I don't want to bash Ferrania or sound negative or anything, but I would just like to have a clear view of what is going on, and I really don't want to sound harsh.
When I participated to the kickstarter I knew well it was to purchase the machinery, but the same campaign made it also sound that the color film was kind "around the corner" - you could make a batch in 2015 and after restructuring it would be possible to go on production in a somewhat timely fashion. It turns out it is not the case - and please don't get me wrong, this is not a critique, complex industrial processes are complex - and probably it will not be ready anytime soon. But I wish the kickstarter made that clearer - if the 2015 window closes, that's it: color film is going to be a long-term project, with years on the making. The fact that much of the communication stressed that Ferrania had no interest in BW film somewhat reinforced the idea that color would be ready more or less soon.
Please know that I'm more than happy that you achieved P30 right now (and I'm happy to have ordered it), but I think you owe us backers at least the complete explanation - I feel the 2015 deadline was much more precarious than depicted, and the road to color material was much much more steep than described.
I have no problem i waiting knowing that the investment on kicstarter is being put to a good fruit, even if it will be more years till color film, if this is what it takes to create for you a sustainable business. But I feel this stance should be completely cleared from your part.
First, let me say that we're very happy that you (and many others) are happy with P30. We're really quite proud of it, and demand for it is much higher than we expected. 120 and 4x5 formats are coming - hopefully before the winter holidays, but it remains to be seen.
Concerning the Kickstarter campaign - we
did say that we had one shot to make the Kickstarter batch. In the fall of 2014, we had a generous window of opportunity - so it
was "around the corner." We had no reason, at the time, to expect this window to close so abruptly.
Our founders tried every possible angle to keep the window from closing completely, but our landlord is the Italian government, and as ridiculous as it sounds, they needed 8 weeks to remove a bit of asbestos. That was most of our window to run the single Kickstarter batch. The weather did the rest of the damage by blanketing northern Italy in a heat wave that overwhelmed the chiller that was installed at that time. Neither of these things was predictable, nor controllable. And by the time the asbestos was abated and our team sealed off 90% of the building, the coater room
still could not be cooled to the proper temperature. This closed the window. A month or so later, our primary umbilical for electric, steam and water was severed. This locked the window closed. You can look at the posts from early 2015. You can clearly SEE that we were on track - and you can also see where it all went wrong - and subsequently, what we did to try to correct the problem until we had to shift our strategy entirely. It's all there.
But we explained all of this already... The "complete explanation" exists. It is the accumulation of all the updates we've posted.
Also, regarding the idea that your investment is being "put to a good fruit" - it was. Past-tense. We used the funding to purchase the machines that will allow us to eventually become self-contained - as said in the campaign and many times since. None of those machines were necessary to make the rewards and this remains true today. Nearly everything we purchased in winter 2014/2015 is still in storage.
With all of this said, we are right now working on our next Kickstarter-specific update that hopefully (if people read it) will address much of the above and more.