The cat beds finally arrived

The cat beds finally arrived

The cat beds finally arrived. It has been a very long journey since we started designing our first cat beds. It is a fantastic feeling to see and hold in my hands for the first time the products that I envisioned and produced. In total all the products weigh around 350Kg and have “taken over” most of the flat. What did it take to make them and how far did we have to travel?

Day of arrival

The shipping of the first products should have taken just a few weeks maximum. The logistics company and administration in one – non-mentioned country – took an additional month. The whole delivery of about 350Kg arrived during the worst possible day. I was planning to enjoy my holidays in a location without internet but the cat houses still hadn’t arrived for some reason. The worst possible scenario was that the goods would be delivered during the one week I was without internet signal. You can guess what happened! Yes, exactly this scenario happened. The logistics company couldn’t contact me and immediately started threatening that all the goods would be returned. That would be a disaster from a business perspective. Finally, I managed to find a very very weak signal and asked my brother if he could get the shipping. I thought well, now it’s all solved! No…not at all! The shipping company advised my brother to come to the warehouse and collect the cat houses. However when he arrived, he found a very inaccessible place where even the receptionists didn’t know that there was anything to collect. While this was going on the company telephone support increased pressure and threats that everything would be returned (to another continent). The situation got even worse when my brother didn’t arrive with a big enough car and had to return the next day for the rest of things. Meaningless threats increased again. All the parcels were finally delivered, fortunately, and despite the inappropriate behaviour and approach from the logistics company. I haven’t even mentioned that the phone support took 3 days to reach as none of the publicly available numbers were working. To this day nobody has explained the one month delay by the shipping company.

But after such an unwanted adventure and about one year of designing, prototyping and manufacturing, it was a fantastic feeling to see that whole design is able to hold its shape, the material is thick enough and not only that, the products look fantastic!

Designing process and struggles

How do you design a 3D shape from fabric if you don’t have any education in the field? There are many hidden traps and mistakes that we had to experience to finally get our desired shape. One of the very first challenges was to choose the material thickness. What thickness would be enough to hold such complex structures as we have? Our Crystal and Onion designs are beautiful as they maintain their original shape. Secondly was to create a so-called stitching pattern – the piece of fabric needed to be cut out of a big roll of felt to have ready material for stitching. But our material is not solid, so we couldn’t just calculate geometrically the size of the product parts using 2D. It wasn’t clear how much the material would bend and hence how much we would have to increase the stitched parts to match the original product vision. So, what was the approach and how did we succeed? We had to start with 3D modelling and create a model that represented the final design. 

Prototyping process and struggles

After getting the properly designed stitching patterns according to the 3D model, we could start discussions with the sewing company and our manufacturer. Details like the type of stitching and thickness of material were proposed and we could finally wait for a prototype assembly. After seeing the first prototype, I was surprised that all the measurements gave us the overall shape. The strategy with 3D modelling worked! The product itself however had very poor stitching that made our product look like something that we simply couldn’t seriously offer to our customers. It took a couple of weeks to go through improvements and more attempts until the product started to be acceptable.

Shipping and logistics nightmare

While losing sooo much time in designing and preparations, I really thought that the most challenging part was already behind us. Mistake. Terrible mistake. The shipping company and the delivery of goods was the worst experience. Why? Because the shipping company committed to deliver in around one month and after two months the goods were still not delivered. I tried contacting the shipping company, but only found support telephone numbers that didn’t work! The first number the company gave me didn’t exist! The second number they gave me although different, again didn’t exist. When I finally found the right one, they told me that they didn’t recognise my tracking ID and that I had to call to another phone number (also wrong). When I finally found where to call, the only answer I received was that “it’s in customs in Poland”. The Polish customs said that it’s my country’s responsibility, my country said that it’s the responsibility of the shipping company. I was directed back to the devil. To call another team in the same company that didn’t even know how or why my 350Kg of cat houses were in Polish customs when the customs should have been solved locally at the country of delivery. I can barely imagine a more poor service. I therefore contacted the manufacturer and asked them to investigate why nothing had arrived yet. The answer was rather shocking. The shipping company rented a warehouse in Poland where there had been a fire. Are my cat houses good now? Who is responsible for the delivery of goods? Why did nobody want to tell me where my goods were and when they would arrive? This wasn’t the only problem. I had planned to go for a relatively long holiday without internet or mobile phone signal. So as delay increased, it looked like my goods couldn’t be received by me or anyone. It wasn’t even possible to plan the handover as nobody knew when the delivery date would be. Finally when the products arrived, it was “my mistake” that I wasn’t there to receive the products and the company started threatening me with returning the goods immediately. That would probably taken another 2 x 2 months and I would have to had to pay really expensive shipping. I haven’t seen such incompetence, ignorance and amateurism for a very very long time.

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