I released a roadmap of my future products in a video where I talk about my future projects while walking around a fiber festival. I go over an updated EEW Nano, EEW Fold, EEW Drum Carder, and then other farther out projects. If you’re interested in what I’m doing, this is a good one to watch.
Purr Protector
The Purr Protector is a 3D printed case that goes around your EEW to protect it from cats and other things that like to touch the spinning flyer. I made fun videos for the EEW Nano and EEW 6.x versions. I’ve also made the 3D printable files freely available on printables.
Weighting Your Yarn
In this video I show several progressively more optimal ways to weigh your yarn. The most optimal lets you quickly get your yarn weight by putting your whole eSpinner on a scale, but there is a trick to make this easier involving adding a custom weight.
Product Updates
Below are estimates and the dates may change.
EEW Fold Kickstarter – January 2025
EEW Nano 2.1 – Febuary 2025
– Maurice Ribble Inventor of the Electric Eel Wheel
The EEW Nano 2.1 injection molds are complete and I’ve approved them! These “injection molds” are steel blocks with the shape of the plastic part removed so all the custom plastic pieces can be made quickly and affordable. For example if I used 3D printing making one EEW Nano would take around 20 hours and with injection molding that’s around 30 seconds. The downside is these steel molds are expensive, but as long as you are making a lot of something (usually thousands) then injection molding is better. In the photo above you can see many different colors of plastic are used for different parts. That is because when verifying the molds my factory just uses whatever color of plastic is in the machine. I’m really happy with how this version has turned out. I won’t be running a Kickstarter for it, but when it’s available I will send out an email to this community and give a discount for the first 7 days it’s on my store. There will also be an affordable upgrade kit that will convert the EEW Nano 2.0 to an EEW Nano 2.1. I’m still working out the exact pricing of everything, but my hope is to keep the EEW Nano 2.1 the same price as the EEW Nano 2.0. My current estimate on timeframe for the EEW Nano 2.1 is February 2025.
There are major improvements to the uptake system, and the noise noise is reduced due to the new flyer and bobbin system. Here is a more detailed list of the improvements of the EEW Nano 2.1 over the EEW 2.0.
Bobbins now use a bearing system that makes them rotate smoother and more quiet
Completely new flyer out of glass reinforced nylon to make it last longer and it uses a different bearing at the back to prevent extra tension on the bobbins if there is flex in the maidens
New sliding hook system that works better and reduces snags on fiber
Tension system changed to use a spring and string to improve the tension system
Base colors are black and purple (bobbins are gray, purple, and ivory)
Custom Bag Plan
I made this video to show the first prototype of a custom bag I’m making to carry my eSpinners. I plan to eventually sell them in my store and would like your feedback. This video also gives you a good size comparison between the EEW 6, EEW Nano, and EEW Fold. The EEW Fold pre-orders will start with a Kickstarter later this year or early 2025. At the end of the video I mention I’ll be giving this prototype bag to a random person who leaves a comment in the youtube comments.
I spent most of my time this month working on the EEW Fold. Basically it went like this. Change some 3D files on my computer. Print it with my 3D printer. Test it to see what else I can improve. Change it, print it, test it again, and repeat many more times. I don’t keep track of the exact number of prototypes, but I’m sure I’ve done more iterations on this product than any other. The folding mechanism makes a lot of the parts depend on other parts in non-obvious ways. For example when I adjusted the flyer design it caused problems with magnet placement on the bottom cover, which didn’t seem like they should be related. Also the folding mechanism gives more opportunity to figure out little improvements with more iterations. I’m pretty sure in the end it will just seem like this is a simple obvious design. If that’s the case and none of the details I’ve been working on these past several months are noticed, that is a mission accomplished for me. Overall, I’m very excited about the EEW Fold. I think there are a lot of advantages over the EEW 6.1. I’ve mentioned many of them before like quicker bobbin changes, faster speeds, less vibrations, and an RPM display. I’ll be going into more details in the future when I am testing molded versions.
