First Batch In The Mail!
about 8 years ago – Thu, Oct 13, 2016 at 06:21:12 PM

Brazyn Trybe,

We’re way overdue for an update. Lots has happened since we last posted…Morphs have been made…we’ve finally figured out production…we have welcomed our newest (and cutest) Trybesman (trybesbaby) into the world…Morphs have been shipped.

Where to begin?

First off, we want to thank you again for your awesome patience. The road has been long. On our quest to bring you the world’s most dynamic foam roller, we have faced more challenges than we anticipated. Like all of you, we have done our best to meet these challenges the best way we know how – we lean in and we work late nights. Though we still have road ahead of us, we’re excited to report that we have reached an important milestone. This week, our first batch of full production foam rollers has been sent out! Boo-yah!

As we have previously reported, in order to get our rollers out as quickly as possible, we have selected to ship out our pre-orders in batches as Morphs become available. With this shipment, we have approximately 25% of our pre-ordered Morphs out in the real world.

This means that some of you will soon be receiving your order! This also means that some of you will still have to wait a bit longer as we complete the next (larger) batch.

We know you are all anxious to get rolling on The Morph. And trust us, no one is more anxious than us. At Brazyn Life, we’re passionate about foam rolling and making cool things, and we can’t wait to hear your tales about how The Morph has helped you to increase your mobility!

If you were not part of this first shipment, we ask that you continue to be patient as we finish production on the next batch of rollers. We’re always happy to hear from our earliest customers and supporters, but please keep in mind that we’re a small start-up team. We recognize that many of you would like more frequent updates and we totally get it. You’re always on the back of our minds. However, every minute we spend doing one important thing, takes time away from doing another important thing. And in the end, we know that all you really want is to get your roller.

Over the last couple of weeks, we have been intently focused on production, establishing our fulfillment pipeline, doing some hands on quality control on our first shipment batch (in true start-up fashion, we used the neighbors garage), and welcoming our newest Trybesbaby into the world, my little girl Mika Simone.

She’s only 3-weeks old, and she’s already pitching in.

The road ahead: I’ve made overly-optimistic estimations of our production capacity in the past, only to have turned around and hit a brick wall (supplier issues, tooling shortcomings, bureaucratic quagmires, process inadequacies), but FINALLY we think we have a good grip on what it takes to make a Morph in full production mode - the process has been painstakingly hammered out during the production of this first batch. Because of this, we are currently doubling the size of our production team so that we can realize a higher output. Our goal is to have all our pre-orders sent out and inventory “in-stock” before the holidays. Please note, our shipments will go out based on chronological order.

As always, if you need to make a change to your address (or want to send us words of encouragement ;) ), please feel free to shoot us a note.

Lastly, If you are part of this first shipment, please let us know what you think of the product once you get it. We’re proud of this product. It brings you the uniqueness of a hand-crafted product with the durability of a well-designed tool, and we’re always happy to help answer any questions you have about it.

Be Brazyn.

Nate

We Put the "Bus(y)" in Busi-ness
about 8 years ago – Fri, Sep 02, 2016 at 12:15:23 AM

Brazyn Trybe

I’m back from a busy several weeks at our factory in Europe. I’m moderately pleased that we have approximately 1000 rollers in various stages of completion, and we will be adding to that on a daily basis. Though it will still take some time to complete and package this first batch, we are inching closer to the day when our first Morphs will be out the door and headed to their new families. I feel like a proud papa ready to send his kid off to college.  My baby has all grown up!…TEAR.

I would like to have many more Morphs nearing completion, but we continue to spend time tweaking the manufacturing process in order to help us produce The Morph faster and better.  We have not mastered it yet, and production remains on a slower pace than we would like, but overall this last trip was a success.

And thus...Action Item:  If you ordered from a country outside of North or South America, please inform us of any address updates. We are striving to get our first batch in the mail by the end of next week, and since our factory is in Europe, you all benefit from being closer to Casa De Morph.

Here’s a Sampling of Some of the Sights and Sounds (and Surrounding Scenery) from the Merry Morph Making Magic Manufacturing, ughhhhh…place.

Be Brazyn.

