Preorders successful, let's get started!

Wow, what a few weeks this has been! This preorder period has been intense to say the least. Now that we caught our breath, let's reflect on what happened and the insights we got before planning the next steps.

There is an important message to all buyers at the end of this update! Please make sure to read about the next steps.

URSA Funding ✅

As some of you noticed, we had a bar on the website showing the progress towards our funding goal and that didn't move very fast… having some of you worried that it may jeopardize the URSA project as a whole.

We initially aimed for a very optimistic target that would have covered the molds and the injection of the preorder sets, as well as some extras to be available after we fulfilled all orders. We soon realized we wouldn't be able to reach it, and decided to change our funding plans to a more conservative approach. This is what helped:

• Getting payment terms from the factory
• Removing almost all extras from our plan
• Relying on our company's funds for the rest

We are now confident we can cover all URSA costs, and hope to be able to afford the extras when the time comes to purchase them (in a few months, when the molds are done and finalized).

Orders processing

We did receive a fair amount of orders, and we now need to process them. We have to check the amounts paid are correct, and will combine multiple orders into a single one. By the way, don't forget to claim your shipping refund by sending an email to contact@fkcaps.com if you placed multiple orders.

Once this is done, we will send an email to all buyers to ask for your order confirmation on the order content and billing/shipping details. There has been a naughty bug that happened during checkout and wiped a few orders details. If you can see your order in the orders page you have not been impacted! Either way, you are soon getting an email to double check everything.

You will also receive your invoice once everyone has gone through the confirmation process. And again, another shipping details confirmation will be sent out before we ship all orders.

Molds production

Now to the fun part! The last few days, we have been working with Andreas on preparing all the files for the factory. These have been sent to the factory, and we are now waiting for the analysis on their end, and that everyone agrees on the job to do. Given their experience making that first URSA mold, things should go rather smoothly, but designing for doubleshot brings some more complication to the table. We are expecting some files validation before they can start the molds machining.

This process will likely last at least a month before we see samples. We may send updates before that if we have enough content to show for.

Artisans Giveaway 🎁

Remember when we talked about giving away artisans? For each day from April 14th to May 16th (included), we are giving away one limited edition artisan to someone who placed an order that day!

We are keeping the surprise of the finish color so you can have it when opening the box :)

It is called "limited edition" because it won't get produced again, and is only offered during this GB to random buyers. We may have a few spare after fulfilling all orders, they won't be sold but offered in some other way.

By the way, we have received many orders for the artisans and are happy that you are looking forward to them! This is energizing to have us offer more of that in the future.

DAO giveaway 🎁

Due to an unfortunate turn of events, our DAO prototype got lost in the mail from France to Germany. We are going to order another one, hopefully the last before we can start a small run. We had planned to bring one to Mechanicon this year but it seems like we are out of luck 🥲

That doesn't mean we aren't giving one away, it's just a bump on the road and we will draw a random winner among the buyers, so they can get one when production of the first batch is done.

Preorders insights

We have had the opportunity to talk to a lot of customers during this period and this was very insightful on the direction for the future. Here are some takeaways:

ISO users, we will start working on an addon as soon as the molds are into production. Chances are slim that we can get this process started before the GB fulfills, but ISO/JIS is on top of our priority list, right after fulfilling all orders.

Colorway requests have been flooding my inbox and I don't blame you for a second as I was actually excited to see so many ideas. Here is a fun URSA color picker that we prepared with Andreas. You can start using it to create new colorways and share the link to friend or on our Discord server in the #ursa channel. We will eventually make them all public to have all buyers vote for their favorite! We can't provide an ETA for when the next colorway will happen as we focus on fulfilling the preorders first, but let's start having fun planning it.

Japanese sublegends have been requested a lot too as the Sachiko prototypes look too good. We are not sure whether we can offer alt legends with the tooling we are getting. It is not something we focus on, but your requests have been heard and will be forwarded to the factory once we have approved the molds.

Next steps

Coming soon in the next couple weeks:

• Orders confirmation emails: make sure to watch out for these and please reply as soon as possible, especially if your order content seems wrong!
• Giveway winners will be drawn soon, and they will receive an email notification too.

Molds production is starting, but nothing to be expected in the next weeks.

Thank you ❤️

I have talked with a lot of you in the last few weeks, and was overwhelmed with kindness and shared enthusiasm for URSA. Some of you also helped me fix the mess the orders bug made, or placed additional orders to help boost the funding. This is why we are running URSA (everything but the bug!), and now I can't wait to show you some actual progress. Meanwhile, thank you everyone!