I’m going to keep the Kickstarter target in December, but we might miss that. I’m pretty confident the design will be done well before December, but I plan to get the molds made which will take a few months and then I need the video and documentation for Kickstarter made using the molded version. I prefer using the molded version for Kickstarter over 3D printed versions because having molded parts in hand, even if they aren’t completely final. This makes it easier for me to predict when I’ll be able to ship it, and I like having a fairly accurate ship date estimate for my Kickstarter campaigns.
The Seasonality of Selling Fiber Tools
It’s September! I live in Massachusetts where September usually starts off pretty warm, by the time fall starts (officially September 22nd) the nights are usually cooler. This causes more people to start thinking about spinning, knitting, and other fiber crafts they set aside for the warmer months.
I’ve been selling fiber tools for about 15 years and have seen some trends in my sales. I wanted to give some concrete percentages of how my sales have done in different seasons, but after looking over my data it’s just too noisy for that information to be useful. The biggest issue is I often run out of stock on my top items and that causes sales to slow, but then there is a huge spike in sales when that item is in stock. Also I’m fortunate that this community has continued to grow and that leads to different demographic mixes year after year. This makes the data more difficult to compare year after year in an attempt to smooth out the issues from the inventory issues. After looking at my data in various graphs I’d estimate that during these summer months I see sales drop around 15-30%. Then in November/December I see sales increase by about 30-50%. For the rest of the year I’d say sales are pretty regular.
While other fiber businesses are going to be different, I suspect most yarn shops see similar seasonal trends.
Product Updates
Below are estimates and the dates may change.
EEW Fold Kickstarter – December 2024
EEW Nano 2.1 – Febuary 2025
– Maurice Ribble Inventor of the Electric Eel Wheel
Huge thanks to everyone who spun along with Team EEW 2024 for this year’s Tour de Fleece. The three week period saw hundreds of photographs shared from all around the world, showcasing beautiful fibres and many personal challenges set and completed. 328 people played for prizes, 70% on Facebook, 33% on Ravelry, and 16% on Discord (yes, those numbers add up to more than 100%; some people played in more than one place!). The lucky prize-winners are as follows:
EEW 6.1 (or equivalent value from in stock items at Dreaming Robots) won by: sfeely (ravelry)
EEW Cone Winder (or equivalent value from in stock items at Dreaming Robots) won by Teen Ward (facebook)
EEW Yarn Counter won by: Psylocke26 (ravelry)
EEW Lazy Kate won by: Penguinwyn (discord) and Benjamin Randolph (facebook)
EEW 6.1 or EEW Nano bobbins set won by: Kendra O’Hern (facebook) and Knittingmommy (discord)
Congratulations to all the winners, and to everyone else too, even without a prize, you’ve still come away of this with some beautiful yarn and lots of inspiration from all the wonderful pictures shared.
If you’ve not well and truly worn yourself out, don’t forget that Team EEW will ride again from 12 to 18 August 2024 for the Tour de Fleece Femmes as we watch the women’s race.
I’d also like to thank Vampy who did a great job running this event for us (and writing the summary above). She is very active in our community so be sure to give her posts a thumbs up when you see them.
This photo from Ginger Simonson is one of her Tdf projects. This 1:3 fractal Polwarth is just the sixth skein she’s ever spun. During this Tdf she spun in several new places – the car dealership (where a service advisor asked her what a sheep is…), outside, on an airplane, in a hotel, and for one of the challenge days, all four Disney parks.
Clamp Update
I’ve made new free 3D printable files a improved clamp. It replaces a single piece clamp with a two piece articulating head clamp. If you have a EEW Yarn Counter and want the clamp to work better you can 3D print the part r this page explains how to order it from others.
