Waverly Labs is the creator of the Pilot, an earpiece paired with a smartphone app that translates conversations as they’re happening.
At Easyship, we’ve had the privilege of working with them to ship this innovative earpiece to over 27,000 crowdfunding backers from 110+ countries.
Inspired by how they they tackled the issue of being lost in translation, we wanted to share some of their story with the Medium community!
Think about how we currently try to converse with someone who doesn’t speak the same language. There are bilingual books and smartphone apps, but outside of actually learning the language, these are not conversational.
Using these tools during a conversation can be disruptive, not to mention awkward — there’s that uncomfortable silence that happens between the time you hear something from an app to actually understanding it.
In 2014, Andrew Ochoa experienced this first-hand when he met a French girl while traveling. When the smartphone translation apps they were using became more of a burden, Ochoa started thinking about what kind of device would really make it easier to communicate.
His goal was to create something wearable, portable, and fast enough for users to carry on a natural conversation.
The design and prototype stage proved to be difficult, but now-CEO Ochoa and his team at Waverly Labs pushed through. Fast forward to the beginning of 2016, and they had a working prototype.
It was simple — all that was needed was to set up the earpiece with a smartphone. Once completed, the phone could be put away and talking face-to-face with someone could happen seamlessly, without the awkward silences and disruptive tools.
Excited, they wanted people all over the world to have the opportunity to buy the Pilot. They decided that launching a crowdfunding campaign would be the best way to do this.
“Once the video went viral, there was even more pressure to make sure the product met the specifications,” says Ochoa.
After uploading a teaser video showing how the Pilot worked, it ended up garnering over 15 million views in less than a week.
Many viewers wondered if it could really deliver. “Once the video went viral, there was even more pressure to make sure the product met the specifications,” says Ochoa.
Their wildly successful Indiegogo campaign resulted in 27,000 backers from more than 110 different countries, raising a total of more than $4.5 million.
That’s when they ran into the practical challenges of launching a product for a truly global customer base.
“As soon as we were ready to go to DFM stages (about 6 months before production), we started looking for fulfillment partners,” says Jainam Shah, their VP of Hardware Engineering.
They located several options, but some logistics companies offered a complicated pricing structure that left a lot of things unclear.
“We finally settled on Easyship because of ease of use, like the clear dashboard, and because they offered a turnkey solution for a fixed price. It meant we didn’t have to deal with separate companies for ocean and air freight, pallet loading costs, or finding customs partners.”
Head on over to our blog to learn more about how Easyship helped Waverly Labs ship the Pilot to more than 27,000 backers, not to mention saving them $75,000 in shipping costs!
