MyKee - Titanium Multi-Tool Key

Introducing CRATE - The Modular Wallet
about 8 years ago – Tue, Sep 13, 2016 at 04:35:57 PM

We hope everyone is having a wonderful week! The wait is finally over as we are excited to announce our latest product!  The CRATE wallet! 

First and for most, we like to first gratefully THANK our backers for supporting us and giving us an opportunity to continue with our vision. As we move forward with the launch of our new product on Kickstarter, our goal is to apply our experience from the previous campaign to the current one and eliminate recurrence of mistakes.

For those who decide to give us an another opportunity, we've created a special reward tier for our returning backers in order to show our appreciation! 

We're taking a special manufacturing precaution for our shipping dates and we like to show our appreciation for your patience on delivery of MyKees by prioritizing the first batch of orders for our returning backers!  In addition to an early shipment, we'll also be offering $10 discount in comparison to the regular price +  an extra elastic band ($3).

Once more, we THANK you for presenting us with patience and support! Now it's our time to give something back!

Thank you, Team Koygani

Moving Forward!
about 8 years ago – Sun, Sep 11, 2016 at 01:00:06 AM

It has been quite some time since we’ve posted an update. We sincerely hope that everyone is doing well. Almost a year ago, MyKee Kickstarter campaign came to an end. When we started, we had no idea we would receive this much support from our backers. Your enthusiasm has kept us inspired and we couldn’t be more excited knowing MyKee was distributed all around the world! 

Communication

Communication is an important factor that plays a huge role among creators and backers. Due to our busy schedule and a rather small team during the production phase, we struggled to respond to backers individually. Nevertheless that didn’t stop us. We always did our best to reach out to our backers through routine updates and through messages, which brings us to the next point.

Support Team

As mentioned before, our post campaign was lacking a support needed in order to assist our backers. With the new team in place, dedicated to providing the needed support to our backers, we’re always happy to assist with a quick turnaround time! It wasn’t easy! With the help of new joining members along the way, we’ve successfully shipped out all of the orders with few hiccups such as few backers not being aware of the surveys and few cases of shipment issues. (Friendly reminder: If you haven’t answered your survey yet, please contact us and let us know!)

Production

As mentioned in a past update, we had to change our main manufacturing partner during our post campaign due to them not being able to meet our standards and deadlines, which resulted in delays. However we can proudly say that we’ve been happily working with our new manufacturers and have built a strong relationship with them. Their support allows us to prototype and manufacture products here in the U.S. and cut down on lead-time while doing so. It’s our mission to continuously manufacture our products from scratch in America.

Around The Corner

With a larger team in place and major new manufacturing partners backing us, we’ve been working around the cloak on few exciting new products that we believe you’ll love! We can’t reveal them just yet but rest assured, they’re just around the corner.

Stay Tuned! Our mission is the satisfaction of our backers and our past experience has taught us lessons that we’ll be carrying on to our future projects. We love our backers and to show our appreciation, we’ve prepared an amazing discount for returning backers. (Further details of the discount will be covered in our next update)

Our Gratitude

We’re ever grateful to our backers for being patient and not giving up on us when we hit a bumpy road. It has been, and will continue to be a pleasure having you along for our coming projects. Thanks for all the love and support. We wish you a great weekend!

Warm Regards, Team Koygani

All Remaining Orders Are Shipped!
over 8 years ago – Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 10:23:28 PM

Hello everyone! As the title implies, we are finally happy to say all remaining orders have finally shipped (Backers and Pre-orders).

As many of you know, MyKee was undeniably my first successful campaign on Kickstarter and the success was due to a supportive community of backers and friends who believed in the project. With that being said, I was held accountable for fulfilling the orders in a timely manner with quality in mind. However, even with a well thought out pre-planning, the fulfillment phase of the project underwent through bumps that couldn’t have been predicted or avoided. Taking a dive back to when the campaign ended, our only concern was to get the keys to the backers but with 4500+ keys to be manufactured, it posed a difficulty for our first manufacturer responsible. The first batch of keys that were manufactured weren’t quite the way I expected them to be even though our manufacturer insisted so. Long story short, I continuously worked with the machinist and the water jet operator, making few trips a week to make sure they were following on my demands. Working out the perks caused delays that were unplanned for. The same can be said about the shipping process, as we continuously worked with the helpful staff of USPS Santa Clarita Distribution Center to insure the packaging we chose for our international backers were appropriate as the change in prices that occurred in 2016 doubled the cost of shipping for us. The recent delays that were caused were due to us changing our manufacturing and engineering group and transferring all of our work and material to them. It all may seem easy but it’s important to note that a change of this magnitude was bound to cause a delay, however we're now satisfied with result of the change.

I’m very grateful to every single one of you for supporting the project and being patient in the process. Our recent inactivity on Kickstarter shouldn’t have been any indication of us giving up on our backers who haven’t received their keys yet, as we’ve worked from behind the scenes to ship out every single order. We’re very appreciative of our backers and never had any unkind intention of not fulfilling orders. I take a stand against creators on Kickstarter that take the support of the backers for granted.

Where's my order?

Domestic Orders: This should come as no surprise but majority of the domestic orders were shipped before the recent delay, however there were some that we took care of recently and that includes the batch of keys that were lost in the shipping process (1 Tumbled Rainbow | 1 Titanium Split Ring )

International Orders: Majority of the international orders are split into two different packaging (Keys and KeeBit Set). Please allow 1-2 weeks for delivery depending on your location. Also don’t panic if you receive one of the packages earlier than the other.

