Fourth Option Last Update
11 months ago
– Wed, May 24, 2023 at 01:43:24 PM
Hello Backers,
I want to let you all know that this will likely be the last message you receive from me regarding our Fourth Option Kickstarter campaign. This has certainly been a roller coaster experience for me as I've stepped out of my comfort zone and launched a product that we hope will become a household item in homes and in restaurant around the world.
We shipped out all orders to backers who have completed their BackerKit survey about two weeks ago. If you have filled out your survey and have not received your order, please send us an email to [email protected] and we'll check on the status of your shipment. We still have roughly 70 BackerKit surveys that have not been filled out up to this point so I will be reaching out to all who have not filled out their survey individually via email.
I've learned so much during the launch and failure and relaunch of our KS campaign. I've learned to make sure to budget all expenses as much as possible to cover unforeseen issues like international and domestic shipping costs just to name a couple. I also learned that when you have a deadline in mind for your project, you have to account for unforeseen manufacturer delays and issues as well so make sure you don't get too discouraged when delays happen because, there will likely be delays.
I've always tried to be as transparent and honest as possible regarding our campaign and my wife has scolded me for it. I don't have any fancy engineering or marketing degrees that have gotten me to this point. I just want everyone to know that I'm just a normal guy with a God given idea trying to bring a product to market and hopefully it will turn into a business some day. There have been some ups and many downs during this experience. We have lost money and made absolutely nothing launching this product and that's something I have come to understand and live with. Most products when launched don't make any profits if you don't have any social media or marketing experience as I have neither. I only joined social media last summer because I was told that is the best way to get our product out to the masses with the least amount of cost. I quickly learned that I have no interest in social media and I loathe having to log onto any of the SM sites other than YouTube to find a tutorial video or a great motivational speaker like Brian Tracy, Les Brown, Vusi Thembekwayo, and Jim Rohn just to name a few.
My social media woes will continue until I can get our product in front of the right target audience so if anyone is interested in posting social media content using their FO and tagging fourth_option on Instagram and TikTok or @4thOption on Facebook, we are willing to give you an extra discount towards a future purchase. If you are an influencer on social media, we are willing to share in any profits you generate for our product. Reach out to me at [email protected] if interested. Just throwing that out there if anyone is willing to be a brand ambassador. :)
Lastly, I want to let you all know that we have finally landed on our sale price of FO going forward. With recent in-person sales, we landed on $9.99 for version 2, with our remaining version 1 selling for $7.99. Once all our V1 are sold, we will remove those from our website. Our discount code for our Kick Starter backers will still be available until May 31st so please use the code "KSDISCOUNT" to receive 25% off your entire order online at fourthoption.com before the discount expires. That means all your V2 utensils will cost $7.50 each for another week.
I want to sincerely thank each and every Backer of our campaign from the bottom of my heart. We would not have a product on the market to sell if it weren't for all of you and we are truly grateful.
Forever Grateful,
Morris
Still packing and shipping orders plus Kickstarter discount until end of May
about 1 year ago
– Mon, Apr 24, 2023 at 12:35:21 PM
Hello Backers,
I want to thank each and every one of you for supporting our campaign. I truly hope you understand my sincerity in the updates and replies to messages when I say THANK YOU. I want to let all the backers who have not received their order(s) yet know that we're still packing and shipping so please be a little more patient with us. We are a very small group and we still have daily 9 to 5's as we have to support our monthly living expenses as Fourth Option is just a product and not a business yet that can support us.
I also wanted to give out our discount code to only our Kickstarter backers who would like to purchase more at our KS price. When checking out online at fourthoption.com, use the discount code KSDISCOUNT to receive 25% off your entire order which would bring the price down to our KS rates plus some extra savings as you would receive the discounted price for everything you purchase including version 1 of FO and cases for Fourth Option.
We still have roughly 80 backers who still haven't filled out their BackerKit surveys up to this point. Please fill those out if you have not or if you aren't sure if you have, please reach out to us at [email protected] so we can verify if you have.
Lastly, if any of our backers are in the influencer/marketing/advertising space or knows anyone that would like to promote our product, please reach out to us at [email protected] so we can discuss any details further. As previously mentioned, we don't have a lot of money currently at our disposal but, if you or someone you know would be interested in a profit-sharing model, we are definitely willing to discuss the percentages of the deal in more detail along with a thorough contract to protect all parties.
I would love to get on Shark Tank to help speed up the process but I don't know if anyone from the show would find our product to give us a chance but hopefully God will open those Shark Tank doors THIS YEAR for us. Trying to manifest it. LOL
As always. Thank you all for supporting our campaign.
Morris
Fourth Option orders shipping!
about 1 year ago
– Mon, Apr 17, 2023 at 07:22:59 AM
Hello Backers,
I want to thank each and every one of you for your patience as we've had to deal with delays. I'm emailing you to let you know that we have received our shipment and we're currently doing an inventory & quality check. Once done, we will start shipping out all the remaining orders.
