6 ms·

Congrats! The design looks nice, but I'm not very fond of the website design. There isn't a single picture of Trefolo that doesn't crop-out some part of it. Als

by m000 2y ago

Congrats! The design looks nice, but I'm not very fond of the website design. There isn't a single picture of Trefolo that doesn't crop-out some part of it. Also, every picture is in a "sterile" environment. It would be nice to have a picture of it on a real kitchen counter or coffee corner to put its dimensions into perspective, and also demonstrate how it "fades back into the environment". Also, IMHO, the sustainability pitch is a nice one but needs to be put down in more precise terms. It is good as it is for people who would otherwise buy a Nespresso machine, but anyone who has bought something above that level would need more convincing. Overall, a good espresso machine already scores pretty high sustainability-wise. Apart from the used of sustainable/premium materials, a key factor to that is the replacement parts and repairability. So, how does Trefolo do in terms of replacement parts and compatibility with 3rd party parts? For me, the future lack of replacement parts is especially concerning for the Turbina coffee grinder. The use of bespoke grinding burrs adds a wow factor and may be functionally superior to other types of burrs. But this is the one part in the whole setup that is guaranteed to need replacement down the road. What are the provisions for that? How much would it cost? And if you decide to stop selling it, would you e.g. be willing to commit to releasing the burr design so owners or some independent manufacturer can machine replacements?

