Osma Blog Post #1
Hi everyone,
This is Shannon, one of the co-founders of Osma. The folks on our Discord had a great idea that we should start a blog to keep everyone updated on production of the Osma, so that’s what we’re going to do!
I know many of you have been waiting a long time for your Osma. We sincerely apologize for the delay. We are sorry and frustrated that our initial fulfillment projections proved wildly over-optimistic. This ended up being due to three reasons:
- This is a fundamentally new product. The technology behind the Osma was invented and perfected by us over the last three years. It went through many iterations. The version we are selling today is the merging of this new brewing technology with Joey’s design for the countertop unit. Because it is new, it took us a long time to finalize the design for manufacturing. When we released the pre-order for sale, we had a working prototype but not yet a final manufactured machine. As we dialed in the final design for manufacturing, we ended up making continued improvements that pushed out our timeline for ordering parts and beginning manufacturing.
- Supply chain. Like many people, we have been at the mercy of the Covid-related supply chain delays. We have been ordering parts on a rolling basis since the summer, and many of them have been and continue to be delayed behind initial delivery estimates. Literally so many things: the aluminum material, pumps, portafilters, power supplies, straw fitments. Right now we are still waiting on power supplies and a fitment for the straw. The last of our pumps have supposedly arrived in the Los Angeles port and are being delivered on Monday. This has been a learning curve for us, and we did not anticipate the long delays for the materials and parts.
- Manufacturing capacity. We have a great manufacturing partner in Oregon who is machining and assembling the Osmas. They are a small shop who does great work, and we are proud to be making the Osmas here locally in the U.S. However, because we were waiting so long to begin production at scale (design, then waiting for parts), we now have a large backlog of orders and the shop is not set up to make 1000 Osmas at once.
Right now here’s where we are: we dropped off three batches of panels, group heads, and trays at our anodizers over the last week and a half. We’re hoping to have 100+ done and back by next week, which we will then assemble and ship out to our earliest outstanding orders. Here are some of the parts we sent out for anodizing:
The shop continues to machine parts—here is where we were at groupheads as of last week:
We are working to do a surge of manufacturing capacity. It’s a careful process because we need to make sure everything is perfectly dialed in. The fitment of panels, groupheads, and trays needs to be perfect. The matte black anodizing needs to be perfect. This takes time to dial in with any new partners. We have signed a contract with another local Oregon shop which comes highly recommended and we know people who have worked with them. We are doing a run of panels for 300 Osmas with them, which will begin next week. That will be additional to the parts being run at our existing manufacturing shop. Of course this means that we will soon be running ahead of our anodizer’s capacity—this is the next problem to solve. We are in the process of vetting a second anodizing shop to increase capacity; we sent them some sample parts to anodize and should get the results next week.
Overall, Osmas are slowly but surely coming off the line. We are shipping out orders chronologically. We are so sorry for the continued wait, but we thank you for your patience and we remain so excited to deliver this new way of making coffee to you guys.
Ok I promise future blog posts won’t be this lengthy, but I wanted to get everyone caught up.
If you have any individual questions about your order or the Osma, please email support@drinkosma dot com.
And from the Osma team, Happy Thanksgiving!
Best,
Shannon