Join us on Discord
We recently achieved our best throughput – 80 headsets per hour – in our Los Angeles factory. This is thanks to significant effort from our team, as well as improved manufacturing and QC efficiency, and successfully addressing prior risks, bugs, and bottlenecks.
In the past two weeks, we've finished shipping most preorders from February-May. There are only a couple hundred February-May preorders left to ship, and the last remaining should ship within the next 1-3 weeks (why? see below!).
We've shipped nearly 20% of June & July preorders. June & July orders remain ahead of schedule, as previously estimated 2 weeks ago. Most should ship by December 1, although some may slip for the same reasons outlined below.
We've already started shipping August & September preorders 1-2 weeks ahead of the previously estimated schedule.
In our last update, we mentioned international orders would ship between December 1 and January 2024. Canadian shipments are expected to ship in December. Australian, New Zealand, Japanese, and European orders are heavily impacted by unpredictability of air freight during the holiday season, as well as unpredictability of local shippers (ex. UPS) once products arrive within the country. It is looking more likely that customers in these countries won't receive it until January 2024. We're actively working to get better visibility into our international shipping schedule, and investigating approaches to find faster methods of shipment.
But why hasn't my order shipped yet?
It can be confusing to see many people get their headset and in some cases ahead of your order. You may be wondering why your unit hasn't shipped yet. Here's why: Quality Control or Inventory.
Unlike generic consumer electronics that are mass made and shipped by distributors, every Bigscreen Beyond is custom-made for each customer. To ensure an excellent experience, we perform Quality Control on every headset, cushion and prescription lens before it ships.
When QC catches issues with a cushion, it typically takes less than a week to re-manufacture. In some cases, unique face shapes may have some manufacturing issue that takes longer to resolve. This affected a couple hundred people. It was previously time consuming manual tweaks in software, and is now automated.
Custom-made prescription lenses ship with the Beyond because without them VR can be a subpar or unusable experience for people who need corrective vision. During Quality Control, some lenses can be out of spec by just 100-300 microns (the thickness of a human hair). Over the past couple months, one of our lens suppliers was struggling to meet the spec with positive lens prescriptions. We've begun manufacturing +lenses with our secondary lens supplier. Approximately 150 orders are delayed due to QC issues with prescription lenses. They're getting remanufactured right now, and it may take 2-3 weeks for these orders to ship.
In some cases, everything is ready except we're waiting for inventory of a specific IPD headset due to problems with air freight. Simply getting large quantities of product shipped from overseas factories to Los Angeles has been tricky. Sometimes, we've had to wait several days or a week for space on a freighter. LA customs can take time as well. For example, a large batch of devices are currently waiting for a flight as early as Sunday or as late as Wednesday. This can cause delays for certain customers for whom we don't have inventory for another week or so. Due to fluctuating inventory each day, we shipped a lot of 63mm and 64mm headsets last week, and we may ship a lot of 65-67mm headsets next week.
In summary, if your order hasn't shipped yet, it's likely due to remanufacturing of your prescription lenses, your cushion, or awaiting inventory of headsets in your IPD. If you've already received a shipping address confirmation email, we're typically just waiting for a headset in your IPD.
Got your Beyond? Drop a review!
We're excited to see more and more of you receive your Beyonds at home. Many of you are still waiting for your Beyonds to arrive, and we can't wait for you to experience the magic for yourselves. If you've received a Beyond, please post a review on our store page! We publish all the reviews – good or bad – so potential customers can get honest impressions from real people!
We hope this production update helps answer common questions about the status of your order or why you might be delayed by a couple weeks. If you have any questions about today's update or your order, feel free to email us at support@bigscreenvr.com!