Drop + Dan Durston X-Mid 1P Tent Discussions | Drop

Mar 26, 2019

TheGooseFinally some news on this: The drop will re-open Friday. I don't know more details than that, but I suspect it will be limited to about 300 tents with a delivery date in late May.

Mar 26, 2019

DanRigsby

Mar 26, 2019

dandurstonGreat to see we got a date! Ill be out camping starting tomorrow. Will need to be sure to have cell service Friday morning.

Mar 26, 2019

cturnbull

Mar 26, 2019

dandurstonHoly cow man it's a miracle! Thanks for letting us know! If you come across a time when the drop occurs that would be awesome!

Mar 26, 2019

Mar 27, 2019

cturnbullThe drops normally seem to open early in the morning. I think it's 8 AM eastern, 6 AM mountain time, 5 AM pacific time. But I wouldn't panic about catching it right at the open. Massdrop did confirm to me that this is for about 300 tents, but I don't think that'll sell out on the first day. In the December drop there were 700 new requests and then 98 sold on the opening day. Now there are 1700 new requests, so I can see the opening day sales being closer to 150-200 but 300 seems like a long shot. After opening day it'll sell 20-30 on day 2 and then trickle steadily upwards at 10-15 per day. So I think there is a chance these sell out in 48 hours, but more likely will sell out in 3-7 days.

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Mar 27, 2019

TallestofPauls

Mar 27, 2019

dandurstonSo I'm a little confused. I ordered an xmid in September with a delivery date of May which is fine. Are you now saying I could have ordered this Friday with the same delivery date? Seems a little unfair having waited 6 months only to find others can just drop in and get one . Not blaming you just the way it's been organised by massdrop, I know about manufacturing times blah blah but I was under the impression they'd only be made to order so inaffect missold

Mar 27, 2019

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Joeken

Mar 27, 2019

TallestofPaulsIt's buried somewhere in the 1.2k+ comments but there's two positives to having ordered early I believe. The first is they're shipped in the order people joined the drop. The second is that the tents are ahead of schedule so for people like us that ordered in the last drops, there's a chance we will get the tents by the end of April. Not sure if that's been confirmed though.

Mar 27, 2019

TallestofPauls

Mar 27, 2019

JoekenWell no not really, my delivery date is the end of May the new drop is the end of May. I'm not actually that bothered just mildly irked.

Mar 27, 2019

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lackskill

Mar 27, 2019

TallestofPaulsWhat they're saying is that your ship date is probably going to change, even though massdrop hasn't officially said anything, as production was ahead of schedule on the first batch.

Mar 27, 2019

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cturnbull

Mar 27, 2019

dandurstonThank you! I'm hoping to get one of the 25 left from the December drop and get an earlier delivery, everyday counts because most likely it'll be to hot to tent camp by the time I receive the tent. Might have to drive north a bit where is cooler to try it out! Can't wait for the 2P tent to get here!