I want to let you know that we will start shipping our oldest orders first and will work our way through until all orders are shipped. We have more than enough product to fill every single order regardless of the finishes you requested so everyone will receive their order(s) with this shipment. If you have placed a second order, both of your orders will ship together.
If you would like to purchase more now, you can go online to fourthoption.com and your new order will ship out within a couple of days at most. Our prices online are still at our KS rates until April 21. Prices will increase to our new rate on April 22nd but I want to let you know that all of our KS backers will have an opportunity to receive our KS rates until the of May with our discount code that will be sent out before month's end.
We still have around 80 backers that haven't filled out their BackerKit survey. If you're one of the backers who haven't filled out your survey, please do so as soon as possible so we can ship your order out as quickly as possible.
Please make sure to WASH your FO eating utensils before using as they are coming straight from our manufacturer to us and then your various locations.
Thank you all for your support and we hope you enjoy your Fourth Option eating utensils as much as we have!
Sincerely,
Morris Wray
Founder and creator of Fourth Option
Impatiently waiting on shipment!
about 1 year ago
– Wed, Apr 12, 2023 at 04:34:47 PM
Hello Backers,
I want to let you know that I've been impatiently waiting for a couple of weeks now for our shipment to be delivered. I've posted a screen shot so you can see the progress of our shipment with UPS. Our order was done in late March and picked up by UPS as seen below. I went to our local UPS distribution facility and also called on a couple of occassions to get an estimated ETA for our shipment with no help from anyone at UPS up to this point.
As previously stated, we are at the mercy of our manufacturer and freight forwarding company which is tough to deal with when we have backers patiently waiting as our shipping deadline has come and gone. I hope to send you an update later this week with better news. Thanks again as always.
Morris
Fourth Option second shipment slight delay
about 1 year ago
– Wed, Mar 22, 2023 at 08:06:08 AM
Hello Backers,
I've heard from our manufacturer and I wanted to keep you updated on the progress of our second shipment. Our manufacturer is in the home stretch of completing our order and passing it off to our freight fowarder but, they will not make the end of March goal of us shipping to all who have not received their order(s). As you all may not know, frequently, there are delays in production and we're at the mercy of our manufacturer and Fourth Option is no exception.
As always, I want to be up front and transparent. It's a blessing and a curse all in one I guess because my wife tells me I overshare too much. A big reason for the delay is me. I received our first shipment back in January and it was good but I wanted them to be better. I ate some bone-in ribs with FO and noticed that when I applied too much pressure on the utensil trying to secure my food so I wouldn't drop it, I bent my utensil and wanted to make sure this would be improved with future orders. I requested from our manufacturer to make the utensils slightly thicker so this issue could be rectified. With my request, they had to adjust the tooling on their end which caused the production of the second shipment to be delayed for a week or two. I'm only assuming because I haven't asked but if I did not request the change, I'm quite sure our shipment would've likely been completed towards the beginning of March and we should have shipped most if not all of our remaining orders out by now.
I've been testing out the second version of FO for about three weeks now and I'm very pleased with the changes that have been made to make them more durable. I've included a photo of the first version on the left and the second version on the right below (V2 has a greener looking finish). There are minimal changes in appearance and weight. The one on the left weighs 1.5oz and the other 1.7oz but that slightly added weight in the right place make them much more durable in my opinion. To anyone who's wondering, the rainbow finishes will all be different so, green is not the dominant color on all the rainbow utensils.
When I kept telling everyone in my email replies that it would be well worth the wait, that is what I was alluding to without sharing that I requested the change. Once again, I'm more disappointed than anyone on this planet that our goals for shipping was not achieved but with the change requested, we will be shipping out a better product.
I understand if you're disappointed but no one is more disappointed than me. I have lofty goals for FO and I would've loved to have all of the KS orders completed so you can see how awesome FO is for yourself. I know our product is something that should've been created decades ago and we have a product that will be around long after we've left this planet.
I'm trying to think of a way to compensate you who have waited to receive your order so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Full disclosure, we are a brand-new startup so any ridiculous suggestion would be received but, likely won't be taken into serious consideration. LOL
Again, we still have roughly 100 BackerKit survey's that have not been fully completed so we would request that all who have not completed your survey, please do so as soon as possible. I believe most are international orders that have not paid for shipping cost. If the survey is not completed when we receive our shipment, I will reach out to all individually after we've shipped out the remaining orders to see if you need assistance with completing your BackerKit survey.
I think I will take my wife's advice so my next update will be when we have received our second order and shipping has begun to all who have patiently waited. Thank you again to all who haven't received their first order and also to those who have received their order and placed a second and third order with us. We truly appreciate all of our backers and will have your orders shipped to you as soon as possible.
Sincerely,
Morris Wray
