Statement on current supply chain issues

The past year has been incredible in terms of our primary component suppliers going bankrupt or closing business for various reasons. Nonetheless, we are currently and consistently shipping over 5000 folders/month and the current 'normal' is to get in line to reserve your folders, if the ones you want aren't showing as available.

Tip: If you don't want to wait to get in the queue for pre-ordering of folders we are going to make, check our discounted Factory Seconds page (Grade A factory seconds at -25% are amazing value) There you're find folders that didn't pass quality control for functionally irrelevant issues; see descriptions.

We have responded to this supply chain chaos by taking on all manufacturing functions of former key suppliers and are expanding our staff by more than double. We have set up significant credit lines and invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into equipment and supplies purchases as we set up a new bindery division. 

And bought other folder manufacturers. NEWS: In June of 2023 we have purchased Deer River Folio Co., and their machinery have now arrived to a warehouse across the street. *When* we have sorted trailer-loads of folder parts and machinery, and have the data, we will retain their customer's order priority and re-confirm order priority for their 15,000 back-ordered folders, but focus on their highest volume back orders. This purchase will give us better continuity with increased redundancy from machine breakdowns, and higher production capacity when fully running.

All this isn't done overnight, and demand is higher than what we can supply, until we are fully staffed, trained, and smoothly operating. We had expected to get into stride near end of Q2 2023 before acquiring Deer River, and we're not there yet. Some popular folders have significant waiting lists that will expand to months and miss concerts, instead of our former order-in-the-morning-ship-this-afternoon fulfillment. 

Know that we wouldn't invest this much, nor put in insane weekly hours to roll out these projects, unless we believed that it would all work out in the end, with benefits of vertical integration and eventual better control of quality, in-house, here. We kindly ask for your understanding and patience.

Our wait-lists range from 250 to 3000+ for certain out of stock folders, totaling many thousands already reserved (so, pre-order to get in the queue ASAP!). September will see commencement of a number of multi-thousand batches of choral folder models and re-commencement of band folder production although there is a vast quantity of back-ordered Deer River folios to provision first.

-Ian Bullen

President