ward00

For me, the video is enough for me to put up with another year's worth of waiting. A piece of beauty the bike is. Only my Renovo wood bike will ever beat it, which BTW took 2 years before it ever got built.

avole

Why not invest in my vastly superior idea, the inflatable bicycle? Bike will take a minimum of three years to produce, but I'll produce interesting if inaccurate newsletters every month, together with the odd, and slightly out of focus video.

Buy in price is only 2500€, which I will invest in high interest accounts for several years. You won't see the interest, nor the money again, but, at the end, you can bask in the glory of a bicycle technically superior to any other, while I bask in the glory of a martini by the pool in Monaco.

What's not to like?

BromptonINrio

why do you even bother? You are mean to come here just to put people down.

avole

Gentle humor, gentle humor, that's all. Are you a citizen of the US? The sense of humor is a bit different here, you know.

linberl

It might have been funny after the first year, but now it's just rubbing salt on the wound. Not that gentle. I went from excited to disappointed to amused to hopeful to paranoid to frustrated to angry and finally to praying for these folks. Lots of $$ involved, not a little cheap kickstarter you can blow off if it fails. At this point, I think only good thoughts are what is needed. In the U.S. we don't kick a man when he's down, right?

avole

History would disagree with you.

BromptonINrio

Im from argentina.
This is bad humor, many people lost money on this.
No one is laughing.

Gibsonsean

No one has lost money yet. It remains a worry that cash flow issues could result in backers losing out or being pushed to the back of the queue and it remains to be seen if the bike is viable from a manufacturing and commercial standpoint.

A few people are quick to speculate on the worst case scenarios as if they are fact. The reality is we don't really know anthing about the project's financial situation but we do know the project continues with demonstrable progress, albeit slower than any of us, including the Creator i'm sure, would like.

We've seen in some detail what apears to be near enough a production bike and the project apears to have moved firmly from a focus on engineering the manufacturing of the frame to a focus on optimising custom parts production, prepping and assembly processes. Still plenty to do in this and other areas and until optimisation is sufficiently complete and any remaining parts are all delivered we won't know a schedule.

I'm ok with that so long as we continue to see progress. I'm enjoying The Helix Show™ (genius smallboats, kudos) and looking forward to the next episode.

MrFlamey

Me too. As long as there are regular updates and things are happening, I'm going to stay calm. Would be nice if they actually shipped a bike, but let's see if bikes start shipping once they have the full complement of custom parts for the bikes.

kidshibuya

I am

Gibsonsean

A brief note posted today promising a manufacturing update next weekend.

unclejemima

prathmann

Agreed, it does seem as if progress is continuing, albeit at a much slower than promised pace. But I don't see any evidence of malfeasance, just poor estimates of the difficulty of bringing the project to fruition. Hope there aren't too many backers who were counting on this as their only commute vehicle and didn't have a Plan B.

keyven

Such is the risk of being a backer. I've been burned as well in other crowdfunding, and although I didn't invest a cent in the Helix, I do hope it succeeds.
Hopefully it will pave the way for better versions down the road, and we all stand to benefit.

Revoltingest

The latest update is posted for us buyers.
Parts are being made, & purchased parts are arriving.

MrFlamey

I know I'm not supposed to share info from the backer portal, but there have been lots of people here that are just constantly talking like Helix is about to fail and we are going to lose our money, which does get boring to read, so I'll just note that the financial status of Helix was briefly mentioned in the update. Apparently they are healthy, and although the Kickstarter campaign raised a decent amount of money, some further investment has been required over the last 3 years. The part mentioning finances ends with " Of course, we absolutely have to deliver bikes soon as the runway is not infinite, but at this final stage, money is not a concern. "

Regarding shipping, they are still waiting on some custom parts, so can't fully assemble bikes, but they are still building all the frames etc. ready for the parts to arrive and everything is going smoothly. I really wonder if they will try to move some of the custom part production in-house after shipping all the current orders (assuming the company remains), as it seems to be their only remaining major headache, and it must be frustrating to still be unable to ship because certain suppliers are not fullfilling their orders quickly enough (and yes, we Helix backers and buyers know fairly well about waiting for orders to be fullfilled, before anyone makes that obvious joke).

Joe Remi

A year ago I was sure this thing was kaput, but Helix is still grinding away at it. I don't know about its future as a sustaining company, but I think you'll get your bikes.

smallboats

I want to purchase a Helix. They need to hurry.

unclejemima

Joe Remi

No one is going to know anything about orders being filled until the first bike is delivered. Any promises to the contrary are pipe dreams until we get to that point.

Gibsonsean

There are a few backers looking to sell if you are that keen. We won't know about shipping projection for at least another 3-5 weeks..

Jipe

If we look at what happened and is happening for previous kckstarter projects, very often real customers buying the product from the creator pre-order website or from dealers selling the product receive it before backers.

This is currently happening for the Vellobike+ project: produced bikes are first delivered to dealers having sold Vellobike+ to real customers. Only the produced bikes that exceed the dealers demand are delivered to backers.

Even if this seems unfair for some backers who do not understand what being a backer mean, it is normal: the aim of the project (and the backer funding) was to create a new product and sparkle a new business.

So if the business is successful and bikes are ordered by customers, the produced Vellobikes+ must first go to these customers to satisfy these customers. It is not possible to make all these customers wait until all backers have received their bike, this would kill the Vellobike+ business.

I guess the same will happen for Helix if like for the Vellobike+, Helix become a successful business i.e. if Peter has many pre-orders and made agreements with dealer to show Helix in their shops and sell Helix.

downtube

I expect Peter will go customer direct. There are not many dealers with the capital to stock his bikes. Additionally, a 35% margin will negativity affect retail pricing.

He has developed enough exposure to work without dealers.

Thanks
Yan

BromptonINrio

35 % margin is high on these bussiness?
i would expect a lot more...

hhk25

35% is high for hard goods. Most money is made on accessories and service. This goes for just about anything in the sporting goods business - skis, snowboards, golf clubs, etc.