Nate

Brazyn in the News:

Check out the Morph featurerd in The Kiteboarder Magazine

Lot's to Report
over 8 years ago – Tue, Aug 02, 2016 at 01:00:14 PM

Brazyn Trybe,

We have a ton to report and some important action items for you.

Before we get into it, we want to thank you all for your commendable patience. The good news is that your wait is nearing an end as Morph components are now working their way through our production line and we’ll start to have finished product soon. As such, we need to confirm some important information with you.

Action Items

Color Selection – As we have now moved into full production, we have made some minor changes to both the black and blue foam colors (please see picture below). We love the updated colors and we think you will too!   Besides looking great, the new colors also serve an important utility purpose – they have higher UV resistance, which will improve the durability of the product. The biggest change is that black has now become anthracite gray. Please note: All orders for "black" will default to "anthracite".

Love one of the other colors better? No problem. If you wish to change your color selection please let us know! Otherwise, no action needed…

Address – If you have moved since you first entered your shipping address, or you expect to move soon, please let us know and we will update the information lickety-split.

And now…

Here’s what’s been happening since our last update:

As a quick reminder, during the last update I was on my way to our factory in Europe to kick things into high gear (as it so happens, I’m actually about to head back to Europe to oversee the ongoing production and to prepare for our initial shipments...more on this below).  The goals of the last trip were to:

Finalize production process: Completed
During my last trip to Europe, we discovered some ways to make the production process go faster and be more predictable. This is great for the long-term production capacity and quality control of the parts coming off the line, but it required us to create some better tooling which took a bit of extra time.

Optimize tooling: Completed
Several of our most important tools are dependent on the size of the foam. Since the foam component was not confirmed and released for production until late June, we were not able to finish the tooling until early July.

Hire and train necessary staff: Completed
We really took our time on this step so that our team has a good understanding of what our requirements are and what we expect at each step of the process.

Start production: Completed
The first step of production is to make the flexible outer roll structure that ultimately provides the base onto which the foam is applied. This is a big part of the magic behind the product and also one of the most time consuming components to make. I’m happy to report that this is going really well and the output of these parts is starting to ramp up.

Get the foam “in-house”: Ongoing
The output of foam parts is one of the main limiting factors to our shipping timeline. In order to make our production go faster (and start getting your rollers shipped out ASAP), we have chosen to have foam parts shipped to our factory in batches – taking smaller shipments as the parts become available.  This method is definitely not the most ideal for our bottom line (small airfreight shipments are expensive!), but we are committed to expediting the process in whatever way we can.  By the end of next week we should have 900 pieces of foam in house and ready to apply to the collapsible support structures.  After a few days of bonding time, The Morphs will finally be ready for packaging and shipping.

Finalize packaging and accessories: Ongoing
You may not realize it, but we are sending you guys a lot of goodies along with your Morph. All these items are like their own product - they need to be carefully planned and produced. All packaging components have been sent to our supplier for printing, and we are hoping to have them done by mid-August. The Travel Pouches, Morph Skins, and Conversion Kit Bags are now under production as well. If we have one major concern with our shipping timeline, this is the area where we could still see some delays. It’s almost unbelievable, but our initial order for the travel pouch fabric literally caught on fire at the textile factory. Come on man!  Anyway, this incendiary setback aside, we should have the new lot finished this week. We are doing everything we can to make sure we get the most critical parts (travel pouches and skins) done ASAP so that we can include everything you ordered with your shipment.  Conversion Kits may need to ship at a later date.

What we’re up to in the present:

I'm headed back to Romania. Usually my trips to the factory mean long arduous days of planning, prototyping, sourcing, and creating. But this time something cool will be happening…we’ll be in full swing production with Morphs coming off the production line!  We can’t wait to get these things packaged up and out the door for your final approval.

We’d like to welcome our newest Trybesman Tom Hopkins to the Brayzn Life team. Tom is a world-class decathlete, a Princeton grad, a singer songwriter, and a foam-rolling freak!  Tom will be helping us in many areas.  For one, he will ensure that we can more quickly answer any questions you have about The Morph.  Keep an eye out for more coming from Tom in the near future.

