a bit more from Mike
The existing pre order lists will be used so anyone who is on one is good to go, but guys please keep in mind that many of these pre orders lists are years old and they are what I based my production numbers on at least to some extent. There were other factors too.
1. At about 100 PFs I start to get decent discounts on the inserts, for example we once ran short of a run of Centaurs. On the original run I cut about 100 but in the end we had about 15 more guys on the preorder list. Back then inserts were pretty quick and we had the time to order more inserts to make 15 more before Kevin printed them. The inserts for the original 100 were about $30 per PF and the last 15 were about $120 per PF..... not exactly inexpensive. Nowadays this is impossible anyway due to the huge lead times for inserts.
2. With the old shop we really only had room to make about 150 PFs at a time before we just plain had no where to put em. So that was the max we could make. Even if we had 300 preorders we couldn't make them all at once anyway and would have to make two completely separate runs. Hopefully we have a bit better usage in the shop and this problem can be overcome. Although truthfully we never have had to make that many anyway. I think ToTAN is going to be our biggest run yet and we will either have to make two or maybe three separate runs unless we find some new way to cycle that many PFs through the screen shop at once.
We will probably still use preorders on some games, especially licensed themes as that may help determine if it's worth paying for a license.
I noticed someone mentioned taking a good deposit.... we tried that before CPR and it was a nightmare. For example, old buddy Joe sends in his deposit, two months later he changes emails, a few months later he gets a new apt, and then if we're shipping between July and Sept we should ship to his cottage, then he sells his game due to family troubles and needs his deposit back etc... each one of those changes required a change on a customer spreadsheet. In the end many of the deposits generated many many emails each that truly had to be answered because we had this poor guys money and a responsibility to him because of that. Now multiply that by about 100 PFs in each run and maybe 8-10 runs a year. We'd need to stop making PFs just to keep up with all the extra emails!
From now on I will try to buy enough inserts so that we can quickly rerun titles that sell out but for at least the next 12 months I'll be working through existing pre order PF titles so no one has to worry about this very much. We'll still advertise upcoming titles so you guys can plan for them and in some cases we'll still run the preorders but just not in every case.
I hope you guys understand as many people see the preorder technique as broken and we're just trying to find something that works as well but doesn't make people upset at us when for some reasons they don't get one of our products.
You have other options as well, Rick at Bay Area usually and at odd times Gene gets these products as well as part of our licensing agreement so hit them up early and you'll probably be able to get one there. We often have PFs that aren't perfect that Kevin sets aside.... funny thing is after 10 minutes examining it a month or two later he can't figure out why he culled it the first time around. These are usually the silver quality. There are always a few with just plain weird stuff on them, a wrong colored insert somewhere, a weird coloration of the wood, a small misalignment on a color, or something else. These are offered up later as Bronzes with certain caveats and explanations. These type of PFs are often available for a long time afterwards even if they are not posted online because... it takes quite a bit of time to examine and photo each and every PF oddity and list them on our website.
I hope this helps explain some of the rather odd way we do things. I know its not the way to run a "real" business because I have been told this by quite a few people, but it's the only way we really know how to.
Thanks
Mike