The two main reasons I put time into this was because I’m considering ordering a new batch of EEW Yarn Counters and this was a weakness a few of you pointed out when I asked for feedback. By the way, thanks for this and all the other great feedback I received from the request in last month’s newsletter! The other reason is I am considering adding clamps to more of my products in the future. Right now it’s just the EEW Cone Winder tensioner and EEW Yarn Counter that come with a clamp. Both of these are lightweight and the current clamp works pretty well for most people. However, I’ve been experimenting with including clamps to my future eSpinners, and my beta testers have really liked the clamps. I was a little surprised by this feedback because I’ve long been trying to convey that I’ve designed the EEW Nano and EEW 6.x so C or bar clamps (search online stores and you’ll see lots of options) could be used with them. However, it turns out few are doing that. However, if I actually include a little clamp then way more people try it and love it. This custom clamp I’m designing is lower cost and smaller than generic solutions so it is something I’m likely to include on future designs like the EEW Fold.
This is a little insight into how 3D printing and some changes I made recently to improve my workflow. If that interests you then keep reading, otherwise bye bye 🙂
I often release free 3D printed parts for my projects as a way to help my community. I love doing that, but by far the more important aspect of 3D printing for me is prototyping new designs. Without 3D printing it would be much slower, more expensive, and many of my products wouldn’t be nearly as good because I just couldn’t do as many iterations to perfect the design. After I get the perfected prototype, I use injection molding to make my products more affordable. Injection molding and 3D printing have different types of constraints and I design my parts with injection molding in mind since that is my ultimate goal. In general 3D printing has fewer constraints than injection molding, but one limitation with 3D printing is that it needs support when there is no material under the object. Below is an image that shows organic supports holding up some drum caps for the EEW Drum Carder. The supports are those round tree-like structures. Also don’t get confused by the two colors used in this print. I just ran out of filament half way through the print so I changed colors.
The software that generates those supports is clever and tries to leave a little gap between the support and the object being printed. However, if that gap gets too big then the print fails. Often these supports get too stuck to the main object that I spend lots of time removing them. I used to print objects flat, but then more supports are needed and getting them all detached takes a long time. This past month I upgraded my printer so it can print with two different plastics. Many people use this to allow different colors, but I don’t care what color my prototypes are so that doesn’t matter to me. Instead what I do is I use different types of plastic that don’t stick together well. This lets me print the main object out of one type of plastic and then the supports out of a different plastic. These two types of plastic don’t stick together much (types of plastic I’m using are PLA and PETG). Also I can print the objects with better supports and not rotate them to 45 degrees because removing the supports is very easy. The image below compares this 45 degree printing (left) with using different types of plastic (right). You can see there are some rough spots with the 45 degree rotation and those were actually hindering my ability to test my new drum carder prototypes. The prints on the right are basically perfect so I’m quite happy with this upgrade.
3D printing is a field that is improving quickly. The improvements in the hardware and software over the past 5 years is pretty incredible. That’s good too, because the solution I’m using here doesn’t solve all problems. One big issue that still remains is these supports work well for cases like my drum carder model, but I often do supports where instead of the attaching to the plate on the 3D printer the supports have to attach to the model and in those cases this different type of plastic doesn’t work well because the base of supports won’t stick well to the model and then the supports can fail which cause the model to fail later. I’m using a type of 3D printing that extrudes the plastic like a very accurate glue gun, but there are other types of 3D printing that suspend your model in liquid plastic or powder plastic and thus don’t have as many issues with these supports. However those processes are still more expensive or require a lot more cleanup so for my prototypes I think the current type of printing I’m doing is best right now. But it is an area I have to pay close attention to since improvements here can significantly help my business of making fiber tools for you.
Norway Vacation
Emily’s (my wife’s) grandma was from Norway, and migrated to the US as a child. When Emily was young she would talk with her grandma about someday going back to Norway. Unfortunately grandma passed away before that became a reality, but because of those discussions a trip to Norway has always been in Emily’s bucket list. This past month we made it a reality and took a week long family vacation to explore the fjords of Norway. My daughter’s favorite part was meeting some new friends and swimming in heated pools. My wife’s favorite part was meeting some distant relatives for the first time and shopping at Norwegian yarn shops. My favorite was an adventure where we went kayaking in the fjords, hiked up a 340 meter tall cliff to an old farm, and then got stranded without a taxi so we had to hitch hike back to our ship. We all agree that the people we met in Norway are welcoming, friendly, and interesting.
