This creepy post and a couple others have created a flurry of controversy on Avalon's thread:
I'm not imposing anything. A demonstration will come by a customer very soon, if you wish to wait until then, go ahead; but you then run into the risk of not making into batch #2, and where if I don't open orders now, I run into the issue not able to order parts before CNY, which has a pretty long lead time.
It seems there'll be no demos, no 3rd party reviews, not even any tracking numbers to confirm product shipment prior to batch #2 opening(...and presumably selling out).
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137534.720