starts in one to two weeks, once the payment setup is done
- Also find some details about our shipping strategy
The Survey: Colors and Addresses
The moment many of you have been waiting for: the survey will go out within the next few days, most likely through Kickstarter directly. There you'll select your color and enter your shipping address.
In a second step (starting with the first backers in line for delivery) we'll then collect the remaining charges: shipping costs, and depending on your country and shipping method possibly taxes, duties and fees. This will happen in batches, shortly before your Office Walker actually ships, so nobody pays months in advance.
To help you decide on the color, we did two more photoshoots. We photographed the three known colors and additionally
- the light frame with dark slats (the poll showed very clearly that this is the second most popular variant) as well as
- the black frame with light slats, for the Oreo fans among you. These photos will be part of the survey so you can compare all options properly.
And yes, this means what you think it means: for this Kickstarter, every combination will be available to you. Depending on how Kickstarter's survey tool works, the mixed combinations will either be directly selectable or available via an "Other" option with a text field. I'm still figuring out the details, as this is my first time using their survey system.
Whether the mixed combinations later make it into the regular shop is not decided yet, since demand for some of them will likely be quite low. But as backers, you get the full choice.
Taxes and Shipping Costs
A quick reminder: taxes and shipping costs still apply on top of your pledge. Better to have this on your radar today than to be surprised by the payment request.
Within the EU, it's straightforward: the regular VAT will be charged, plus shipping costs of roughly €40–60 depending on your address.
For the US and other non-EU countries, things are more complicated, and to be honest, the numbers came out worse than expected. For the US I'm currently calculating with around €280 in shipping costs instead of the €150 I had originally estimated as the maximum.
The important part: we don't intend to pass all of this on to you. We're currently working out how much of it we can absorb ourselves so the final bill doesn't come out too high. For many other countries, import fees and duties are still hard to estimate. I'll share details as soon as I have reliable numbers.
Two reasons for the higher cost: first, prices have generally gone up since then (including fuel costs). Second, and mainly, the price lists I based my original estimate on didn't include a whole series of fees like fuel surcharge, export declarations, import handling charges from the carriers, and several small line items that add up to a surprisingly large sum. For example, FedEx apparently takes an 18€ minimum provision for prepaying custom duties.
The €150 estimate itself is actually still fairly accurate for the pure shipping; it's everything around it that stacks up.
On top of that come tariffs: as far as I know, the US currently applies a flat 15% tariff on goods imported from the EU, and there may be additional processing fees.
Production Has Started! 🎉
Now for the news I've been waiting a long time to write: we have officially started production. Everything we need is finally in one place. The slats arrived, the shipping boxes and packing material are here.
As of today, we have around a dozen finished Office Walkers, possibly a few more by the time you read this, plus roughly the same amount of additional frames that are fully assembled.
Side note about the "warehouse": that escalated quickly 😅 It filled up much faster than I expected. I hadn't anticipated this much material, especially the four oversized pallets just for packaging (boxes, padding, and so on). And on Monday we'll receive another two pallets of side panels. Back when I signed the lease, I genuinely debated whether renting the second room was worth it at all. Now I'm incredibly glad I did. Without it, we'd already be out of space.
Of course, real production immediately surfaces the things you never thought about beforehand. The tape we planned to use for the boxes wasn't strong enough, so now we need a special reinforced water-activated tape... plus a machine to apply it. We also still need to sort out exactly which labels have to go on the packaging. It's these small things that keep you humble.
Quality control (aka I) has also flagged a few units with noise or too much resistance. Analyzing those cases and optimizing our processes accordingly is the next step which means it will take a bit longer before we can really ramp up capacity. But it's important that we get this right now rather than fast. There's a saying that fits my life perfectly right now: building one car is easy - building a thousand cars is very hard. I now understand that on a deeply personal level 😅
How We'll Roll Out Shipping
We're planning to ship in expanding rings: first a few units within Germany, then a few units to some EU countries, the US and other faraway destinations.
The reasoning is simple: I want to validate in practice that the packaging truly holds up before we ship across the ocean. If many units arrived damaged from the US or other distant countries, returns would be expensive (the already-imported devices would have to be exported again), complex, and slow. A short validation loop close to home protects all of us from that.
So When Do the First Units Ship?
The honest answer: we don't have a concrete date yet but not for production reasons. Production-wise, we'd be ready to start shipping now.
The open question is how long it takes to set up the payment collection for taxes and shipping costs. Here's the backstory: we originally planned to use a so-called pledge manager for this. There are three big ones, and I assumed it would be relatively simple to plug one in. But it turned out that none of these tools really fits our needs. The main reason is that we'll be producing and shipping over a fairly long period, and we don't want to charge everyone their shipping costs upfront. Partly because we don't have all the details for every country yet, and partly because nobody should have to pay now for a package that ships months later.
So we've decided to build this on our own systems instead. That should be relatively quick but since it's our first time doing this, there's naturally some uncertainty in the estimate. Hopefully we can start next week; realistically it's more like two weeks. The upside: because we've pre-produced, once payments are flowing we can send out a whole batch of packages at once rather than trickling them out. So a little more patience, but the dam is about to break.
Your Color Choice Affects Your Delivery Time
One important thing to know before you fill out the survey: the color you pick will influence when your Office Walker ships.
Right now we only have dark gray slats and dark brown frames in stock. So the batches will roughly look like this:
- Dark brown frame + dark gray slats: the first batch, shipping soonest
- Light frame + gray slats: likely next
- Black frame + black slats: after that
- Light frame + light slats: last, once the light slats arrive
A bit of background on why it works this way: the injection molding company produces the slats in only one color per production cycle. So first all the ordered dark gray slats get made, then all the black ones, and then all the light ones. I had actually wanted the light slats before the black ones but the manufacturer decided otherwise without checking with me first.
The side panels are more flexible: they're produced here in Europe, so they're available much faster without the long shipping routes, and switching colors is far less complicated than with injection molding. That's why, after seeing the results of the color poll, I was able to quickly change plans and schedule the light frames next.
The next delivery of side panels will also be dark brown; the light ones (and some black) should arrive in October. I can't say yet exactly how long each phase will take. But if you want your Office Walker as early as possible, dark brown with gray slats is the fast lane.
One more thing: the very first units will ship with the blue belt I showed in a previous update. If you'd rather not have the blue belt, you'll unfortunately need to wait an extra two weeks or so.
That's it for this round. Keep an eye out for the survey, and thanks as always for sticking with us. It's finally getting real!
Johannes
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