Since I'm finishing let me praise the team for what we've achieved in @turris_cz over the past 2,5 years.
...and let me remind you that those were years of the Covid pandemic, years of the biggest supply chain disruptions, and semiconductor shortages in the past 4 decades
yet we managed to grow and continued to improve
#Sales and #Production
and that deserves applause for everyone involved! π
This is approx how our sales grew over the years, excluding initial #indiegogo campaigns in the early days.
Not bad, right!
This is how the sales would look with initial IGG campaign numbers included. (yes, we don't provide numbers on purpose, it's for your imagination)
This is not all, of course, we were working on opening new sales channels for our products:
- we improved #Amazon sales reach by tripling no. of countries where Turris is available while optimizing promotions
- we spent most of our sales time during covid on...
...on B2B international sales development where we talked to every major #telco operator and #ISP in #Europe
- we started working with our existing customers and asked them about their satisfaction, problems, and issues.
if they were willing, we asked them for...
....for testimonials.
That's how names like Qarnot, Dialect, Oxalis, Kralovstvi zeleznic, K3 Bohumin, SamKnows, UC3M, HW Server, UTB, Sherlog appeared on our website.
turris.com/en/
- we also prepared our first own B2C e-commerce store which is ready for launch.
There you should be able to buy things you can't get anywhere else π (but who knows π
)
Since all things I mentioned before needed someone in #hardware and #production to make it happen before we could sell or even talk about it. This shout-out goes to our hardware team!
Couldn't happen without them and their great relationships with our suppliers. π
#Hardware developments
We also started working on a new generation of devices to cover our target markets.
That proved to be a challenge because just getting different testing boards was an adventure for a number of months.
now the fruits of the efforts are close... π
We are closing down on the final designs of one of the most powerful home routers in existence
and
there are also final production samples at work of our new generation AP product...
not to forget that we have #wifi6 products coming out soon to the "store near you" π
You may soon hear about Turris MOX with WiFi6 or Turris Omnia with WiFi6, and there might be a completely new WiFi6 product coming soon along with other surprises...
π
Sure,...
every #software dev step took longer than expected but the team did a great job of trying to find ways to be better, faster, and more user-focused.
Rember these... π
#Software
Well, #TurrisOS is our extension of OpenWRT with many extra features and sometimes extra bugs. Believe me, we are on it!
and TurrisOS 6.0 is just turning from round the corner π
We also spent extra time and efforts to create our own #cybersecurity focused team building on top of Turris Sentinel base towards something like this ...
Remember #router #onboarding ...well, that's painful to change with our stack and lack of UX skills but there are continued efforts to improve even though it's really too early to expect anything, so just a picture π
#Support
The team has done a great job of staying afloat after initially working on overdrive to fix forgotten and sleeping tickets.
They should be the ones benefiting from the newly developed and fully rewritten user documentation...
...for Turris Omnia
(with other devices coming soon)
docs.turris.com/
I hope it will make their life easier, as well as the life of our users and potential new users searching for easy-to-find and understandable answers.
Let's face it - documentation is a pain in the rear for everyone but it has great benefits when done right.
It improves the impression of the product on the outside and it saves valuable time on multiple fronts inside of the company.
#Marketing and #PR
We were lucky to be able to work with @FYIPrague as our local PR agency and they were a treat to work with.
I'm pretty sure there were more mentions of Turris products across the media in past 1.5 years than there were mentions for 5 previous years.
and on the marketing side, we were extremely lucky to find
@FBorsik who agreed to join us in our US market conquering efforts.
Frank is @rfelements veteran so we hoped he'll help us become the best-known device in our niche as he did with RFelements antennas.
and to his credit, our online marketing was on fire;
we were getting noticed, the community was getting rewarded with swag and merch regularly, internal attitude towards customers was shaping towards positivity...
and we were connecting across the broad range of meaningful industry events with potential future customers...
(some we managed, some we planned for next year)
#TurrisOmnia
I will finish with this great visualization of our event set-up from @david_urban who unfortunately spent with us only a few months but his work is visible everywhere you will look around #TurrisRouters
That was a short summary of what went well and the thread about what went wrong would be (of course) way longer π
I'm leaving the Turris team today but I stay as a great supporter.
After all, any #Czech and #European ambitious project...
... especially in #opensource #hardware and #software space deserves all support we can give!
Let's support them π π