Mar 27, 2019

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Mar 27, 2019

TallestofPauls"I ordered an X-Mid in September with a delivery date of May which is fine. Are you now saying I could have ordered this Friday with the same delivery date? Seems a little unfair having waited 6 months only to find others can just drop in and get one . Not blaming you just the way it's been organised by Massdrop." Hi Paul, I'll try to shed some light here. Massdrop doesn't involve me in all the details of ordering/ship dates/batch sizes etc but I think I have a fairly accurate understanding of the situation. With production there are minimum order sizes and then as you order more, the price improves. The minimum order from our factory for the X-Mid is somewhere around 500 tents, but because Massdrop has priced these quite low, they really need to get a better price than that to make the number crunching work on their end. Consider that these tents are built in the same factory as tents from brands like MSR, but the price is much lower partly because there's no retail markup and partly because it's just priced with a smaller mark up. For example, the X-Mid is $199 but if you buy a 1P inner tent and tarp from MSR the price is $370 combined for something that would have about the same cost to produce (actually I suspect the X-Mid costs more to produce because we have more expensive components like waterproof zips where this tarp has none). So after 300 were pre-sold in July 2018, Massdrop ordered about 1000 tents. If they just ordered the minimum I expect they would have lost money on this (I don't think they ever said these were made to order). Folks that did pre-order first in July got the benefits of a $10 credit for other purchases, a Q&A video I made exclusively for them, and their tents ship out first. Then in September Massdrop opened it for more orders to sell through the remaining tents of this 1000 tent order. They did so via that September drop and via one more drop in December, where the advantage to ordering in September vs December is that processing/handling/QA etc takes a bit of time so the folks ordering in September will get them a bit sooner than December (even though the estimated ship date is the same). As far as I am aware, these 1000 tents are all arriving in the same big shipment, so once Massdrop gets the first 300 tents shipped out to folks from the July drop they will start working on shipping them out to folks in the September drop. I don't have access to precisely how that is coming along, but Massdrop recently said things are on track to ship those first 300 by April 19, so I think it is likely your tent ships a week or two after that in late April/early May. I expect in a couple weeks there will be an update with detail on how this is coming along. So about 1000 tents were ordered and sold between July/Sept/Dec 2018. We started that production run once the first drop happened in July but it takes a while to start sewing the tents because first we need to order the custom fabric which takes a while to make and ship, and then the factory wants to make one more prototype in exactly that fabric for us to approve for production. During the couple months it took for those steps, I had a few ideas for how we could improve the tent. For example, the tents in the drop photos have seams in the panels near the closest corner:

Later I realized we could eliminate those by changing how the panels were cut out from the roll of material. Removing the seams is mostly just aesthetics but it is also a tiny bit lighter. In total I came up with several last minute improvements, but the factory was hesitant to make last minute changes because we had already agreed on a design. They wanted to increase the price if we did those, while I wanted the best possible tents for everyone, so a solution was found where if Massdrop ordered 300 additional tents, then the factory would make these improvements for all the tents without changing the price. So basically, because we added 300 more to the order, everyone gets a better tent. Those 300 extra tents weren't sold back in December even though they could have done so (Massdrop cut off orders near 1000) because it wasn't clear when these last 300 would be ready. Previously the factory thought the last 300 would be a couple months behind, but now it looks more like a few weeks behind because things have been going well with production in general. I'm not sure what Massdrop is going to put for the estimated ship date for these last 300 but it seems likely to be late May which is the same estimated ship date as yours, but your tent is seemingly also ahead of schedule where it may ship in late April/early May. So yes the same estimated ship date, but not the same actual shipping date.

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Mar 27, 2019

TallestofPauls

Mar 27, 2019

dandurstonGosh, that's a long reply. Are you sure your not female..? -only joking ladies! My wording i guess was incorrect -so had to pay ahead to get the xmid but it wasn't exclusive (should have read the small print) Fair enough, I've got over it. The counselling was expensive but hey the tents cheap. Looking forward to it btw, using it for 3 months on via alpina red route this summer. Cheers Dan.

Mar 27, 2019

Mar 27, 2019

TallestofPaulsSorry I'm practicing my typing so I'm ready for Friday when the drop re-opens and I get a million questions.

Mar 27, 2019

moofu

Mar 27, 2019

TallestofPaulsHuh, I had no idea logical and thorough explanations were exclusive to women. I thought it was a sign of intelligence. TIL

Mar 27, 2019

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TheGoose

Mar 27, 2019

dandurstonThat great news. I can wait!

Mar 27, 2019

Fast51

Mar 28, 2019

dandurston1@dandurston I just want to hand you a fist full of money after watching you patiently answer a gazillion questions, very calmly and professionally about details that are totally out of your control! Well done sir! Hope you get filthy rich........or at least make enough $ that you can spend more time on the trail just getting filthy!ha

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Mar 28, 2019

redibackpacking

Mar 29, 2019

Fast51this... even i was getting frustrated just seeing the same question or two getting asked and answered over and over.... and over.

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Mar 29, 2019

LoneWolfCanada

Mar 29, 2019

dandurstonHow are we supposed to trust Massdrop to deliver on time, when they can’t even open the drop when they say they will?? nothing against u Dan, but this is getting Ridiculous! ...........reopen Friday 2024 maybe

Mar 29, 2019

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