I agree with everything you said except this. They knew the demand for their product. They met there kickstarter goal in like an hour. And then proceeded to receive somthing like 7x the amount they hoped for. If that doesn’t prove they had high demand then what does?
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For what its worth, China is all manual labor, not much automation, so a.) time is increased b.) margin for error also increases.
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(Just a side note, their fundraising goal was $100K and they received over $7M, so it is 70:1 not 7:1)
Very true, and we are not really in disagreement. I’m sure Snapmaker was at first surprised and then delighted by how much demand there was. I’d also bet good money that they soon became horrified by the ever-expanding demand as it would have sent them scrambling to re-align their manufacturing plans to the new level of demand.
I have some insight that most people don’t have. I have been designing goods for China manufacturing since 1992. What most people don’t realize is that China manufacturing is almost 100% CONTRACT manufacturing. Unlike the typical USA model where a company buys/builds a factory in which to manufacture their own goods, the factories in China are neither owned nor operated by the company that is “making” the product. Snapmaker is almost certainly just one of many “customer” companies at the factory where the SM2’s are being built. Blocks of space and time are allotted to each customer months in advance, and expansions or delays of those allocations are very difficult to accommodate since they impact all of the factory’s other customers, who are themselves locked-in to specific manufacturing schedules. Snapmaker undoubtedly set their Kickstarter goal based in part on factory quotes for an assumed number of units to be produced. I would bet that when the demand jumped by 70:1 over the two months of the Kickstarter campaign, every factory that had originally quoted for the project either backed out (because they couldn’t accommodate the expanded demand) or re-quoted for a “split run manufacturing” model, where the factory essentially says “OK, we will make the originally agreed upon number of units, then shoe-horn you in around our other commitments for two months, then set up 80% of the factory for your main production run.” This would explain much of why the A150’s were shipped almost on time, while the A250’s and A350’s did not. In short, the delay probably started before the campaign had ended and just kept getting worse from there as the engineering, supply, logistics, and pandemic issues added up.
I do wish Snapmaker had been a little more transparent and communicative through this process, but again I can see most of why they handled it the way they did. There is no pleasing 100% of the people 100% of the time and being TOO transparent tends to cause panic over-reactions to each bit of bad news. I thought the way Snapmaker handled it with monthly updates outlining but not detailing the issues was fine but like I said, I have a lot of experience in this sector and as such am very forgiving of companies going through the learning curve. Success is the death of more companies than people imagine it possibly could be.
For me personally, I am glad that I can absorb a major delivery delay like this, as frustrating as it was. It would have been a different story if I was basing a business model around the planned delivery of my SM2 in mid-2020.
Anyhow, like I said originally this is just my two cents worth. I am super happy that I waited the whole process out and now have a new “toy!” I will be posting a write-up of my experiences so far for anyone who enjoys my style of describing things – and of course to the horror of those who don’t 
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