ah well, i just think people should declare their vested interests, direct or indirect; in the member profile it should be compulsory. don't present your views as impartial if they are not, especially if you are in a position of influence. i was annoyed the product was being compared with the Strega, that doesn't mean I have it in for the Strega, I just think our product is going to be of a significantly higher quality, which leads nicely into the question raised here about what initiated the project sheer frustration with our existing product offering in terms of our repeated inability to give our customers the experience we think is reasonable when you are spending that kind of money if a product isn't 'right first time' when it is being shipped around the globe the cost to us, and we do stand behind the products we sell, of making good the defect is huge - i.e. it can often wipe out all the profit so we might as well not have bothered making the sale you put up with this for a few years and lobby for change. if none is forthcoming you have to take control of your own destiny i think. some people will think a decent espresso machine can't be made outside italy, or europe at worst, but then there are guys in the States like Slayer, Synesso, etc, who are world class, so we're def up for the fight if that's what it takes that's the driver for this project; to improve the customer experience, not some airy-fairy stuff don't think I'm arrogantly suggesting we'll never have defects. what I'm striving for is a defect rate of 1%. on some of our products it is 50%, which is unsustainable, and the only reason the customer doesn't experience it is because we have to take some of the machines we sell apart, fix, test, dry, repack, etc that's not a business, a least not a sustainable one, that's some kind of charity where we are the bulwark between the manufacturer (no problem, no problem, nothing to return to us) and the customer (get it right first time or we won't come back) if you are familiar with some of the products we sell, i doubt that they are any better or worse than the average for the espresso machine industry - i.e. its pretty poor across the board in my experience, even the so called 'stellar' brands of espresso machine. but we're not putting up with it any longer, hence me getting hot under the collar when comparisons were made with machines we have considered becoming resellers for in some detail and dismissed the idea on quality control grounds. i don't think that's rude, impertinent, ill-advised, deplorable, or disgraceful behaviour. i made the comments on our blog no where else, and I'm sorry but i don't maintain a blog to post pictures of latte art & serviettes. we'll write what we think gives you an insight into what we are up to so you can feel as though you are in the factory with us. people who want to maintain control over forums as to what the 'best' machines are and who the 'best' roasters are, etc will get their feathers ruffled, we're not too worried about that - we're nobody's stooge because we haven't worked our way up through the industry selling someone else's machine/roasting someone else's coffee/etc - you get the idea. indeed the notion that we could be a threat to anyone is pretty funny - we're not exactly Illy or Lavazza in size. reiss. [attachimg=1] after i posted this i remembered a part i threw in the bin earlier this afternoon, which i fished out and took an image of for you (above). i think we all know what this comes off, so no names will be mentioned to protect the guilty, but the point still stands - we are bearing the cost of this. this i found amoungst our stock of bases that we ordered some time ago. it isn't saleable - i can't wrap this up and send this to you in good faith, sure its only cosmetic as our manufacturing friends tell us and it will do the job just as well as one without tooling scars on it, but i don't think it is saleable. it certainly not worth sending it back to italy to prove the point. so once again, we put it in the bin & take the hit. there will be those of you thinking that airing this in a public forum is unprofessional, and i mightn't disagree with you, but we have really tried with all these guys - its like banging your head against a stone wall, especially for the low value stuff like this which a lot of it is - dings, scraps, scratches. so if you want to know what inspired the Londinium I, the image above is the answer. its time for change. before you think I'm a snotty nosed pen pusher who has never actually made anything, for the record i worked evenings in a machine shop running CNC lathes & machining centres when i went to university, so i am fully aware of the reasons and causes of each & everyone of these machining defects. for example, the defects in the image above will be from running the carbide cutting tip on the tool beyond its useful life for the job, combined with running at too high a feed rate on the tool so it isn't cutting cleanly, but ploughing up the machine face. Unacceptable, but more of an issue on a hard material like steel, but on aluminium???? give me a break - its as soft as butter - they're just wringing every last penny out of the carbide tips to squeak a bit more profit. it unacceptable, unnecessary and totally out of place on high value 'cosmetic' machining, which is what externally visible espresso machine components are. Poor, and we've had a gutsful of underwriting the cost of it (throwing away defective components), so please don't tell me the L1 is just like a Strega 🙂 (this part isn't off a Strega, just to be clear, but the point still stands across the board from all the espresso machines I've looked at) reiss.