Product Updates
Below are estimates and the dates may change.
EEW Fold Kickstarter – December 2024
EEW Nano 2.1 – January 2025
– Maurice Ribble Inventor of the Electric Eel Wheel
I still have enough stock of these to last a while, but it is time to start thinking about an update since manufacturing takes time. I’m happy with how these are performing and have had very few complaints.
I’ve considered changing to a screen with a backlight so the screen can be easier to read in the dark, or switching from the optical sensor to using a hall sensor (magnets) to make it more dust resistant. The screen idea would use a lot more power. The hall sensor idea would increase power usage moderately. I’m leaning towards not doing these changes since I think having a very long battery life is really nice.
I have a few other very minor ideas. For example an assembly change so the yarn guides don’t move as easily.
Right now I’m leaning towards just the assembly improvements. However, I’d like to ask the community for ideas and if I get any that justify an updated version I’d consider that. If you want to make any suggestions please just respond to this email.
Since making that video I’ve sent off prototypes to a few testers. I’m just starting to receive feedback and plan to do some more updates based on that feedback and then more testing. After a few rounds of this back and forth I’ll finalize the design and start getting it ready for manufacturing. Once I’m convinced that the molded plastic parts will work well, I’ll do a Kickstarter for this. I’m still hoping to do that around the end of this year, but there is a lot of variability in this part of the process so that date is just an estimate. If I need to do a few extra rounds of prototyping or if there are unforeseen issues with the molded parts (both of which have happened on past products) then this date will get pushed out. When I run the Kickstarter or pre orders I want to have things far enough along that I have a good chance of hitting my delivery dates.
EEW Nano 2.1 Info
I’ve got some nice improvements coming with the EEW Nano 2.1. Some of the big ones are changing to a spring tension system, bearings in the bobbins, and a new flyer design. I’ve already had some beta testers try it out and they were pretty happy with it, but they did have some suggestions which have required me to make some changes to the molds. I’m going to wait until I get a near final version before doing a video showing the full list of improvements in this new version.
The motor and electronics are unchanged. Most of the changes are focused on the flyer/bobbins which means I’ll be able to offer an affordable upgrade kit for those who want to upgrade from the EEW Nano 2.0 to the EEW Nano 2.1. These upgrade kits should be available at the same time as the EEW Nano 2.1. Right now my best estimate is this will be around January 2021. I’m not accepting preorders, but when I get the items in stock there should be enough for everyone who wants them.
Tripod Mounts
I made 3D printable mounts for the EEW 6.x and EEW Nano. As always the files are freely available. If you don’t want to deal with the files this page explains various ways to get them.
I’ve seen a few people make wooden mounts to hold their eSpinners and I thought a 3D printable mount would be an improvement on those. The eSpinner slides right into the mount and you can tilt the tripod to any angle you want to spin at without worrying about the eSpinner falling out, but it’s still easy to remove the eSpinner any time you want to spin without the tripod. I’m happy with how this tripod mount turned out.
Product Updates
Below are estimates and the dates may change.
EEW Fold Kickstarter – December 2024
EEW Nano 2.1 – January 2025
– Maurice Ribble Inventor of the Electric Eel Wheel
Here is a new video that shows a new eSpinner prototype. It will be between the size and price of the EEW Nano and EEW 6. It also folds down to a super small size for shipping and storage. Watch the video for more details. Please leave feedback if you haven’t, but based on the feedback so here are some things I’m working on for the prototype I’m making for my beta testers.
Probably will be named EEW Fold
Will include the display
I’m working to see if I can make a better bottom holder for the flyer
Shipping Box and Quality Control Report for EEW 6.1
I’ve seen several posts on the Facebook/Ravelry group where people have reported damage to boxes and other issues. I think it’s good people report these since I like to be open about there being issues. However, I hope people remember a much higher percentage of people report issues than report everything is working. A lot of other businesses try to avoid these kinds of open discussions because it can make people think there are more issues than there really are, but I am taking an approach where openness is best. It also really motivates me to reduce issues going forward.
