Thanks for the insight. I understand the desire behind reducing waiting times, but for some people that method actually increases waiting time or potentially makes the knife unobtainable.
Obvious example. I don't have the availability to camp the website on Monday morning. So if there is no growth in supply but ideally a continuous growth in demand it makes it unlikely that I will obtain a knife directly, thus creating a secondary market for people to buy the knife direct and resell for profit. Like Hinderer. If that is thier goal perfect. If not will they be happy when all thier knives sell in 5 minutes then a week later a bunch show up for $50 more online somewhere?
I prefer a waiting list because I can get on the list when I have time to do so. I also see the advantage of the demand as I can order a knife and if I don't like it, resell it without a loss.
In my mind it makes sense to have a waiting list, and a few that are made public at a specific time as well. For people who would rather not camp a website to have thier demand met while still meeting the demand of people who prefer instant gratification.
This also creates demand for the service of the secondary market.
I'm not complaining at all, just trying to understand the current procedural process that has changed significantly since I last purchased.
This has been touched on before so I will try to be brief. We can't change availability without lowering quality and/or increasing prices. So, there will continue to be a wait for GSO knives for the foreseeable future.
I am purposely switching up the times that I list the knives for folks who may be working or sleeping Monday mornings. Right now, supply is limited because Guy is still working on fulfilling preorders. Once those have all gone out later this year, the Monday releases will have some much larger numbers. The knives have always sold out quickly and often end up for sale elsewhere for a mark-up. We would definitely prefer to have the supply necessary to meet demand ourselves. We have increased our production numbers, but demand does continue to increase as well (even though we don't advertise at all).
"A waiting list and a few made public at a specific time as well." Something like having a preorder and then selling the remaining knives as we have the time to fulfill regular orders?
I guess we could be more specific than "Monday" but then we would sell out in 5 minutes rather than 20. And we would need someone to answer all the angry emails accusing us of being horrible people.
We have learned that there are two groups of customers: one that definitely wants it and another that wants it now. No matter what we do, one of those groups is unhappy. The Monday releases are designed so that we no longer feel buried by orders, meaning morale will be a lot higher, leading to more knives actually being available.
When you say waiting list I'm assuming you are differentiating that from our current version of a wait list, the preorders. We don't have a non-payment based waitlist for several reasons.
1: It is not an easy thing to keep track of. You're talking about hundreds, probably thousands for the GSO-5.1, of names. We might be able to run it through our website, just have the system not charge people. But as people have proven, they don't read the fine print. We will have all the same problems as we have with preorders, except that people won't have paid for the knives.
2: Of course, if they aren't paying that means there will be a lot more names on the list. A lot more knives that we have to produce. Knives cost a lot to produce, and with our standards there are often a lot of knives that don't make it through QC. We might produce enough to cover the waitlist, but then more names get added and/or less knives are up to standard than expected. Then the end of the list is waiting a whole other big chunk of months for the next production run. Then more names get added to the list.
3: Time.
- Guy is a human, not a robot. He can only make so many knives in a time period. Say we get 1500 orders for the GSO-5.1, 800 orders for the GSO-4.7, 500 orders for the GSO-2.7, 1000 orders for the GSO-4.1.... His year fills up pretty quickly and our wait times become several years.
- I am a human, not a robot. I don't have the time call thousands of people to get payment information and deal with, "oh, I forgot about that. I can't pay for it anymore" and all the other things that can happen.
As it is, we feel stressed when we try to take a whole weekend off. I can't go anywhere without the laptop. The dogs are always restless, none of us get enough exercise. Here's a good one: We got married last month and we laugh when people ask about the honeymoon because it is ridiculous for us to even pretend we can take that much time off and actually enjoy ourselves. So no, there will not be a wait list. I am sorry that we can't keep up with demand, but a wait list is not our answer.
