Oh overarm pin router, where art thou?

[paul heller]

I ordered an overarm pin router during the September 29 sawdust session where it was shown. Well, it seems it is still back ordered. That's more than a month so far now. I called Shopsmith about it today. I spoke to Dave and he said "there's been a lot of interest in that particular product lately". Nick is probably generating so much interest that Shopsmith was caught with inadequate supply.

Anyone know how long items like this typically take to get back in stock? Could it be a couple of months more yet?

Paul

[scottss]

I ordered the stop collar after Nick demo and it took over a month and a half.

[dusty]

Wait patiently for our backorders to ship!

Backorders are a good thing?? It shows that - Inventory is down and sales are up.

[rkh2]

Now I'm glad to hear that I am not the only one waiting for an order to ship. I ordered the Rip Fence Stop along with the auxiliary sled for my crosscut sled after Nick did a demo at the beginning of Oct and it is still in process. Agree that it is good that Shopsmith is apparently getting more orders than inventory from all the latest sawdust sessions and Nick's Tips.

[easterngray]

I ordered a saw guard upgrade in August and got a call this week that it's in. Looks like SS is busy! Alec

[kd6vpe]

I too have this situation. I had ordered the adjustable stop colars 1.5+ months ago and still waiting for them. I just did the email special on the bandsaw plastic cover. It was a one day special and now it seems to be back ordered. This is really messing my credit card payments up. I sure hope they get their stock levels fixed soon or I will have to defer from my shopping for awhile.

[paul heller]

I don't believe they charged my credit card yet. I think they only charge on shipment. But that also makes things tricky because we have to set money aside for a charge that will come at some unknown point in the future.

It's a tough call: build it first then market and sell it and hope the right number of orders come in, or sell it first and then build when the orders arrive? And how much to build in advance? If you guess the presale production volume wrong (too low), and the marketing event is very successful, you end up short. Guess it wrong the other way and you wasted a lot of money.

My job seems easier.

But it does seems that recent marketing events have must have been rather successful. Good for Shopsmith!

Paul

[scottss]

On my last order I was charged initially then it was taken off and charged again when I recieved the order.

[admin]

Paul I had your order expedited, the Router Arm will ship tomorrow, we received the parts to build them today.

Normally the longest anything will stay on back-order is 30 days unless the parts come from overseas which isnt often almost all of our materials are from the U.S.

[Nick]

Well, I've got good news and bad news.

The good news is that the video marketing we are doing -- even with all my technical blunders -- is working. Let's take the stop collars as an example. In the six months prior to my video tip, we had sold less than 20 of these suckers. Six weeks afterwards, we sold almost 400. Not every product I've shown has enjoyed that sort of success; obviously, the more expensive the product, the fewer the numbers sold. But sales are up, nonetheless.

Now for the bad news. Shopsmith, like most twenty-first century manufacturers, does what has come to be called "just in time manufacturing." That is, we carefully study our sales to predict what our inventory should be. The results on a band saw sale in 2006 help us to predict what our inventory should be to fulfill orders if we put that same tool on sale in 2007. It's a reasonably accurate system based on straightforward statistical analysis, and it helps us keep our inventory as low as possible without inconveniencing our customers. In theory, we save money and you don't have to wait for product -- win/win.

The problem is that in order for statistical analysis to produce useable results, first of all you have to have something to analyze. These Sawdust Sessions and Video Tips are a brand new form of marketing for us and we have no history from which to draw the numbers we need to prognosticate.

We aren't completely clueless, of course. The videos that we're producing are actually an extension of a marketing philosophy we've adhered to for half a century -- we provide solid information on woodworking technology and craftsmanship, show you how to accomplish woodworking tasks safely and competently on our tools, then let you make up your own mind. But these web-based videos reach the market in a way we've never tried before. So it's not surprising that the response is something we can't yet accurately anticipate.

Who could have predicted that a 3-minute video would result in a 5000% jump in sales on a single item? Even if we had predicted it, we would have convinced ourselves that there was something wrong with our forecast. No sane marketing guru would try to justify the expense required to increase inventory by 5000%, however strong his or her hunch. So it's likey the stop collar woukld be backordered even if the Oracle of Delphi had forecast the sales.

All of which is to say: We're sorry for the backorders and we don't like having to make you wait, not one little bit. But we are grateful for your interest in and your response to our intitial webcasts. As we glean more experience with webcasting, our ability to predict sales will get better and the backorder situation will improve. Until then, please understand we aren't charging you for product until we actually ship it, giving us every incentive to ship it as quickly as possible.

With all good wishes,