I don’t have a good way of measuring box damage since many won’t report it, but very few of the EEW 6.1s had shipping damage. The EEW is designed to be durable so the items inside the box are usually fine even if the box was beaten up during shipping. I know some people feel worried when a damaged box shows up, but what really matters is what’s inside. If anything is damaged I obviously replace it. Out of the 1000+ EEW 6.1s that shipped in the first few days there were only two people who I think actually had their eSpinner damaged in shipping (0.2%). That said two other people decided to return the EEW 6.1 for a refund because of box damage without opening so I should say 0.4% were affected. I do want to improve this, but I think the cost and carbon impact of double boxing every item to avoid this is too high. Instead I will focus on other improvements. I can try to make the box smaller which will help and perhap add some internal support. Items that are smaller like the EEW Nano and future EEW Fold have a big advantage here just due to box strength increasing exponentially as box size reduces. Better taping will also help strengthen existing boxes.
A bigger problem has been quality control issues. My best estimate is this affected around 3-4% which is a lot of people when shipping over 1000 of these in the first few days. I target under 1% issues. This is stuff like loose motor screws, and missing parts. I’m not counting the reversed flyer hooks which is a different process issue that was very easy to fix by people just flipping the hooks around. I actually had the quality control pretty good on the EEW Nano 2 and Cone Winder (my last two products), but there was a regression with the EEW 6.1. I asked the factory to try and go a little quicker (assuming they would keep quality control in place, but they didn’t). I’ve made it clear to my factory that quality control checks are going to always be important going forward. Quality inspections add to my assembly costs, but I think doing a reasonable amount of quality checking is important and is something I factor into my prices.
Reducing Vibrations on EEW 6
I made this video to show ways to reduce vibration on the EEW 6. There are chapters in the youtube video so you can skip around, but the topics covered are balancing the flyer, aligning hooks, adding a clamp, adding weight, and tightening the bottom cover.
EEW 6.0 Circuit Board Upgrade and Store Spare Parts Change
Previously, I sold parts packs for the EEW 6 and EEW Nano. The reason I did this is because each item I carry in my store adds complexity for people getting the parts they want and for myself keeping things in stock. I really don’t even want to care about these kinds of parts so on any generic part I also list on that item’s page where you can buy them elsewhere online. However, I also know people like the convenience of buying directly from me and those people have been asking me to sell individual items. Because of these requests and to try and create less waste, I’ve changed to selling individual items in my store. Now people can buy individual items like drive belts, orifice hooks, bearings, and more. For the non-custom parts I will continue to list alternative stores. Just go to the main www.dreamingrobots.com page and then at the top go to “Product Info” and select your product. That page will list all the replacement part options. If you want to buy things from me just to my store.
One of the new parts I added to the store is the circuit board for the EEW 6.1. I created this video about upgrading the circuit board on the EEW 6.0 to the EEW 6.1 to increase motor life. So watch that if it is something you are possibly interested in doing. This only applies to the EEW 6.0 since the EEW 6.1 already uses this new circuit board. This new circuit board is an item in my store now.
Product Updates
Below are estimates and the dates may change.
EEW Fold Kickstarter – December 2024
EEW Nano 2.1 – January 2025
– Maurice Ribble Inventor of the Electric Eel Wheel
This email will be replacing my normal May 2024 Newsletter.
EEW 6.1
Upgrade to the EEW 6.1 now! The EEW 6.1 is a bigger, more powerful, and smoother version of the EEW Nano. Order today for $269, before it goes back to $299 on May 1st. This limited time discount is my way of thanking both return customers and those who have been patiently waiting while the EEW 6 has been out of stock. Due to high demand there may be shipping delays of upto a week. Watch this video for a quick overview of the EEW 6.1.