f1shy 2y ago
Excellent comment. I beg the OP to address the topics, specially spare parts, so I can buy it.
- hsshhshshjk 2y ago
  I was also looking for a full, non edited, non animated, non faded picture of the machine.
  - turnsout 2y ago
    He has "full body" shots in the actual store, but I agree—it would be great to see a clearer shot, maybe lower in the flow.
    - krisoft 2y ago
      > He has "full body" shots in the actual store Is this the image you are thinking about? https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/642b16caa701311a34f57545/9e396783-effe-4214-8e9d-f3e642951d1e/Front.png?format=2500w https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/642b16caa70131... Because the problem is that it is not the "full body" of the coffee maker. Those pipes go somewhere. At least in the sense of how people usually think of an espresso machine the machine also contains the pump and the boiler. This apparently doesn't have those parts? Or if it has they are not good looking and minimalist enough to show. We are discussing the photos as if those are the problem, but I think the issue people are having is with the product design. If I make a picture of a laptop on a charger people don't ask where do the cable go, because they know it goes into a charger connected to the wall. But with this people have to imagine a standalone boiler/pump setup just waiting to be connected into this coffee extractor thingy which is not a thing most people have (or expect to one day have ) in their kitchen.
      - taway789aaa6 2y ago
        Surely that image is a computer rendering and not an actual photo though! I want to see an _actual_ photo. Like on a counter. How big is it? Wires? Power brick? Cool concept, but hard to make a decision with so little information.
        krisoft 2y ago
        > Cool concept, but hard to make a decision with so little information. It sounds like it is not hard to make the decision. I made my decision and it is a no. This is a cool thing for people who want to try the latest concepts but don't worry about it being an already polished and integrated whole product. It is how some people kit build their Rutan Long-EZ to fly with, and some people just buy tickets from an airline. They are both flying but they are not the same class of thing. This is more towards the kit built airplane end of the scale for me than what I would be comfortable with.
        boneitis 2y ago
ed_db 2y ago
Exactly this! It immediately turned me off from the product when I realised there isn’t a single practical image of it. It’s impossible to visualise how it would actually look on the counter.
- crazygringo 2y ago
  Agreed. And please -- show a video of it working, start to finish! This is clearly a product designed to be a sensory experience, so let me see and hear this on a kitchen counter pulling a shot or two.
  - not_your_mentat 2y ago
    The video of the device in operation with the entire device in frame please. You could still even switch between sexy angles.
- alexwebb2 2y ago
  Yep, I looked for a couple minutes and concluded “must be ugly since they clearly don’t want to show it to me”.
ajb 2y ago
It's interesting that he's made this visual mistake even as a person whose main concern is the product. So many photographers/videographers make the same mistake, and I guess he's copied them rather than thinking through what his market needs. The error is basically to film the product as if it was a sexy woman. I'll put it bluntly: I don't want to fuck your product. I might want to buy it but only if you show me the practical details. (Speaking generally - I'm not in the market for a coffee machine). Videos that solely try to convey allure and mistique are a net negative for the vast majority of products.
neogodless 2y ago
I'd also like to add that everything I click seems to open a new tab/window. Can't I just view the coffee devices and store all in a single tab? Details? New window. Shop? New window! Back to the details? New window. Contact? New window!! I don't like having all these extra tabs to close without a good reason for it.
XCSme 2y ago
This was my first impression too. On a large, 4k display, I could barely read anything, all I saw was a really zoomed-in photo of some device.
amluto 2y ago
I would also like to see a user’s manual and a diagram of how it’s plumbed. Where does the hot water come from? Does the user supply their own kettle? Where does excess water go when pressure is released? How does the preheating cycle work?
- smeeeeeeeeeeeee 2y ago
  Hey there! Yep, you bring the hot water, the machine does everything else! There is a pressure seal directly in the group head that holds the water in at the end of a shot. You can preheat just by pumping water into a cup for a couple seconds, which is around the same as a purge cycle on a traditional espresso machine. The fluid path is kept as small and as insulated as possible to avoid thermal losses or unnecessary water being held in the machine. I added a pre-release version of the manual to the warranty page! Please excuse any minor errors. https://velofuso.com/warranty https://velofuso.com/warranty I definitely agree that there needs to be a simple clean 30 second video of the full workflow with every part visible - I will work on that ASAP.
  - 0xffff2 2y ago
    Sorry I can't look at your product page from work, but am I getting the correct impression that this machine doesn't have a boiler? If so, my (meant in good fun) suggestion is that you have in fact designed half an espresso machine :)
    - smeeeeeeeeeeeee 2y ago
      Hahahaha, that is fair, but I like to think it is the important half =] We figured out how to heat water thousands of years ago. Flow control is considerably newer
      - greenthrow 2y ago
        Yeah but having the water hit the grounds at the right temperature is what separates a great machine from an average machine. Yours doesn't do that. Congratz on everything you've done so far but I am your target customer and won't consider a machine that doesn't also manage the water temperature.
havefunbesafe 2y ago
This is very good news, as designing a physical product like this is 20x more difficult than designing a website!
hardwaregeek 2y ago
Yeah, I couldn't tell if the photos were real or were rendered images
- smeeeeeeeeeeeee 2y ago
  They are all real! But I definitely need to have more photos in actual environments.
cryptozeus 2y ago
My bad ! Should not have said my comment about the website earlier. Apologies to op, i am human, this is how communication should be.
smeeeeeeeeeeeee 2y ago
Thank you so much! I appreciate the advice about the potentially over stylized product pages. If you go to the store here, you can see many full profile views of the products: https://velofuso.com/store https://velofuso.com/store You raise a ton of good points. - It's going to ship with a full spare parts catalogue available - Full prusa-esque upgrade paths will be made available for existing customers - Every single part on either product can be changed off with the removal of 1-5 screws. - The switches, cords, buttons, and (gear)motors are all standard sizes. - and I absolutely commit to open sourcing everything if a day came where the project could not continue (I have done this for previous projects, it isn't an empty promise) You make a good point about the burrs being a non-standard size. The thing to remember is every size of burr was once a non standard size. One of the most important parts of being a good engineer is only making something new when you can truly add value, and I think the burrs are valuable enough to have them be probably the only non-standard wear item in either machine.
- m000 2y ago
  Appreciated that you took the time to address my points. Glad to see that it's probably the website design that doesn't do justice to the product. IMHO, you should be putting these details in the spotlight. As a new brand in the espresso world, this would help convince customers go with you instead of a tried-and-trusted brand with decades of history on their back. Also, if there is a hackable PID controller or if there are plans to add one, this would also be a selling point for many (see the renewed popularity of the relatively humble Gaggia Classic). For the burrs, maybe running a lab test of Turbina against a traditional grinder of the same class would help make a solid argument for the new design. E.g. start grinding 2 kilo batches on each grinder and then take a sample and lab-test it for consistency. Continue until the ground coffee becomes inconsistent on both. Yes, this may turn out to be pricey. And maybe there are established test procedures that I'm not aware of (not a coffee pro - just pulled this out of my engineering bottom). As a final comment, for the wooden parts of Trefolo, maybe a darker or even black varnish would look more premium/classy. The pale wood color is vaguely reminiscent of IKEA furniture, something you probably want to avoid.
- sixo 2y ago
  Re website, The photography is also noticeably low-resolution, which stands out immediately
teknolog 2y ago
I for one can't read a word while there are moving pictures around. That's one of the main reasons I block ads. So please, remove the video and stick with stills! Animated stills while scrolling is fine, however.

