🏡 It's time to update your address 🏡
over 2 years ago – Thu, Sep 23, 2021 at 04:55:15 AM

Hey Blisstilers,

I hope you've been enjoying the last of the warm weather up in the northern hemisphere! 

For all of you in lockdown, we feel your frustration, luckily easier days are ahead 😊.

For this update, we only have good news!! 

 The Essential Info

•  🚚 Delivery is on track for November 🚀: the manufacturers have told us that they haven't encountered any issues so far 🤞. The SleepMuffs should be ready to send to our logistics partner in the second half of October. Depending how quickly they can pick, pack and post, your SleepMuffs should be shipped out end of October to the beginning of November 🌎🌏🌍. Transit time should be between 7 to 21 days depending on where you live; you will receive more details once your SleepMuffs are on their way!
• 📦 Branded shipping boxes have been ordered 🚛: they should be ready at the warehouse in 2-3 weeks
•  🖥 New website is up and running 📱: we've spent quite a bit of time developing the website over the past few weeks and would love your feedback! If you have a second don't hesitate to take a look and tell us what you think, good or bad 😊: www.blisstil.com
•  🤓 Starting a blog 📝 : we'll soon to be starting a blog where we'll be writing about tips & tricks on how to achieve better sleep. We'd love to have to your input on the subjects that can be covered. If you have 2 minutes please take a look at this 2 question survey and fill in what you can - LINK TO SURVEY. Any help is much appreciated.

If you have any issues getting access to your account or have any questions let us know, we're here to help 😊.

In other business news 

• We had a small legal issue ⚖️ with a brand squatter: a company tried to trademark our brand in a country where we weren't registered, luckily our lawyers caught it early and are now opposing its registration 🥊 #dontmesswithblisstil 💪.
• We got an email 📥 from a very big hospital outside of Australia interested in having SleepMuffs as part of a noise reduction project in their general wards 🤫. The aim of the project is to help their patients get much needed restorative sleep 😴  by reducing the ambient noise. We're pretty excited about this one as it opens an opportunity to help people in need and could set an interesting precedent, so let's hope things work out! 🤞
• We got through the first hurdle of the 🌺 NSW Government Grant, they are now evaluating our project. Let's hope we're successful on this one 🤞!
• We've officially partnered, again, with Carbon Neutral but this time with their 🌳 Plant-A-Tree Program 🌳. Future customers will have the opportunity to help plant a tree for the price of a coffee 🤯!

No detail section for this update 😊.

Till next time!! Love you all!🚀🚀

PS: Did you know Blisstil is the combination of bliss and and stillness? It's a word created by Alice and Oliver to communicate the pure bliss that is found in stillness.

🐌 Production has been held up 🏭
over 2 years ago – Tue, Aug 24, 2021 at 08:30:41 PM

Hi Blisstilers,

I hope all of you have had a wonderful time since the last time we spoke 😊.

We have some good news in relation to the business but frustratingly enough we have a few things that have held up production.

The Essential Info

Good news:

· 🌺 New South Wales Government funding is within reach! This is a first step into government grants. If it comes through it will give us access to bigger grants available for accelerated commercialisation. We really hope to be able to get this one! (touch wood 🌴🌳 - hopefully this touch wood business will work this time! 😁)

· 🖥️ A new website is coming up where you will be able to purchase and review your SleepMuffs 🤓. This new website will also be able to manage fulfilment and track deliveries automatically as it will be integrated with our logistics provider's delivery system.

· 🇺🇸 US patent has been granted! 🥳 This is the last of 5 patents which also include 🇦🇺Australia , 🇨🇳 China , 🇪🇺 Europe & the 🇬🇧 UK. This is a massive relief as it will enable us to steadily grow into a successful business without getting our design copied by a bigger company with more resources.

In other business related news we didn't manage to get selected for the Good Design Australia Awards, the winners were announced at the very end of July. They still haven't publicly announced who won which category but they put a few entries that stood out on their website which you can see here: Good Design Australia Entries. We're definitely going to be trying our luck next year!

What's been holding things up:

· 🏭 Foam manufacturer has not started production. He prioritised a bigger client than us, a train manufacturer who needed 1,000s of headrests made as quickly as possible. He has told us that he will be starting our batch next week. 

· 🧵 The seamstress has also been delayed as she's having trouble with the reproducibility of her pattern so she's trying to change it. In addition to that the Australian lockdowns and state border closures have delayed the delivery of certain components.

We estimate that these two delays combined with the possibility of other issues arising have offset the delivery to the beginning of November.

Please be sure that we share your frustration and we apologise for this additional delay. We're doing everything we can to get our SleepMuffs manufactured and delivered.

The detail: SleepMuffs

A video speaks a thousand words so here's a sample cover of the Galaxy print on the SleepMuffs. We're actually pretty stoked about it all 🤗, hope you enjoy the video 😊.

