Spark pre-orders closed!

The response to the Spark pre-order registration program has been phenomenal. Thousands have registered and we've exchanged hundreds emails with various interested parties answering questions and receiving great feedback and input.

It has been so successful that we've reached our initial production capacity and have closed the pre-order program for now. We hope that you were able to get your registration in! If you did miss out, you can still sign up on the Make·Play·Live website to be notified when Spark becomes available for order in your area.

We did experience some hiccups along the way, including a mail server issue on Sunday that prevented confirmations being sent to some registrants. No registrations were lost, however: we've confirmed they all made it into the system. So even if you didn't get your confirmation email directly after entering your information in the pre-order form you can still look forward to receiving your priority registration order number.

When purchasing goes live, we will be sending out emails in batches to those who pre-ordered in the order that pre-orders were placed. So those who got in earlier will have the opportunity to get theirs first. Also, due to how demand ended up being geographically spread we are in the process of setting up logistics in the United States. We had thought that we could be able to service the Americas from Europe, even if that wasn't optimal, but demand is such that it just doesn't make any sense to do so. This should mean lower costs for orders in the Americas, but it also means that orders may start up to 2 weeks later in the Americas than in Europe as we have had to rearrange logistics all the way back to factory delivery to make this happen. We want the time between purchase and delivery to be roughly the same for everyone, so our delivery delay will be reflected in when ordering starts.

The roll-out plan currently looks like this:

1. Purchasing will begin for European (and some international) customers in March, in order of pre-order registration.
2. Purchasing will then open in North America (and, if logistics work out, South America) a couple weeks later, also in order of pre-order registration.
3. Once pre-order demand has been fulfilled we will open up orders to the general public

The last point is where we have have the most question marks left as we are still working out how quickly we will be able to meet the pre-order demand and then reload our logistics partners with more devices. It's a nice problem to be faced with .. but we know that the spice Sparks must flow!

We are also working a bit more concertedly on building out our regional partner network and defining a volume sales programs (discount levels, complimentary preview devices, etc.) This is likely to only increase pressure on our ability to supply, so we are having to take care here.

For those curious as to how the pre-orders ended up looking like geographically, here is a chart showing where registrations came in from:

There is fantastic demand for open devices, and many people like what they see in both Mer and Plasma Active's futureThe ball is now back in our court to deliver your devices as quickly and efficiently as we can!