by m000 2y ago

f1shy 2y ago

Excellent comment. I beg the OP to address the topics, specially spare parts, so I can buy it.

hsshhshshjk 2y ago
I was also looking for a full, non edited, non animated, non faded picture of the machine.
- turnsout 2y ago
  He has "full body" shots in the actual store, but I agree—it would be great to see a clearer shot, maybe lower in the flow.
  - krisoft 2y ago
    > He has "full body" shots in the actual store Is this the image you are thinking about? https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/642b16caa701311a34f57545/9e396783-effe-4214-8e9d-f3e642951d1e/Front.png?format=2500w https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/642b16caa70131... Because the problem is that it is not the "full body" of the coffee maker. Those pipes go somewhere. At least in the sense of how people usually think of an espresso machine the machine also contains the pump and the boiler. This apparently doesn't have those parts? Or if it has they are not good looking and minimalist enough to show. We are discussing the photos as if those are the problem, but I think the issue people are having is with the product design. If I make a picture of a laptop on a charger people don't ask where do the cable go, because they know it goes into a charger connected to the wall. But with this people have to imagine a standalone boiler/pump setup just waiting to be connected into this coffee extractor thingy which is not a thing most people have (or expect to one day have ) in their kitchen.
    - taway789aaa6 2y ago
      Surely that image is a computer rendering and not an actual photo though! I want to see an _actual_ photo. Like on a counter. How big is it? Wires? Power brick? Cool concept, but hard to make a decision with so little information.
      - krisoft 2y ago
        > Cool concept, but hard to make a decision with so little information. It sounds like it is not hard to make the decision. I made my decision and it is a no. This is a cool thing for people who want to try the latest concepts but don't worry about it being an already polished and integrated whole product. It is how some people kit build their Rutan Long-EZ to fly with, and some people just buy tickets from an airline. They are both flying but they are not the same class of thing. This is more towards the kit built airplane end of the scale for me than what I would be comfortable with.
        boneitis 2y ago

ed_db 2y ago

Exactly this! It immediately turned me off from the product when I realised there isn’t a single practical image of it. It’s impossible to visualise how it would actually look on the counter.

crazygringo 2y ago
Agreed. And please -- show a video of it working, start to finish! This is clearly a product designed to be a sensory experience, so let me see and hear this on a kitchen counter pulling a shot or two.
- not_your_mentat 2y ago
  The video of the device in operation with the entire device in frame please. You could still even switch between sexy angles.
alexwebb2 2y ago
Yep, I looked for a couple minutes and concluded “must be ugly since they clearly don’t want to show it to me”.

ajb 2y ago

It's interesting that he's made this visual mistake even as a person whose main concern is the product. So many photographers/videographers make the same mistake, and I guess he's copied them rather than thinking through what his market needs. The error is basically to film the product as if it was a sexy woman. I'll put it bluntly: I don't want to fuck your product. I might want to buy it but only if you show me the practical details. (Speaking generally - I'm not in the market for a coffee machine). Videos that solely try to convey allure and mistique are a net negative for the vast majority of products.

neogodless 2y ago

I'd also like to add that everything I click seems to open a new tab/window. Can't I just view the coffee devices and store all in a single tab? Details? New window. Shop? New window! Back to the details? New window. Contact? New window!! I don't like having all these extra tabs to close without a good reason for it.

