**The State of AE Address** Today is the first time I will be in the shop for nearly a month other than to stop in and pick up supplies or assemble a cabinet that was leaving with me. These last few months have been very long working to complete a local project. I have a new respect for installers who do this kind of work regularly as it can be exhausting. At times this felt like the never ending project. It was a difficult but necessary step we needed to take to be able to move forward, become profitable, and assure long term success in the future. In trying to catch up on email now, there are several recurring questions. Here is some information about things that were asked most commonly. All New Orders: Effective immediately, we will be changing things in the way we handle DIY orders. Rather than charging for many orders over the course of a month we will now process orders in batches. People will be placed on a waiting list until it is time to process the batch. This will help streamline the process but will most importantly help with purchasing parts inventory. We will be able to better inform people if there will be a long delay due to specific parts availability. Email can still be sent to Jessica, info@aespeakers, with any requests. Additionally, we will have a new Request For Quote form available soon to confirm that all details such as impedance, phase plug color, Apollo Upgrade, etc are correctly recorded for the orders. As we process a batch, Jessica will then contact each person on the waiting list to gather payment details. This will not increase lead times at all from the current rate and we will eventually be able to shorten them using this process. Current Orders: We are very aware that some of our lead times have grown much longer than expected. We do apologize for this. We realize that the steps we have taken for long term success did have an effect on our current customers. We wish this wasn’t the case but the decisions made were necessary. Next week we will begin shipping woofers again for the DIY and small quantity OEM orders. If you have been on the build list for some time, you should be receiving email shortly with a status. While we realize there are some who desire to cancel orders. While we understand this frustration, we do our best to make it very clear that once we receive payment, we cannot allow cancellations. As we are custom manufacturing woofers, money is used to purchase the required parts and materials and is then no longer available to provide a return. We make this very clear as the following cancellation policy is agreed to when purchasing from our online store, and can be reviewed here: aespeakers/aes_store/catalog/conditions.php This policy is also attached to every paypal invoice stating that payment of the invoice constitutes understanding of this policy. “Cancelation Policy: As all drivers are custom built to order, sales are considered final once an order has been paid for. After this point we cannot allow cancelation on our custom made drivers. We will be happy to spend the time with you prior to your order being placed to guarantee you are getting exactly what you need for your application to prevent the need for any changes. Occasional long delays caused by issues beyond the control of Acoustic Elegance such as parts supply issues do not constitute ability to cancel an order once paid for. Please be aware of this prior to purchasing.” Obviously this is a current situation that the lead times have gone much further than expected. It has also been a period where cash flow has been exhausted to purchase the inventory. We will be working through the back orders quite quickly now as everyone is back in the shop. Please be patient. Your orders are very important to us and we believe you will be very happy with the product you receive. As we get through the current backlog we expect to not have this kind of delay in the future. Distribution: While we have always sold direct, there has been growing interest in having our woofers sold through distribution. This is something we are looking into between now and the end of the year. It seems most reasonable to do this in countries where the cost of air shipping is prohibitive. Our goal is to be able to deliver woofers with minimal increase in cost to the end user. We do not believe that the DIY customer paying 50% more for the same product is the best solution. Most of those who have expressed interest in distributing for us are former or current customers. Those with a love for DIY loudspeakers like ours. They wish to help support the DIY users rather than simply making profit. Expect some announcements within the next few months as we finalize things. Kit/Plan Offerings: By offering kits/plans, we will be able to help support the DIY industry without the enormous amount of time and support required. Initially we will have simple plans available for some of the most common cabinets people are building. Doing so will take the guess work out of the build for DIY users. Eventually we may expand to offer knock down or finished cabinets as well. Expect these plans to start to become available by the end of the year. Passive Radiators: Many have asked about ordering passive radiators. We are sorry to inform that we will be discontinuing them for the immediate future. With the limited availability of the various frames, we need to allocate those parts to more profitable products like woofers rather than passive radiators. We do plan to bring them back as time permits in our production schedule and parts inventory is more available. The Future: The immediate plan is to work on getting through the current orders. At the same time we will be finalizing inventory purchases with our investor. This will assure we have parts available as needed in the future rather than being hindered by availability of parts from China. Shipping times will no longer be a concern as parts will be available to us locally as needed. We are working with a local CNC machine shop to handle our machining needs rather than have Tom tied up for weeks on end running the lathe. This comes as an increased cost to us but will increase the amount of product we can put through. As we expand we will be able to bring this work back in house. We have a few new products we will begin offering as time permits which fill some needs not currently met in the market. New employees will be brought on beginning next month to help keep up with demand. We expect the next 12-18months to be quite challenging as things continue to grow. We are very excited at the opportunities put in front of us though. Thank you again to everyone who supports us. We don’t spend money on advertising to help keep costs down. Your support is what keeps us going and we are very grateful. There has been no question that we offer the best woofers in the world. Now is the time to be able to make those products more deliverable to all who want them. Best Regards, John
Posted on: Sat, 01 Nov 2014 15:56:00 +0000
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