Snorble is a smart companion for children designed to promote healthy habits, educational advancement, and social-emotional development.
Like everyone else in the world, we are shocked by what is currently happening in Ukraine. Snorble loves all children, and believes they all deserve to be safe. We are thinking of everyone in Ukraine, including our business partners, while hoping for a quick and peaceful resolution.
Love,
Team Snorble
As we mentioned in our last update, we're currently working on testing a number of alpha units to prepare for production, and things are going great.
While we do that, we thought we would continue to introduce you to our team members. Here's an excerpt from a piece we just posted on our website:
One of our core goals at Snorble Inc is to positively impact people’s lives. Our basic philosophy is that bringing balance to a child’s routine can create a brighter day and calmer night for everyone in the family.
For Dee, who joined Team Snorble in the new year as our Senior Product Manager, her role has become more than helping Snorble progress towards being able to achieve those goals. Dee herself is seeing the positive impact of working for Snorble rub off in her personal life.
Dee’s family suffered a tragedy three years ago and since then she has juggled guiding her young son through acute anxiety, managing a seven-person household, adjusting to multiple employment changes, locating to a new city, and refocusing her career direction.
Who better than Dee herself to give some background on her personal situation and then come back to our point that her association with Snorble is already creating positivity for her family?
“My son, especially, has experienced a lot of trauma,” Dee explains. "When he was really young his dad and I separated, and he had a lot of separation anxiety being away from his dad and that's a worry that three-year-olds just shouldn't have. We sought help for him, but his anxiety kept escalating. When he was six, his dad passed away from complications associated with the flu, and my son's change in behavior and cognitive abilities was dramatic. Less than a year later the pandemic happened and suddenly thousands of people were dying from similar symptoms. My son was terrified.”
"The prolonged anxiety and stress my son experienced affected him in so many ways. He went from being a happy three-year-old who was very good at following instructions – like, put on your coat and shoes, and go to the bathroom before we go out – to a school-aged child who can only follow one instruction at a time. He has a really hard time focusing and processing information.”
“He started having panic attacks at bedtime. We were pretty good at keeping him busy during the day, but at night there was nothing to keep his mind from filling with his worries, all he thought about was missing his dad and fear of Covid-19.”
“One night, it was so bad and nothing I did helped to calm him, I took him to the children's hospital where we were finally referred to a child psychologist. I will forever be grateful for that, my son and I learned so much about emotional coaching and it really has helped.”
To read the rest of the piece and find out how Dee has already seen her family benefit from what she's learned through working with Snorble, just visit our blog.
Finally, we also want to mention that today is Baby Sleep Day. As a company that understands how important sleep is to babies (and everyone else), we're happy to acknowledge the work of the Pediatric Sleep Council in spreading awareness about the topic. For more info, read the press release on our blog.
Sincerely,
Team Snorble
With a new year upon us, we're feeling refreshed and ready to make 2022 an even bigger year for Snorble®! We ended 2021 with some great messages from all of you about the holiday gifts, and we’re excited to hear from you even more this year as we get closer and closer to sending our little buddy to your homes.
With that in mind, our manufacturing and production team have been making great progress and we wanted to share some of that with you since you've been instrumental in making this all happen.
First up, we're happy to report that we’ve been working with our factory to get things in place for the moment we start production while also ensuring strict quality standards and testing procedures. They’ve been crucial in finding local alternative sources for components and other options that will make things run smoothly. Overall, we've implemented an aggressive schedule and they’re committed to helping us make it happen.
In other areas, we've had similar success.
We’re currently building 20 alpha units to do further testing, and they are using custom control boards and the latest Snorble software, which is a huge milestone on the path to production. With eight different boards required for each alpha unit, we're now able to test functionality in a Snorble that is extremely close to production. Better yet, our first run using the new boards passed our initial testing, which is almost unheard of at this stage!
Building on the progress our team has already made, the recent addition of a Product Manager, Dee Loft, will ensure we continue to move forward on the way to shipping to you in June.
Thanks to your support, we’re going to do just that.
Sincerely,
Team Snorble
Our team will be spending time with family and friends in the coming days, and we hope you're able to do the same. As always, we thank you for caring about our little buddy and supporting what we're doing, and we welcome you to reach out to us with any questions or comments you may have.
Happy holidays,
Team Snorble
Thank you for your patience while we determined a revised date when Snorble® will be shipped to our first group of backers.
When we launched our crowdfunding campaign earlier this year in March, we had planned to ship in October, but that was impacted by microchip shortages and the shipping crisis that has affected businesses globally, forcing us to revise that date.
Having consulted our manufacturing and shipping partners and assessed the likely ongoing challenges associated with the pandemic, we now plan to ship in June 2022. Our intent is to try to get Snorble to you earlier, but we want to give a date that we can stand by and that will allow you to plan for Snorble’s arrival.
We wish our interactive little buddy could be with you sooner, particularly for the holidays, so please accept our apologies. To ensure you still have something from Snorble for this special time, we will be sending you a gift exclusively for our backers.
It has been our goal all along to bring a little animated character to life to inspire children of all ages and through the magic of Snorble, we are able to do that. Better yet, we will use this time during the delay to add more rich content to the Snorbleverse, and improve the things we’ve already developed to ensure your family has an even greater experience with our little buddy.
To give you an idea of what’s in store, we wish to invite you to a Peek Behind the Curtain that will be held for backers only. This will take place on Wednesday, December 15, at 7.30pm EST via a Zoom call. We will send you a separate invitation to register, so keep an eye on your inbox.
During this special event, our team will present a private viewing of their contributions towards bringing Snorble to life. This will be a unique opportunity for us to share our creative process and some of the amazing developments that make Snorble even more magical than we had originally anticipated.
Needless to say, we’re excited for what’s ahead, and I hope you will continue this journey with us. Of course, if this revised timeline and a chance to peek behind the scenes does not work for your family, we will honor your request for a refund.
Once again, we apologize for the delay, but we promise Snorble will be more than worth the wait!
Sincerely,
Mike Rizkalla
CEO & Co-Founder