Here are some of my favorite features of the EEW 6.1:
Compact travel friendly design
Weighs under 3 pounds (1.3 kgs)
Bobbins hold 8 ounces (225 grams)
Sealed ball bearings on all friction points (eliminates need for oil and results in quiet operation)
Controls are ergonomic and easy to use
Brushless motor gives more speed and power than previous EEWs (max speed of 1,800 RPMs at the flyer)
Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival
We will be at Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival May 4-5. If you’re attending there check out the booth. We’ll have all our products there to try and buy:
EEW 6.1
EEW Nano 2
EEW Cone Winder
EEW Lazy Kate
EEW Yarn Counter
See you there! Don’t forget to come to the Spin In on Saturday evening.
Photo Winner
Last month I asked people to submit photos. The response was tremendous. I now have hundreds of photos that I’ll be slowly uploading to my Instagram page over time. The randomly selected winner of an EEW 6.1 was Serena (@bassoonlady1). Thanks for all the contributions!
I’m hoping the EEW 6.1 will start shipping early next month, and I want to give one away to someone in the community. You can submit photos featuring my products (eSpinners, Yarn Counter, Cone Winder, Lazy Kate, …) or something made using one of my products. I will randomly pick someone to win an EEW 6.1, and will ship it out to them before I ship an EEW 6.1 to anyone else.
I need more photos for my Instagram page, and I love sharing photos from people in this community! If you want to participate with a chance to win an EEW 6.1 you can use this form to upload photos.
Maryland Fiber Festival
We will be at Maryland Fiber Festival May 4-5. Our booth will be in Main A06. This is going to be the first festival being run by Jessica. She was a helper in many of my past booths, but this one she will be running. She’s actually been attending festivals for way longer than I’ve been making eSpinners and knows all about my products. I’m sure she will run the booth great. Please show support by stopping by the booth. I’m sad I can’t make this one, but it’s hard for me to justify the drive and I’m planning to put the time I save into making progress on some new products.
One of my favorite things at Maryland is the Spin In. Last year it was on Saturday evening so definitely consider going to that if you attend. We’ll be donating some door prizes and the mini competitions are awesome. Perhaps my favorite from last year was the longest single you can spin in a minute while BLINDFOLDED! I didn’t do it, but it was so much fun to watch.
New Products Verus Upgrade Kits
I know many of you want to see upgrade options when I release new versions of my products so you can get the improvements without having to buy a new whole product. I like making the community happy, and kits are generally better for the planet since they reduce waste so I also want this. However, my top priority is making the best products I can and sometimes that causes problems with doing upgrade kits. In this section I will discuss the upgrade kits verus requiring new products to get the improved features.
I’ve done upgrade kits with the EEW Nano and EEW 5.x in the past. However, I’m not offering an upgrade kit for the EEW 6.0 to EEW 6.1. I want to explain why an upgrade kit doesn’t work well for the EEW 6.1. The main problem is I made many small improvements to the EEW 6.1 and I’ve talked with many spinners about which changes are most important. They just don’t agree. There have been changes to the motor, other electronics, case, bobbins, and flyer. That is basically all the major components. So I would basically need to send out a full new eSpinner and there would not be any savings by ordering a kit. I did consider offering lots of little upgrade kits, but that would be really confusing for users to know what to buy. In the end my recommendation is that the EEW 6.1 is a nice upgrade, but if you’re happy with the EEW 6.0 and you don’t see any must have features on the EEW 6.1 then just keep your EEW 6.0 and be happy with that. I personally don’t see any massive reasons to upgrade. If you’ve been out of the loop and are wondering what the changes from the EEW 6.0 to the 6.1 are, then here is a video I made several months ago about that.
A project I haven’t announced yet is an upgrade for the EEW Nano 2 that I’m calling the EEW Nano 2.1. I’ll share more details about that in the future, but it will include a new flyer, a better tension system, better bobbins, and a few other things. For this one I will be offering a low cost upgrade kit because the electronics and case are being left largely unchanged. So for that case an upgrade kit really well.
My point here is while I’d like to always offer upgrade kits, sometimes upgrade kits just aren’t practical. Deciding to do these kinds of upgrades will be made on a case by case basis for me, but when I think a kit makes sense then I plan to make it available. While I’m sure this isn’t ideal for everyone, I just want to be open and let you know my thought process on this complex topic.
