Here at Bia, 2013 will be a BIG year of firsts.

This is the first year we will ship our first watch, and this is the year we get to celebrate and thrill our first customers. These are HUGE firsts.

2013 will go down as the year that multi-sport GPS got chicked.

Yep, we said it. This is the first year that our female founded & focused brand will put a watch on your wrist that is as pretty, tough, and smart as you are, AND that will surprise and surpass the competition.

Time to Celebrate

To mark the start of this big year of firsts, we have opened our online Bia Store and we are offering everyone the chance to be among the first to reserve their Bia from our initial production order.

Our first 1,735 watches are already reserved at a special price and earliest delivery for our treasured Kickstarter backers. After that, a limited number of our watches are available for reservation at a crazy-good introductory price. And, as a huge thank-you from us, our earliest customers –initial Kickstarter backers and new backers alike– will get a 30% discount off of future Bia products, forever. Yep. Forever. Are you getting excited? We are.

Firsts are a BIG deal.

Help us celebrate our firsts with YOUR firsts. Share a pic of yourself or a friend accomplishing an athletic first (like Kelly Delgado’s first Ironman finish, or your first ride on a new bike, first 5K, first open water swim of the year, first trail run, first 5,10, 20 miler–you get the idea) and share it with the rest of us on Facebook, Twitter and/or Instagram. Be sure to hashtag that photo #BiaFirst and we’ll use it to start building our blog’s Big Wall o’ Bia Firsts.

Let the world know you found #BiaFirst!

Press-Fit-Clip

What’s a press fit, you ask?

Check out this clip from How It’s Made (season 10, episode 13).

This week in prototypes, it’s all about getting the watch’s glass to fit into its case just right in order to achieve maximum integrity of the case and waterproof protection for the watch. That and it needs to be strong enough to withstand being pressed together. This perfect fit is coming down to just the right gasket width and case material.  Of course this isn’t easy because we’ve defied convention by moving away from the typical watch design of round cases and domed faces.  Fortunately for us and all of you, we have an awesome mechanical engineer who’s done watch design and manufacturing for over a decade and we couldn’t be better prepared to push the design envelope and achieve our vision. Next up: testing our manufacturing prototypes for press fit durability. Bring it.

As we’ve been nailing down the details for manufacturing, we’ve discovered that the Go Stick’s design needs some reconfiguring to best protect its parts as they come off the line so they aren’t compromised, or even broken, in the manufacturing process. Unfortunately, this reconfiguring means we need to make a big decision. One option is to reconfigure in such a way that the Go Stick is bigger than originally designed. It would still be small and fit into our pockets, but it wouldn’t be as small, and it wouldn’t be the compact product we envisioned. The other choice is to choose materials that will maintain our original ‘smaller than a pack of gum’ dimensions, but that could also run the risk of some delay, which could mean that everything from field testing to final ship dates could be bumped out by a few weeks. What to do?!

Ultimately, we are focused on delivering the product we promised as close as possible to the time we estimated, and obviously, protecting the quality of the materials in our product is our top priority. But not so obvious is, if push comes to shove, which do we give up: the integrity of our design, or the reliability of our estimated delivery dates? We believe in our design, but we are also loyal to–and very fond of–you, our backers and customers, and we hate asking any of you to wait. We are beyond anxious to see our watch on everyone’s wrists.

After spending the last week sporting a mock Go Stick in the larger size, we’re pretty sure we’ve made our decision and we will definitely announce it loud and clear when all is set. In the meantime, which way would you go?

Thought we’d share a little of the fun we had in the lab over the weekend.

The task: to test the GPS receptivity of our Go Stick against the watch of a competitor.

We are VERY happy to report that the test results looked good. VERY good.

We beat the competition in our simulated challenge to find and hold a GPS signal.  Our team is rocking it!

This success has us even more excited to begin testing in the field, and as soon as we firm up details with our contract manufacturer, we will be able to set field and beta testing schedules. Look for that update within the next couple of weeks.

On July 13, 2012 the vast number of supporters of Bia Sport made the reality of the Bia GPS Sports Watch come one step closer.  We are thrilled to announce that we reached our funding goal from pledges by 2,118 individuals totaling over $408,000.00.

