Statement on current supply chain issues
General and current NEWS: The past couple years have 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 in-stock.
Tip: If you don't want to wait to get in the queue for pre-ordering of folders we are going to make, then 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 purchased remaining assets of Deer River Folio Co., and their machinery and an array of incomplete folios has now arrived to a warehouse across the street. Much of their machinery, sadly, is worn out and in need of vastly more extensive repair than expected. *When* we have sorted trailer-loads of folder parts and fixed machinery, and have sorted 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. FYI, no, we still haven't completed transitioning of their web site.
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 before acquiring Deer River, and we're nowhere near 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!). November will see completion of batches of :
- 4000 Standard/Deluxe/Deluxe Classroom Choral folders (completion Nov 15/oversubscribed);
- 4000 Band & Orchestra folders (fully pre-booked, starting supply Nov 15); and then
- 1500 Choralex, 2000 Choir RingBinders.
- and then hard decisions about which folders to produce as many are already out of stock, as we've been warning in print ads for about a year now.
-Ian Bullen
President