Level Winding System Update
Another question I get is when will I have a level winding system and will it work with my current eSpinner? This is basically a request for an upgrade kit. I’ve talked about a level winding system for the EEW Pro back in this video. I’ve made some progress on that, but this whole EEW Pro project is taking me a lot more time than I expected. I will complete it eventually, but I still have no idea on when that will be (other than that it’s still years from shipping). For that project a level winding system that works better than anything else out there is one of my two top priorities. While doing work for this I’ve realized I probably can’t integrate a level winding system that I’m happy with onto any of my existing eSpinners without big changes. Right now I’m focusing on getting a really good level winding system into this future EEW Pro. Once I have that I’ll look to see if it can reasonably be fit into an existing eSpinner like the EEW 6.x. Based on what I know now I’d probably say I can’t make a version I’ll be happy with that works with the EEW 6.x, but I do play to try once I have a known working level winding system.
Website Work
I am planning to move hosting services soon for my website. While doing this I’ll be cleaning up a lot of things on my website. Most of this you probably won’t notice. I’m just letting people here know in case things go wrong you can let others know. While I’m hoping you don’t have to do this, for some people to get it working correctly after this you might need to clean the cookies out of your browser (you can search for how to do this online if it’s needed). A smooth migration will be that I stop accepting orders for a few hours, the site goes down, and then appears again without any noticeable changes other than that it’s faster. If things go terribly wrong I can always go back to the original server until I figure out the problems.
Product Updates
Below are estimates and the dates may change.
EEW 6.1 – May 2024
I don’t accept pre-orders in my store, but when I get a batch of products there should be enough for everyone who wants them.
– Maurice Ribble Inventor of the Electric Eel Wheel
I have been thinking about a new eSpinner that would be priced between the EEW Nano 2 and the EEW 6.1. The bobbin size would be 4 ounces (100g) and it would be designed to have my fastest flyer speed (smaller design, but same motor as EEW 6.x). It can also fold flat to make it ultra portable and to make removing the bobbin easier. I’m also considering a few other features like a 4 digit screen to display the RPMs of the flyer. Please watch the video and provide some feedback in the video’s comments if you haven’t already.
EEW 6.1 Update
I released a new quick getting started video for the EEW 6.1 which should be shipping in May. A huge thanks to Vampy who filmed it. I also set up this page for it on my website.
If you are interested in tracking the container/ship it’s through Pacific Star and the B/L number is TBOS24010640. I’ll keep you updated in this newsletter though.
Return Policy Discussion Results
Last month I sent out a survey asking for feedback. 77% of you thought I should limit returns with one return being the most popular option with 61%. About 80% of people didn’t think I should be refunding or paying return shipping. There was also a lot of great feedback.
Many of the comments were that people were concerned about refunds for defective products. I didn’t explain this well in the poll, but that doesn’t apply because I always send out replacement parts for defective or damaged items for free during the longer warranty period. However, I do sometimes get people saying they want to return defective products instead and what I find is well over half the time I check the products aren’t defective. Instead of defects I suspect the people just aren’t using the item correctly, which is understandable. Spinning can be difficult for some and it’s hard for new spinners to know if it’s a defective item or a technique issue. My point here is that it’s difficult to explain an item isn’t defective to someone who said it is, and I don’t want to get into arguments with people about what defines defective. The same desire to avoid arguments applies to defining a product as used or defining valid reasons for a return. There were also lots of suggestions about doing returns per item category, but that adds a lot of complexity (see my restocking fee after the first return which helps with this). In the end I decided to try to keep my policy as simple as possible without a lot of judgement calls by me so I’ll be allowing one free return just like before.
Could my policy be more fair if I made it more complex? Yes, it probably could be. However, explaining a more complex policy so customers would understand it would lead to confusion sometimes. Also implementing a more complex policy would take more of my time. So I decided to keep it simple. I think the changes I’ve made to my return policy actually make it simpler than it was previously and also more fair, while likely costing me about the same as my previous policy.
