Hi everyone!
2024's been a pretty big year for TDP International - from officially launching the Artemis Stellar Field Watch site to negotiating with launch service providers - and through the ups and downs, we cannot possibly express our gratitude for your support and excitement enough. To that end, we wanted to write a year in review post and talk about what some of our challenges have been, and what delivering on the Artemis looks like in the medium term.
First, the good - we launched the site in March and completed our dial prototyping process the same month, and in May we finished tweaks to the Artemis handset. We also established a social media presence on Instagram! We've accomplished about 50% of our return on investment goal and hope to close that gap through next year. All of your preorders have gone a very long way towards making the Artemis financially viable. The moment we send the dials to space will be the moment we can start shipping final units.
Second, our challenges - it is surprisingly difficult to get a payload to space. Our original launch service provider backed out in April due to a business-wide switch to supporting government hypersonics research. We hunted high and low for a replacement LSP, and out of the 7 we contacted, 3 were willing to work with us. Of those three, one also experienced a significant business change, the second wound up getting delayed by the loss of two Falcon 9 rockets over the summer, making the timeline untenable for us, and the third is an experimental lightweight liquid launch vehicle being developed in California. At present, this remains our launch service provider, though some other inquires have been floated to see if we can accelerate the timeline for your benefit. We've pushed back the dial flights into 2025, and it is our hope that we can complete them in about the right timescale. Additionally, with the uncertainty around international tariffs, we've had to plan accordingly and alter our presale strategy.
Third, looking ahead - we have a few alternative plans to delivering on a space-flown watch, and if the timeline and cost becomes untenable we may have to (as much as we don't want to) switch to one of those alternatives. All of them do involve space-flown material, as promised, but it may look a little different than our original intentions. Aside from this, we're very confident and comfortable with the design of the Artemis, and still have confidence in delivering a final product at the cost we've intended. We're also planning on doing some more advertising and getting connected with the bigger microbrand world.
Thank you for supporting us, and we'll see you in 2025!
-ML