Till next time!! Love you all!🚀🚀

PS: Did you know Blisstil is the combination of bliss and and stillness? It's a word created by Alice and Oliver to communicate the pure bliss that is found in stillness.

🏭 Production is commencing next week 🏭
over 2 years ago – Fri, Jul 23, 2021 at 11:44:21 PM

Hey Blisstilers!! 

It's all coming together 🤗. Everything seems to be working as planned (touch wood 🌴😁). 

This update will only be talking about the essential info 😊.

For all of you gearing up for your holidays: I hope you have a fantastic, well deserved break ☀️🏖.

For all those in lockdown: I hope you're well, staying optimistic and keeping your imagination busy 🦹‍♀️🦸‍♀️👨‍🚀👨‍🎨👨‍🍳👩‍🌾👩‍🎓.

The Essential Info

• We managed to iron out the creases in the fabrics to get the prints we were looking for 😁.
• Labels and stickers have been designed and legal requirements found; they are soon to be printed 🏷.
• Orders have been put in with all our suppliers this week for the production of all our SleepMuffs 🥳. Production will commence next week.
• If everything goes as planned we will be able to ship all the SleepMuffs out in the second half of September for a delivery end of September. This of course will vary depending on where you live in the world and if we encounter any production issues along the way. We will be able to give you a more precise delivery date in September 🚚 ✅.
• Once your SleepMuffs are on their way we will send you a tracking number so you aware of its whereabouts 🗺.

Surveys will be locked on the 25th of August so please update your address if you plan to move!

How to update my delivery address in BackerKit

If you have any question please do not hesitate to comment or contact us directly through Kickstarter 😊.

Till next time!! Love you all!🚀🚀

PS: Did you know Blisstil is the combination of bliss and and stillness? It's a word created by Alice and Oliver to communicate the pure bliss that is found in stillness.

🚠 We're on track 🚠
almost 3 years ago – Wed, Jun 23, 2021 at 12:16:58 AM

Hey Blisstilers

I hope you're all enjoying life with the easing of a few covid restrictions 😊.

The main news is that we are on track to delivering the product in September!

The essential info:

• The new graphics for the sublimation print are in the works 🌌 ☁️ 🌊 🪨. We actually changed our approach this time so we could test quicker; we simultaneously created multiple modifications to the same graphic at the same time which we sent to our printer. They should hopefully arrive early next week.
• The sewing company has been selected!! 🎯 After being in contact with a few companies, and testing their workmanship, one really stood out. We decided to go with a seamstress in the sunny city of Brisbane, Queensland 🌞. She's still working on the pattern, and should be finished early next week.
• Our packaging manufacturer is currently working on the print plates 👩‍🔧 📦
• Label 📃creation is in the works. This will let you to know how to take care of the fabric covers. There's also quite a bit of legal work behind them as we have to figure out how to respect the rules around wording and warnings of the primary countries in which SleepMuffs will be used 🌏🌍🌍.
• Stickers for our swing tags 🔖 are being designed. This will be used by our third party logistics provider to differentiate the different coloured SleepMuffs.
• All other components are ready to be manufactured 🥳.

In the other parts of the business we've been busy too!

The University of New South Wales' 10x Pre-Accelerator program went really well; we met a lot of great start-ups with fantastic ideas and founders that shared the same passion as us.

We worked hard to complete all the required tasks which were super helpful in bringing parts of our documentation up to date. Unfortunately, or fortunately (it did take up a lot of our time) we did not get selected to go to the next round.

The selected start-ups were chosen based off the program's ability to make the them progress and succeed. Our optimism suggested that they didn't see how they could help us since we are already on track to succeeding, in major part thanks to all of you who backed us 😘.

Finally, we're still waiting on the results of the Australian Good Design Awards; they'll be announced next month 🍀🤞.

The detail: sublimation printing

After our second unsuccessful printing attempt our fabric supplier told us that it was probably best if she sent us a colour blanket. She told us that we should use it to find the colours of the graphics we saw on our screens.

We did not expect to receive 1.5 meter by 2 meter piece of fabric on which was printed 716 different colours 😁 (below). We scratched our heads and really thought about how we were going to proceed to match the colours of a backlit screen to something that was physically printed onto a massive piece fabric 🧐.

 After a few days of asking around and searching into the depths of the internet we understood that it was very important to compare colours under the same light to be able to match correctly. This meant we needed to be able to hold our graphics in our hands. Se we decided to use a high quality paper printer to print them out. This was actually a great idea because they came out very similar to how we saw them on our screens and therefore a great basis for comparison.

After that we isolated each main colour of the graphic by cutting out specific pieces of the printed papers, grabbed a pair of tweezers and matched each piece of coloured paper to one of the 716 colours present on the blanket. It took a bit of time but it was worth it 😊.
 

You can see the colours we matched to the those of the colour blanket in the V3 squares below.

The results of this test were received last month (when we announced the delay). Although they were much better than our first 2 attempts they weren't perfect; they didn't convey the emotions we were looking for, the contrast wasn't right and the colours were missing a bit of depth.