There were many people who thought only one return was too strict so I’m going to change that. Instead of limiting returns to one I will charge a restocking fee for returns after the first one (first return still has no restocking fee). It will be 25%, but I’ll still be losing money. However, I think this will help stop people from abusing my return policy multiple times because it will result in them sharing some of the loss with me. I won’t need to change any of my prices to cover this since this kind of event will be very rare.
I tried to discuss this with paypal and unfortunately they won’t provide any feedback on my return policy. They have their own refund process that is separate from mine (credit card companies also do this), but these policies do result in paypal taking funds from my account. I agree to this so it is fair considering I opt into their service. So if someone really wants to abuse my return policy and then take it to paypal they may still get the refund, but this is exceedingly rare (only happened to me once) so I’m not going to worry about it. This is a time consuming process to file these claims with paypal so I suspect nobody will do it too many times. I just need to let such things not bother me and remind myself when the occasional person does this it’s ok and just part of my cost of doing business.
To all those who said they were sorry for this being a problem, there is no need for that. I’m super lucky to have a successful business doing what I want. I am so fortunate that I don’t get many returns and I’m just trying to put together a system here that is as fair as I can make it given the constraints of my small business. I see the average return rate on Amazon is estimated around 10% which is much higher than my return rate. Certain categories like clothing have a 40% return rate there which is mind boggling to me. I’m so fortunate to have such a great community.
The EEW 6.1 assembly ran into an unexpected slowdown since the sliding hook oring manufacturer sent too few orings and we had to wait for more of those to be made and delivered. It shows how even a single low cost part can delay production. The good news is the EEW 6.1s in line and the container should be loaded on a ship on February 11th. The container will take around three months to get to Boston. I plan to start shipping them in May, but this still depends on no major shipping delays. I will keep everyone here updated on when they are ready to ship to you.
(I generated this image using AI – sheep watching container ship at sunset)
Busy Shipping
In the newsletter last month, I announced the EEW Lazy Kate and EEW Cone Winder are in stock. The response was crazy. First my website crashed. I use a scalable web server on Amazon’s cloud so I increased my web server resource allocation and fixed that. Next, I received over 600 orders in the first few days, which is way more than I was expecting. I found one retired friend who was willing to help so we worked over the weekend and got all the orders out in just two days. It wasn’t how I expected to spend my weekend, but I wanted to get them shipped quickly so people wouldn’t be waiting any longer than needed. A huge shout out to all of you supporters! The main reason I’m able to keep my prices affordable is because so many of you love these fiber tools. My two goals with this business are to grow the worldwide fiber community and to make a reasonable living for my family. I’m accomplishing both of those. Thanks!
Return Policy Review
I’ve had the same return policy in place for the past 6 years. Back when I set it up I was having issues with a few users getting the same product multiple times and returning it. While I don’t have any direct evidence of why this was happening, it did seem to happen around major fiber festivals so I wondered whether people were getting my wheels for those and then returning them. I never sell returned items as new and don’t have time to refurbish them myself so I sell them for a fraction of their new value to a friend who refurbishes them and sells them as used. Returns raise the prices for everyone else so I wanted to stop it. While I considered a lot of options, the main ones I considered was adding a restocking fee or limiting the number of returns to one. I decided there were legitimate reasons for a single return and as a customer I’d like to be able to do a single return without having to pay a restocking fee. I do require returns to pay the return shipping mainly because it simplifies the return process for me since I don’t have to send them return labels which take time for me to make and sometimes people don’t have access to printers.
That is the current state of things. I am committed to cleaning up the wording on my return page to make it more concise. However, before I do that I wanted to see if the community had any thoughts so I’ve created a poll to get your feedback on what you think would be the best return policies to use in my store. If you’re interested, please go fill out my survey here. I’m fine making my return policy more generous, but I wanted to see what others thought since that would cause prices to increase (only a small amount since my return levels are much lower than big online retailers like Amazon see).
Product Updates
Below are estimates and the dates may change.
EEW 6.1 – May 2024
I don’t accept pre-orders in my store, but when I get a batch of products there should be enough for everyone who wants them.
– Maurice Ribble (Inventor of the Electric Eel Wheel)
