Our new production facilities are nearly finished, it looks good so far and will be completed in late September. Each day we continue to manufacture in manageable quantities with the allocated space we currently have.
Since we are also in Berlin, we grabbed the opportunity to show off the Heatle at this year’s IFA, the largest consumer electronics trade fair, with enormous interest and useful feedback from the visitors. Our booth was always very busy with visits from existing customers to industry contacts from large firms and manufacturers.
Production continues...
As long as our new facilities are being refurbished, we continue to use our rented workspace to keep momentum going and manufacture small, but steady batches while making constant improvements to the assembly process. We realised it’s quicker and easier to assemble the Heatles upside down, for example.
With each completed batch we are learning a lot for future optimisation of our assembly process in order to be even more efficient and uphold our tight controls on premium quality. We are looking forward to setting up quickly in our new manufacturing space soon, when we can ramp up manufacturing in larger quantities.
We ourselves can hardly wait to ramp up the production volume and deliver the Heatles to all those waiting as soon as possible. At this point, a big thank you from all of us for your patience and understanding!
Gathering customer feedback
An office kitchen: David in Berlin, hand delivering a Heatle to one of our customers, a Berlin-based company.
The customer said the Heatle fits nicely in his modern corporate kitchen, next to the coffee machine. The Heatle was very well received by other employees, two of them ordered Heatles for their home.
Despite the August heat wave, lots of customers visited us in our office to try their Heatle and drink some tea. This family came all the way from Western Germany.
On her business trip from Rheinland in Western Germany, Michele dropped by to try out her Heatle and see the ‘Duo mode’ in action.
We delivered some Heatles to our customers personally - others were collected directly from us by the customers.
IFA Ausstellung in Berlin
Although we booked our booth spontaneously and have not spent any money on decoration, we had the most visited booth at the entire IFA Next by a large margin.
We met a lot of our existing customers. Those who were still waiting for their Heatle were keen to try out the Heatle, get a demo, ask some questions, and suggest some product improvement ideas. One was to make detachable add-ons for the disks. The attachment would give the disk small feet, like bumps underneath which would help thicker fluids like milk to flow under the disk easily. Also the attachment can help with air drying the disks after use.
Once the water started boiling in a cup, people would often stop to take a look and ask some questions. Some were interested in the new energy-saving way of heating liquids with the current energy / cost crisis. We demonstrated our black and white Heatles as well as the integrated version under the worktop. We received a lot of positive feedback about the design, technology, usability and sustainability points.
People with physical disabilities in particular have become enthusiastic about Heatle. Since the Heatle is intuitive to use and you don't have to lift heavy vessels, it proves to be a convenient solution for people with special needs.
We also took advantage of opportunities to go on stage and share insights about wasteful appliances in the kitchen and how we can drive positive change.
And here is a clip from WELT at IFA where you can see the size comparison of a regular portable induction hob with an inductive kettle on top - and a Heatle (the beeping sound comes from the hob).
New office in progress
The construction work is progressing well and is already largely completed. As soon as the floor has been made at the beginning of September, we can also slowly start with the construction.
Everything is moving ahead well and we continue to work diligently to deliver your Heatle as soon as possible.