• When traditional investors said “maybe” – you said YES!
• When competitors asked “who needs that?” – you answered WE DO!
• And when we asked “can you help?” – you not only pledged but drummed up the support from fellow athletes.

We are humbled, grateful, thrilled and a wee bit exhausted from the past 35 days campaigning to make the Bia GPS Sports Watch a reality.

On Monday, we’ll be back in the office, working away and keeping you updated along the way.

- In case you missed getting in on your Bia watch, get on our Bia ‘Watch’ List for updates, pre-order announcements, specials and more!

Highlights

We got our first press coverage yesterday. The guys at GizMag got it spot on. It was a great first article, and even though they don’t have an enormous audience we generate a handful of new backers from it.

“GPS watches already come in all shapes and sizes (at least if you consider “heavy, square brick” and “massive discus” all shapes and sizes). Now they have a gender. “

We have been getting insanely positive feedback on the product. Lots of excitement from lots of women (and men) we don’t even know. We do have the raw material for a blockbuster success here. 

Additionally, a long lost friend stepped up today and is able to make a personal introduction to the most important product blogger and reviewer in the GPS-watch-universe. And we got our first inbound inquiry from a European Distributor.

Rough spots

I think we have a big understanding gap. Lots of folks who LOVE and want the watch don’t understand that if they don’t back the project the product won’t happen.

We’ve tried to address that in the project write up, but right now I think we just need to refilm the tail end of the video this weekend to get real explicit about it.

We also haven’t popped strongly with bloggers and press yet. I need to keep reminding myself that it takes a few days for things to settle in. It’s tough to try to make a blockbuster hit overnight, from a cold start, with no budget and no professional help.

We have 35 days and lots of untapped resources.

The Elephant in the Room

I would be lying to say I am not in a cold sweat panic. We need epic project growth to hit our end goal. Yesterday was a decent but we needed it to be double what it was.

Typically projects have an initial spike, a long period of slow steady growth and then a monster spike at the end. We have 3 X-factors in our project though:

• Weak customer knowledge of how Kickstarter works
• Press that will hit at a delay from our launch vs. at the start
• The psychological barrier of such a big goal.

The last one is vexing. If we had set our project goal at $100K like most other “big” projects, backers would be doing a happy dance right now. We’d look like a garenteed success and we’d probably be generating more native momentum off of that. People flock to winners.

However, with such a big goal, we need to make more progress before benefiting from that effect.

I will blog about the risks/rewards we balanced to determine our project goal later, because a number of folks have asked.

Now it’s back to hustling.

Here is what we’d love you to do…

1. Back our project on Kickstarter.
2. Post the link http://kck.st/GetBia on Facebook and Twitter.
3. Repin us on Pinterest.
4. Blog about it!

Here is everything you need….

• an exhaustive product FAQ
• a downloadable zip file of photos
• our original press release
• you can learn more about us on our About page
• and of course we’re available to answer your questions.  Just email us at press@bia-sport.com.

Bia is targeted at women but guys are scooping it up too. Here’s why:

• Safety system for peace of mind on solo workouts
• Quick-connect GPS; no more time wasted “finding satellites” even in the city or on a cloudy day.
• Data to your online training log; no more time wasted “sync’ing”
• iPod-like ease of use; just one button and a touchscreen
• Water resistance to 100M; full GPS tracking when you swim

Plus through July 13th on Kickstarter, Bia is $150 less than the comparable Garmin.

New to Kickstarter…

Kickstarter is a popular crowd-funding platform where millions of people have contributed to products and projects they are passionate about to ensure they get to market.

Bia is using Kickstarter to raise the remaining funds we need to field test prototypes, finish software development, and fund the tooling and initial component orders we need before manufacturing.

In exchange for pledging funds to our project, backers get rewards. These rewards include the Bia GPS sports watch. Backers will receive theirs first and at a discount to what they will cost after we ship.

Kickstarter works off an all-or-nothing funding model. If backers pledge enough for us to meet our $400K funding goal by July 13th, credit cards will be charged, backers will get their rewards, and Bia will ship early next year.

If we do NOT meet our funding goal by the 13th, we will NOT receive any funding and we will NOT be able to get this amazing, empowering product to market.

Let’s make it happen!