First Trade Show a huge success.   We took a few prototypes down to the IDEA Fitness World Convention on July 14-16th and made unsuspecting passers-by get in a little foam rolling sesh. The feedback was AWESOME.   The appeal of the collapsible innovation is a no-brainer, but we are adamant that The Morph should not just be a good solution for travel. It should be your go-to roller anytime. We knew that we loved The Morph’s patent-pending rolling surface, but we were blown away by the feedback we got at the convention.  Lot’s of love for The Morph coming from a group of fitness professionals that use foam rollers on a daily basis.

Brazyn in the News:

Runner-Up Honors at the HYPE Foundation’s Global Innovation in Sports Start-up Competition at Google - link here

Inventor’s Digest Feature on The Morph inventor Nate Lawrie (that’s me!) – Keep an eye out for the August Issue of Inventor’s Digest. I talk football, foam rolling, and inventing.

Final thoughts:

We are super excited to be working on our first production run and pumped to be entering a new phase in the story of Brazyn Life (the part where we actually have product to ship).  Thank you for being one of our earliest supporters and customers.  And thanks for sticking with us through the delays.  We have an extremely high volume of foam rollers to make and ship out, so we ask that you stick with us a bit longer as we work to finalize this first production run.   We’ll be using whatever guerilla tactics we can come up with to get your roller finished and shipped out to you ASAP.

In the meantime, let us know if we can answer any questions for you.

Be Brazyn.

Nate

p.s.  - The Morph is going to the Olympics!

We're proud that one of The Morph's earliest adapters is Team USA Olympic Heptathlete Barbara Nwaba.  Look for her to do big things in Rio!  We'd like to take total credit, but we're pretty sure it was hard work that got her there.  We'll settle for a little bit of credit.  Go Barbara!

We're Doing It!
over 8 years ago – Mon, Jun 20, 2016 at 07:00:18 PM

Mobility Ninja,

We are pleased to report we have made significant progress since our last update. After extensive testing, we have finalized the foam compound we will be using and I’m happy to report that foam production (take 2) is now under way!

As I write this, I am on my way to our factory in Europe so we can start the assembly process. Our assembly line is basically ready to go. We have been patiently waiting to give final approval on the foam component before pulling the trigger on assembly of the support structures. We have done a lot of work on the process engineering to make sure the production runs efficiently and that we have good quality controls in place. Having said that, we have learned over the last couple months to expect unexpected challenges. We do expect for things to go somewhat slowly at first as we train our team on how the parts should be made and what kind of precision and quality we expect. Once we clear this hurdle, we expect production to ramp up quickly. The good news is that since we are doing the assembly ourselves, the production line is wholly dedicated to making Morphs. This would not be the case if we had outsourced the production to a large manufacturer. You can be confident that we will be working day and night to get these rollers produced and shipped off as soon as possible.

Timeline: While we had hoped to be at this point months ago, we are glad to be finally moving into our first full production! How long will all this take? We are eternally hopeful that the stars will align and everything will go smoothly from here on out. Call it entrepreneurial optimism:) But, despite our firmest beliefs that we were above the classic travails of start-updome, we have had to learn the hard way that everything takes longer than you expect. It turns out that bringing an original, first of it’s kind, handmade, high-quality product to market is really HARD! If the stars do in fact align, then we are hopeful to meet the timeline we set out in our last update (by the end of July). More likely, the shipping date will come sometime in early August. The good news is that by the end of this week, we will be making Morphs!  This is happening!  Of course, we will continue to update you as we move forward.

Be Brazyn.
Nate Lawrie

Some Recent Press / Reviews...

Inc Magazine: We were proud to be a finalist in the 2016 Inc. Magazine Design Awards. Check us out here (scroll to #10): Inc. Magazine

USA Rugby: With the few prototypes we have had available, we have sent them out to places we knew would really put The Morph to the test. Here's what we heard back from a trainer for US Rugby:

"As for tour it held up great. I took 6 rollers with me on the Paris leg. Two orange ones, 3 SKLZ travel size ones and yours. Yours by far was the hit and also a hit amongst international travel. I have a lot of people interested especially in the rugby world and every night it always went missing.

Ideally, we would want every player on our team to put one in their bags for the road to Rio. It actually was used as a pretty good pillow at some layovers at the airport."

Love it!

Progress Report
over 8 years ago – Wed, Jun 01, 2016 at 04:12:42 AM

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