KS Updates #26 - Rockwell News, Progress, and Product Concepts

Dear Backers,

First off, thank you to everyone that has passed on feedback on their Rockwell 6S. Having a responsive group of early adopters is precisely what Kickstarter is all about and we feel very fortunate to have highly engaged backers. We also appreciate you all standing by us through this process and all the support you’ve shown! We’re hearing that most of you have received your pledge rewards. If you still haven’t received your reward at this point, please reach out to us by Kickstarter message, including your email in the message, and we’ll get the issue sorted out!

Quick update on the MIM Rockwell 6S manufacturing: The first step in the process to create the MIM Rockwell 6S was to make tweaks to the cap design files to take advantage of the fantastic MIM tolerances. This is followed by the tooling process that is required to manufacture using MIM. We wish we could show you interesting pictures, but until the tooling’s done there isn’t much to see or share. There’s lots of other stuff to talk about and share, but it’ll be a bit quiet on the MIM front until we get the tool and prototype samples that we’re expecting by the end of the summer. We’d like to take this chance to re-iterate our commitment to our backers to create the highest quality product possible, and we can’t wait to show you all the MIM version of the Rockwell 6S.

On a personal note, we have big news to share. As some of you have gathered, we were still in our final year of university when we started up Rockwell Razors. We are excited to announce that as of this May, Gareth has completed his undergraduate degree, while Morgan has only a couple courses left to go! What does this mean for you? We’ll be working full time on building Rockwell, while creating value and innovating in the classic shaving industry. We’re lucky to have received incubation space at the Ryerson DMZ, one of the top startup incubators in North America. Additionally, we’ve received government grants that have allowed us to bring on a team of consulting engineers, designers, and quality control experts. It’s awesome to be building a company in an environment like that and learning lots from those with far tons of real-world design and manufacturing, and business experience.

Over the next few months, you’ll be hearing us talk about new product ideas and innovations. As we’re making this our full-time business, it’s extremely important for us to make it financially viable. An important part of this is adding new products and building retail partnerships. We started on Kickstarter and immensely value the community we’ve built here. This means you guys will be the first to hear about new products we’re considering creating. The first of the new product ideas is what we’re calling the Rockwell Sheath. The purpose of the Sheath is to cover your razor in between uses, which will make the Rockwell 6S (and many other classic razors!) safer to travel with, or leave out in your washroom. We’ve had some prototyped out and wanted to share pictures of these prototypes with you, our backers, to get your feedback on the concept. Please let us know what you think in the comments, especially if you think it’s worthwhile for us to take it into production! If we were to go forward with the project, the Rockwell Sheath would retail for around $4.

 A Rockwell Sheath on the Rockwell 6S

 A Rockwell Sheath on a different classic razor

We have seen significant interest from retailers who would like to carry our products. Going forward, we plan to partner with select retailers to sell Rockwell Razors Kickstarter Edition parts. After all the pledge rewards (and any necessary pledge reward replacements) have been shipped out, we have leftover stock of the Kickstarter Edition Rockwell pieces. We are calling this first production batch of investment-cast razors the “Rockwell 6S Kickstarter Edition”. This is to distinguish from the MIM Rockwell 6S which we will ultimately refer to as the Rockwell 6S. These retailers have also told us they want to offer Rockwell adjustability to customers who already have other safety razors. We’ve heard this is called “franken-razoring”, which is, frankly, awesome. We firmly believe that the Rockwell Base Plates and Handles provide exceptional added value as additions to most modern three-piece razors. These retail partnerships are to financially contribute to the production of the MIM Rockwell 6S and the viability of Rockwell as an ongoing business. However, we want to make it 100% clear that our backers are still our number one priority and will be the very first to receive the new MIM caps (through the previously announced free replacements) and have access to the MIM Rockwell 6S. These retail partnerships will not at all compromise our focus on getting our backers replacement caps this fall, but rather a commitment that Rockwell will be in business for many years to come.

As always, thank you for your ongoing support, we wouldn’t have gotten this far without you!

Gareth and Morgan

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