As you may remember, the last newsletter issue announced the official commercialisation of the minichord.
In retrospect, the timing could not have been worse: it came right as the tariffs between USA and China were starting to increase, creating a lot of uncertainty both for potential US buyers, but also for the project itself, as it relies on a US-made microcontroller that was the target of the reciprocal tariffs.
To respond to those rising costs, Seeed Studio had no choice but to augment the minichord price to $169, and even with this augmentation had issue to foresee how the project could keep making sense economically.
Luckily, this last two weeks, tension have eased, with an agreement to back down to more reasonable tariffs levels 👏🏻.
It allowed Seed Studio:
📦 To offer US customers a DPD option (Delivery, Duty Paid), to remove any uncertainty associated with the purchase. It comes at around $20 in total, with a slightly longer delivery time (around 10-17 days). A faster option is still available but quite costlier. You can find more details here.
📈 To launch a restock for 500 units, in order to be able to respond to current demand.
Once the stock is sufficient, Seeed Studio will also organise to send inventory directly to the US warehouse to make this process even more seamless.
Initial batch should be shipping in the coming days, and the second batch next month. Please accept our apologies for the delay, as this is a difficult situation to navigate.
🛒 As before, if you want to pre-order, please use this link to do so!
🛠️ On my end, keeping up with the DIY spirit of the minichord, I am experimenting with techniques to allow easy customisation at home, with the intention to publish a series of tutorials on the matter. Whether it’s making semi-transparent enclosures, colouring the buttons or using custom fonts for the keycaps, there will be no limit to the ability to modify the minichord!
Regards,
Benjamin
➡️ 📬 If you have any unanswered questions, feel free to reach out, either by email, or through Instagram.
➡️ 💻 To ask for any additional software feature, you can use the issue tracker on Github
Fine print:
I’ve used a privacy-friendly newsletter and disabled all tracking options;
I’ll never share your email or use it for any other use than the stated one;
I won’t send more than an email every two week (and you can actually expect a lot less until the project is launched);
Once the project is fully available for purchase, I’ll delete this mailing list and all data related to it.
To express your right, feel free to contact me by email.