So our graphic designer disappeared into the darkness to work her magic, this time she created 2 different versions for faster testing.

Now, these two versions (V4 and V5) are with our printer. We're extremely eager to receive them; we really think we'll be winning this one 😁.

Charcoal 

Cloudy

Waves 

 Galaxy

I hope you enjoyed this update.

Till next time!! Love you all!🚀🚀

PS: Did you know Blisstil is the combination of bliss and and stillness? It's a word created by Alice and Oliver to communicate the pure bliss that is found in stillness.

👷 We've been working hard 🤓!
almost 3 years ago – Mon, May 24, 2021 at 03:18:34 PM

Hey Blisstilers!

I hope everything is going really well!

We've been working hard at keeping the pace of all suppliers and contractors up, so we can start manufacturing our SleepMuffs as soon as possible. It's been difficult, but always rewarding to ride the rollercoaster of entrepreneurship.

The Essential Info

It's been a pretty crazy time since our last update and there is some good news and some not as good news.

The good news:

• Design of the travel bag has been finished ✈️: a snap hook and D-ring was added so you can attach the bag to literally anything without every losing your SleepMuffs. This was very intelligently suggested by 2 of our backers Melissa Thompson and Andy D., thanks guys 🤗😘.
• 🎁 BONUS 🎁: zipper pouches for the extra covers have been designed and will be provided with each extra cover so they stay, so fresh and so clean (clean) 😁, and we avoid the use of single use packaging 🍃.
• A warehousing & logistics supplier has been found 📬.
• The foam density has been chosen 🥳: we’ve tested 13 different foam densities in total, with a lot of back and fourths with the manufacturer to find the perfect one, it all paid off 👨‍💻!
• The packaging design will be sent to off to the box maker during the week so they can get started on the print plates. 📦
• The seamsters should be coming back to us during the week with the cover's pattern. From there we'll decide who is best 🧵!

We've also been busy in other areas of the business, trying to promote our hard work. We recently submitted SleepMuffs to the Australian Good Design Awards in the hope, of course, of winning Best in Category (touch wood 🙌). The winners will be announced in July ! So we'll keep you posted 😊.

We've also managed to get into the University of New South Wales' 10x Pre-Accelerator program. 

The program gives us access to mentors, leaders in industry, a network and classes to help us grow! It was of course a competitive entry; we were selected amongst hundreds of other startups that applied. The program also gives us the opportunity to fight for a spot in the accelerator program; in which we'll get more tailored help, access to funds, offices, media and PR support and potential investors. Hopefully we'll get through 🤞.

Ok, now for the not so good news ...The printed graphics...

Correctly printing the graphics on our fabric is taking longer than initially expected. For those who do not know, fabric sublimation printing, which is the technique we are use to print on the fabric, can be a bit tricky 🧐. The colours you see on a backlit screen look completely different once printed on fabric. This means that we have proceed by trial and error: we have to print the graphic, see the result, tweak the graphic, print it again etc. until it all looks good. 

We've printed all our graphics (charcoal, cloudy, waves & galaxy) twice each but haven't managed to obtain the colours we're looking for. Our graphic designer says we may have few more tries before getting right. 

Each run can take some time; generally between 3 to 4 weeks. This is of course holding up the fabrication of the covers which will certainly take 4-6 weeks.

So in short,  our deadline of mid July will be pushed back to mid September.

We are of course deeply disappointed and frustrated by this news 😔 and hope you all understand. 

We're trying our very best to get things done as quickly as possible by turning things around as fast as we can on our end and constantly following up with all our contractors and suppliers so they respect the lead times they announced.

We'll keep you posted if the situation changes.

The details: the foam 👩‍🔬

Some were too hard, some too soft, it was only on the 3rd run and 13 densities later that we managed to find the absolute gem 💎.

In the photo below there are only 11 since 2 of them are being used by our seamsters for the pattern design ✏️. 

What you see below are prototypes (from the manufacturer).

The details: the travel bag ✈️

We're actually really stoked with the design of our bags; they really bring the whole Blisstil experience together and allow you to carry your SleepMuffs anywhere, to enjoy soundless sleep, everywhere 😇. 

Both bags are made from the same waterproof fabric 🙅‍♂️💦, so all your Blisstil gear (or whatever you want to put in them) will stay clean wherever you go! 

Here are a few pictures 📸:

Zipper Pouch for Extra Covers & the SleepMuffs Travel Bag. 

The zipper pouch easily fits in the Travel Bag.

Made from waterproof fabric

Chrome snap hook and D-ring on the travel bag to easily attach it and detach it.

As sampled by me 😁.

Till next time!! Love you all!🚀🚀

PS: Did you know Blisstil is the combination of bliss and and stillness? It's a word created by Alice and Oliver to communicate the pure bliss that is found in stillness.

 Project Timeline