First, we want to wish everyone a Happy New Year! 2015 is here and it’s an exciting time to be in the lab. There’s been a lot of concern out there about our lack of updates, so here is our best effort to explain to our supporters the product development process we’ve been implementing and our next steps. But first, we’ll address the most pressing question – when will I get my Evoke?
Timeline for Release:
Our biggest hope is to get the Evoke into the hands of our Indiegogo supporters by late-spring/early- summer (sometime between April and June). As soon as we have a specific shipping date, we will let you know and be requesting your addresses.
Product Development:
The product development process we are following can be summed up in four steps:
step 1 – project planning, our indiegogo campaign
Our first step, thanks to all of your contributions, is complete. Your support has literally kick-started our dream of turning the Evoke from an idea into something we’ll soon be able to hold in our hands.
step 2 – concept definition and main development
Step 2 is the most time consuming stage. This is where the product comes into fruition and we’ve devoted the past several months of our time on this exclusively. We have taken our initial design ideas, and integrated them into digital drawings. We’ve also researched our supply chain to ensure we can source the proper components and materials. Bringing our Evoke design concept into the manufacturing process has been extremely difficult, exciting and rewarding. For one, we are taking an old technology (induction) and using it in an innovative way (vaporization). Since this has never been done before, there are no previous models/blueprints/examples for us to follow or use as a baseline. We are innovating and creating as we go!
step 3 – product hardware, prototyping and software engineering
In step 3, our engineers are fine-tuning the Evoke to squish, cram, rotate, revolve, miniaturize, push and fidget with all the necessary internal components to fit our patented induction technology into its beautiful design. In this stage we are also prototyping: we’re answering key technical and commercial questions related to product feasibility, form, architecture, function, performance and cost.
step 4 – commercialization
The final stage is to get the product onto the manufacturing line and ultimately to you, the consumer. For that we need:
- Tooling Equipment: We need to create tooling equipment for the manufacturing line in order to quickly produce units at a reasonable cost (as opposed to custom cutting each unit as an individual piece, which we have to do for our initial prototypes).
- Shipping: We’ll be shipping the Evoke first to our Indiegogo supporters for real-world prototype testing and feedback.
- Commercial Production and Distribution: When we’re done with shipping to our Indiegogo supporters we’ll focus on ramping up production and distributing worldwide.
I hope this answers many of your concerns regarding the status of the Evoke. If you have specific questions, we’ll try to respond with detailed answers, just email us directly at
hello@lotolabs.com.
Thank you everyone for your patience and positive support. We promise we are hard at work, every day, with the single-minded goal of making the Evoke a reality. 2015 is going to be a great year!
Happy Vaping,
Loto Labs
Edit: we got some drawings of the design and they're halfway through supposedly