Guys, Please, let's end this thread for now. Its taking a tremendous
amount of reflector bandwidth and is not going to make any impact on our
production rate. Believe me, we are already acutely aware of how much
everyone wants their K3 to be delivered quickly. If you want to vent,
please email me directly.
We are already working very long hours and putting all of our resources
into getting you K3s as fast as possible without sacrificing quality.
Wayne, I and our whole crew virtually live Elecraft every day (and
nights & weekends for many of us!)
We run Elecraft on a very conservative financial basis - we want to stay
here for the long run . We have a tremendous amount of cash tied up in
test equipment, inventory and work in process. Throwing more money at it
is not a prudent path to take in a market as small as the amateur
market. We have a big bubble of product to ship, but once we do catch
up, we do not want to have to lay off staff, pay rent on unneeded
factory space etc. We have made a very careful set of decisions on this,
which we review on an ongoing basis to make sure we are on track. So
far, while I would love to be able to ship at a 2x to 3x rate right now,
I feel we are on track with what we have planned. We are in a strong
financial condition and will stay that way. Many a small company (and
some larger ones) has bankrupted itself by trying to ramp up too quickly.
As a general comment, the reason we still are in a backlog situation is
due to the fact that each time we have increased our production rate,
our rate of orders has also increased beyond our projections. We have
been amazed at the K3 order response from our existing and new
customers. This Dayton our sales were way above even last year's (which
was an all time record with the K3 intro.) We even sold out of K2s this
Dayton. Even if we had infinite cash resources we could not find the
people, building space, parts etc to ramp up more quickly. We do not
want to compromise quality as we increase production. We will not
compromise quality. Period.
As I have noted before, we are currently on plan to increase our monthly
production by 50%+ over the next several months. (Parts ordered,
personnel hired etc.) If we are successful, the lead time on orders will
continue to drop noticeably. We hope to be at less than 4 weeks or less
by the fall. Personally I want to be in a ship from stock position for
the holiday season. Several of the parts used in the K3 (and in our
other radios) have 13-24 week lead times. We do plan carefully, but
there is an unavoidable lag in response from our parts pipeline and
assembly vendors each time we revise our production schedule. Plus, as
an extra 'fun' variable, each vendor can also be late on their
deliveries to us. As we see this reoccur for any vendor we immediately
bring on extra sources for that part - but it takes time to qualify each
new vendor, especially for custom parts like toroids etc. We do plan for
some of this, but each week brings lots of new excitement. ;-)
Wayne and I started and continue to run Elecraft because we enjoy doing
this, even with the stresses of bringing a product as successful as the
K3 on line. This really is a labor of love. As many of you have noticed,
we do not look at this as just an eight hour a day job. ;-) Also, Lisa,
Katie, Madelyn, Scott, Gary, Richard and the rest of our customer sales
and support crew manage to maintain their excellent attitudes in the
face of some rather rude and immature callers. Fortunately the 99% of
you that have great attitudes make up for that. I'm amazed at their
resiliency. Please remember when you call that they are only trying to
help you as much as possible, and that they are not responsible for
production delays etc. Please feel free to email me with any complaints
etc. I have a thick skin and take each email seriously, even if I am not
able to reply to every email.
We're working hard to get these out the door to you quickly. Hopefully
we'll catch up enough soon so we can play with -our- K3s! :-)
73, Eric WA6HHQ
_..._
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