A long time ago, in a design studio far, far, away, a team of ambitious designers and engineers sought to develop the ultimate music stand for the home. A stand which was beautiful and functional, adapted to modern life and that had one enduring goal: to make you want to pick up your instrument and play more.
Fast forward 3 years later, one Kickstarter, 600 backers, 2 shipping containers and two trade show launches, the Grandstand has finally arrived. But what is it, and why did it take so long to deliver?
Design and Manufacturing
First and foremost,, we are innovators. It’s our biggest strength and our biggest weakness - we just can’t stop! When we launched Grandstand in June of 2022, we had lined up a manufacturer and wanted to start with the designs that we had at that moment. Thank goodness we didn’t.
The first manufacturer was flakey and unresponsive. Then the war in Ukraine started and it put an end to affordable timber prices in Europe. However, by looking to our traditional trading partner of China, we gained an experienced musical accessories manufacturer who raised the opportunity for a revised design. And so began a long and fruitful saga of redevelopment.
An example would be the ‘extreme height adjust knuckle’.
The inspiration for the first design (below) was a range of traditional microphone stands. Simply rotate the plastic handle and pull the pole up to gain more height - tighten to stay in place. Plus our new manufacturer made those parts all the time so it was a no brainer…
Except it was cumbersome to use. Locating the handle below the tripod joint meant it was difficult for users to access, your hand would be trapped by the wooden tripod legs and your knuckles would brush past them whilst adjusting. Solution? Move the mechanism above the tripod joint. Now it looks weird and it is hard to adjust in relation to the black pole. Solution? Flatten and now make it into a knuckle, it is easy to grip, it ties in with the aesthetics and adjusting the height is super easy! Solved.
This process was repeated for just about every component. Slowly, the Grandstand was refined and improved, at much delay. Until eventually we had a product ready at the exact wrong time… The lead up to Christmas 2023. We had tinkered for so long that we were now at the back of the queue for every component and we had not shipped for a second Christmas in a row.
Kickstarter
Kickstarter is a crowdfunding platform that offers rewards to those who pledge, the company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life"... and it does just that.
The thing that got us through this long process was our backers. Without them, the project would not have happened in the first place. When penning every update (40, to be exact) our hearts sank a little.
Thoughts racing through our heads went like this:
“ohh god, this is just another excuse on why we aren’t delivering, people are going to think we are a bunch of idiots.”
The actual responses:
“Thank you for the update, you guys rock, keep going, you can do this!”
It was our backers that got us through the crowdfunding campaign but more importantly, it was our Customers that got us through the darkest days!!
Homeward Bound
Now that we actually have the stands delivered, the responses have been even greater. Seeing Grandstands in people’s homes, after waiting so long, and hearing all the positive feedback has been overwhelming and we felt the love (aside from one pesky little foot...).
Delivering Grandstand has been long and has taught us a lot. We always seem to hit every single obstacle on the way but each time we stumbled, the Grandstand got better. Years of hard work paid off by even just one customer informing us:
“It looks good enough to have on display, which may have the added bonus of encouraging me to play more!"
- Joe, COO (the legend that orchestrated the chaos)
If you have a Grandstand and would like to share your experience with it, please reach out to info@noisyclan.com as we would love to hear from you!
