22 May 2024
In one of those moments that one can only laugh at, Hammerhead has seemingly accidentally shipped out units of the 7-year old original Karoo, to some eager buyers of the just announced ‘new Karoo’. Admittedly, someone at Hammerhead is probably not laughing as much as the rest of us right now, but I promise eventually they will. Probably. Hopefully. Historically SRAM has always had a sense of humor.
That’s because the backstory on this is downright hilarious. As regular readers know, SRAM/Hammerhead decided on naming the latest edition of the Karoo cycling GPS, simply “the new Karoo”, rather than the “Karoo 3” (which it actually is). There were concerns about the abbreviation, K3, being tied to people who wear white sheets and cones on their heads. The existing Karoo 2 is known as the K2, and the original Karoo is simply known as the K1. The Karoo 1 was released in 2017, the Karoo 2 in late 2020, and now the Karoo 3 in 2024.
The orders in question were all fulfilled directly by Hammerhead, rather than through retailers. Of course, at a high level, one can quite easily see how this could happen to warehouse employees. They were undoubtedly given a manifest that merely said “Karoo” on it, and said employee looked at that list, decided it wasn’t the ‘Karoo 2’, and picked a box that just said ‘Karoo’ on it. First, for reference, here’s the Karoo 1 box:
And then, here’s the Karoo 2 and Karoo 3 boxes.
While it might seem odd to ship out old Karoo’s, there were probably some warranty related stuff sitting around somehow. Most companies have old parts on hand, occasionally for fulfilling support requests. Those shipments are usually handled just like new orders (from a warehouse/packing standpoint).
In this case, all of the reported new-but-old Karoo orders were coming from their distribution warehouse in the Netherlands, and thus far to buyers in the UK. Starting with the packing slip included inside the box, you can see it says just “Karoo”. The number after it doesn’t match the SRAM SKU numbers I have, so I’m not sure exactly what that number is yet. Either way, it just says ‘Karoo’.
(Thanks to Trebor and Laith, who sent these in!)
Fast forward a few days and a FedEx delivery, and here’s what people have received:
Good ol’ fashioned Karoo 1.0. And in fact, the customs slip on the outside of the box actually does list the contents correctly as “Karoo 1.0”:
Here’s the outside/side of the box, with the “Karoo-1.1”:
Which is what makes this interesting. most companies also have very automated scanner systems for fulfilling orders. This generally makes it near impossible for these sorts of accidents to happen. A warehouse employee will have a pick-list from the computer, and then scan barcodes of products off a shelf. If they scan the wrong one, it’ll give a unique rejection beep/etc. Usually a pick list can’t be marked complete till all (correct) items are scanned. Thus errors these days are exceptionally rare. Further, similar parts are often put in totally different pick bins/shelves, to avoid this.
Of course, there are plenty of technical ways these could have been accidentally loaded into the system incorrectly, and thus in the pick pile.
Still, I imagine there’s some poor guy in a Dutch warehouse this morning that’s likely very matter-of-factly telling his boss: “Look, the order says “Karoo”, and I picked the box that says “Karoo”, if they wanted it to be a different “Karoo”, they should have called it that”. Yup, I agree buddy, I agree.
Both customers that sent me images initially got back some confusion from Hammerhead Support, followed by Hammerhead offering to send return labels to pickup the 1.0 units, with the Karoo 3 units being sent once Hammerhead got back the Karoo 1 units. Both customers pushed back on this, and were able to get the new Karoo 3 units shipped out immediately, rather than waiting for the ‘old Karoo’ to be returned first. One customer was a previous Karoo 2 owner, and the other is converting from a Wahoo BOLT V2.
I reached out to SRAM/Hammerhead last night about this, and they seemed a bit blindsided by it. Nonetheless, after probably immediately taking a few strong drinks, they’re digging into what happened, and I’ll update this post accordingly once they figure it out and report back.
Now, if you want a blast from the past, you can read my original Karoo 1 review, to see just how far the company has come in those 7 years. It’s incredibly impressive to see the level of innovation that’s happened in that timeframe, especially between the Karoo 2 and Karoo 3, even if the ‘new Karoo’ lacks the ‘proper’ numeral at the end.
Otherwise, in the meantime, good luck to those and others trying to get Back to the Future.