XCSme 2y ago

This was my first impression too. On a large, 4k display, I could barely read anything, all I saw was a really zoomed-in photo of some device.

amluto 2y ago

I would also like to see a user’s manual and a diagram of how it’s plumbed. Where does the hot water come from? Does the user supply their own kettle? Where does excess water go when pressure is released? How does the preheating cycle work?

smeeeeeeeeeeeee 2y ago
Hey there! Yep, you bring the hot water, the machine does everything else! There is a pressure seal directly in the group head that holds the water in at the end of a shot. You can preheat just by pumping water into a cup for a couple seconds, which is around the same as a purge cycle on a traditional espresso machine. The fluid path is kept as small and as insulated as possible to avoid thermal losses or unnecessary water being held in the machine. I added a pre-release version of the manual to the warranty page! Please excuse any minor errors. https://velofuso.com/warranty https://velofuso.com/warranty I definitely agree that there needs to be a simple clean 30 second video of the full workflow with every part visible - I will work on that ASAP.
- 0xffff2 2y ago
  Sorry I can't look at your product page from work, but am I getting the correct impression that this machine doesn't have a boiler? If so, my (meant in good fun) suggestion is that you have in fact designed half an espresso machine :)
  - smeeeeeeeeeeeee 2y ago
    Hahahaha, that is fair, but I like to think it is the important half =] We figured out how to heat water thousands of years ago. Flow control is considerably newer
    - greenthrow 2y ago
      Yeah but having the water hit the grounds at the right temperature is what separates a great machine from an average machine. Yours doesn't do that. Congratz on everything you've done so far but I am your target customer and won't consider a machine that doesn't also manage the water temperature.

havefunbesafe 2y ago

This is very good news, as designing a physical product like this is 20x more difficult than designing a website!

hardwaregeek 2y ago

Yeah, I couldn't tell if the photos were real or were rendered images

smeeeeeeeeeeeee 2y ago
They are all real! But I definitely need to have more photos in actual environments.

cryptozeus 2y ago

My bad ! Should not have said my comment about the website earlier. Apologies to op, i am human, this is how communication should be.

smeeeeeeeeeeeee 2y ago

Thank you so much! I appreciate the advice about the potentially over stylized product pages. If you go to the store here, you can see many full profile views of the products: https://velofuso.com/store https://velofuso.com/store You raise a ton of good points. - It's going to ship with a full spare parts catalogue available - Full prusa-esque upgrade paths will be made available for existing customers - Every single part on either product can be changed off with the removal of 1-5 screws. - The switches, cords, buttons, and (gear)motors are all standard sizes. - and I absolutely commit to open sourcing everything if a day came where the project could not continue (I have done this for previous projects, it isn't an empty promise) You make a good point about the burrs being a non-standard size. The thing to remember is every size of burr was once a non standard size. One of the most important parts of being a good engineer is only making something new when you can truly add value, and I think the burrs are valuable enough to have them be probably the only non-standard wear item in either machine.

m000 2y ago
Appreciated that you took the time to address my points. Glad to see that it's probably the website design that doesn't do justice to the product. IMHO, you should be putting these details in the spotlight. As a new brand in the espresso world, this would help convince customers go with you instead of a tried-and-trusted brand with decades of history on their back. Also, if there is a hackable PID controller or if there are plans to add one, this would also be a selling point for many (see the renewed popularity of the relatively humble Gaggia Classic). For the burrs, maybe running a lab test of Turbina against a traditional grinder of the same class would help make a solid argument for the new design. E.g. start grinding 2 kilo batches on each grinder and then take a sample and lab-test it for consistency. Continue until the ground coffee becomes inconsistent on both. Yes, this may turn out to be pricey. And maybe there are established test procedures that I'm not aware of (not a coffee pro - just pulled this out of my engineering bottom). As a final comment, for the wooden parts of Trefolo, maybe a darker or even black varnish would look more premium/classy. The pale wood color is vaguely reminiscent of IKEA furniture, something you probably want to avoid.
sixo 2y ago
Re website, The photography is also noticeably low-resolution, which stands out immediately

teknolog 2y ago

I for one can't read a word while there are moving pictures around. That's one of the main reasons I block ads. So please, remove the video and stick with stills! Animated stills while scrolling is fine, however.