I can't imagine what will happen if 1/10th of the American population found an interest in Survive! products, and we haven't touched on international interests like those from myself yet. How then would it be realistic to still be running a 3 man team outputting knives for the multitudes? The Monday sales is going to be like shark feeding frenzy and many are going to be disappointed due to some commitments taking their time away from placing the order, made worst by the fact that there's only so few pieces up on sale at a time to cope with the increasing number of interests. I can only foresee things getting worst in the future and secondary market prices would be skyrocketing as demands shoots way pass availability. Does that go well with offering quality knives at an affordable price? What good is that when customers can't get in line to buy it direct from S!K? As said, there's going to be a lot of customers or would be customers without a GSO knife. Of course I understand the need for perfection and I want it too from the products that I had paid for with my hardearned money, but Survive! must learn to strike a balance to cope with demands and yet maintain quality. There's got to be a way around that. Training skilled workers takes time, but it has to be done. You can't continue doing what you are doing just because you are having frustrations after frustrations dealing with workers who did not perform to your expectations. More and more orders and interests are going to come in the future. You should be geared up for that and should already start training the manpower required from now. If Survive! stops taking pre-orders, the prices on the secondary market would really start rocketing skywards and many would start to lose interest no matter how good the products may be. I most likely would too as I see availability getting harder and harder to fulfill without the pre-order.
If I were operating Survive!, I would allow pre-orders to go for a duration of one month for each model, close it, move on to the next model for pre-orders, and then start the manufacturing process for the current pre-orders. Do this for all the models and restart the cycle again. This will help maintain a more controlled quantity than to keep the order open for so long, way longer than S!K could manage to fulfill on time. Start training workers on the skill set required to do the job and allow the company to gradually expand. As have been said, Guy is only human and he's not a robot. He will be drained one day, he will start losing the passion having to do the same mundane job of sharpening so many knives, he will probably lose his focus too. This is not about whether Guy wants to expand his business, but that he must expand the business to keep customer's interest in the products as demands sore. I hope S!K would take the time to think about the business strategy again.