Returned Orders: We will contact those whose orders got returned to confirm the shipping address. 

Support 

Our journey with this project isn’t quite finished yet as we're responsible for providing a support to our backers. I know many of you have questions and concerns regarding your order and we’re happy to answer them. My NEW support team can be reached at [email protected] so please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us!

Next Journey!

I’ve thanked my backers many times before and it’s never enough! I once more like to personally THANK all the backers for making this project possible. I believe criticism is an important factor in every project and should only be seen as the best learning tool. We value everyone’s OPINION and we’ll continue to do so in order to be more successful in our next journey.

Thank you, Narbeh

General Update #2
over 8 years ago – Tue, Mar 08, 2016 at 07:15:24 PM

Hi everyone, we hope everyone is doing well! Although we've stated our apology before, we can’t apologize enough for all the delays that have occurred. We're thankful to all of our backers that made it happen for us and we don’t take any of you for granted. We've had a smooth start but somewhat of a rocky post campaign regardless of our pre-planning. Our orders took all of us by surprise, limiting our previous manufacturer, thus forcing us to change our manufacturer. Despite the hardship, followed by criticism that we’ve faced, we're humbled by it as we've learned from our mistakes.

We value each and every concern, however we can’t deny the fact that the workload limited our updating and communication with our backers. We're almost at the finish line with our orders as there are about 100-120 Kickstarter based orders left.

  Quick points to cover:

• One of our shipment batches that consisted of 30+ domestic orders, majority being single tumbled rainbow anodized keys, have gone missing and was never delivered, so please be patient as we resolve the issue and send out replacements. 
• Pre-order costumers: If you're reading this update, we're set to finish all Kickstarter based orders this week and our estimate for the shipment of Backerkit preorders are this coming Saturday/Monday. We haven’t forgot about you! 
• As we mentioned before, once all of our orders are out the door, we are more than happy to resolve any technical problems that arose. After all we like to stand by our product despite the somewhat rocky road.
• If you're not a backer and wondering how Keebits can be purchased, we halted production until further notice. Keebits for our backers have already been produced and all steel variants get a free upgrade to titanium variant. 

General Manufacturing Update: Due to the change of our manufacturing firm, there was a slight delay. We've been closely working with them and they've been assisting us with the repair of MyKees from the previous manufacturer. The process takes constant co-operation between us and the machining operators to ensure we don't end up with super dull keys. Generally when keys get repaired, they're sent to surface finishing and then anodizing which eats up some time but the benefits outweigh the wait. 

We think criticism and feedbacks are important in any business, as it thought us quite a lot  and that's why we are taking extra steps to make sure we finish strong and always start strong in our future projects and not repeat the same mistakes.

Thank you everyone, our next update is scheduled for this coming weekend!

General Update
almost 9 years ago – Sat, Feb 13, 2016 at 02:34:36 PM

Hello everyone, I wish everyone a swell weekend! My absence from Kickstarter has caused uncertainty among some of the backers and I can certainly sense the frustration.

I want everyone to understand that we are here and we are doing our best regardless of not being able to meet our deadlines. It’s easy to point fingers and blame selected people who played a role in manufacturing, however due to the nature of the business, hiccups that arose, were unexpected for us as well and the engineering firm that we have worked with are no longer handling the manufacturing of the keys due to incompetence of understanding and meeting deadlines in timely manner. Like many of our backers, our frustration was off the chart because the failure of the manufacturer was passed down to us then to our backers. Although we can’t mention the company name, we are happy that we are not longer doing any work with them. 

Now for our international backers: 

Although there are no tracking #s, by simply logging into your Backerkit account (website used to answer the surveys), you can check the status of your shipping! 

Based on our records, depending on the destination, it usually takes anywhere from 3 days to as long as a week for the package to reach to you!

Why do KeeBit orders take so long? 

KeeBits go through a process in which few of our team members test and match the appropriate bits to its matching key. Due to the thickness tolerance of the titanium sheets, the thickness of each batch differ from each other by ±0.005 which sometimes causes the claw of the bit not to properly fit into the key. Our goal is to make sure the functionality does not get affected. 

Dull Blade? 

I took notice of complaints regarding dull blades and have let our manufacturer know to make the quality control stricter. Creating the blade is a very delicate process that is done by CNC machining and continuously requires much needed attention of continuously adjusting the offsets to make sure uniform and sharp blade can be achieved. For backers asking how can they slightly make the blade little sharper, I recommend using small flat metal file that can be purchased from a local hardware store. Once we attend to all orders on Kickstarter, we will be able to resolve any issues related to the keys with our backers with needed care.

Frustration with the shipping of the keys will be soon be over with as we have set a deadline to ship out every single order by Monday morning and we are on the path to meet the deadline! Please note there was another 200 orders that went out today so please be patient while your order arrives. 

I'd like to give each and every single backer greater amount attention and care so I can resolve any issues that arise. I can reason with everyone when I get the free time to do so. We receive tremendous amounts of messages and comments on daily bases and my goal personally is to be able to interact with the very people who supported this campaign and will do once every order is settled as I want to reflect on everyones perspective and try to keep everyone satisfied. 

Thank you, Narbeh