[sanddrag]

I know FIRST is a nice cushy place of gracious professionalism but we do deal with serious issues here and right now I am not happy. Time and time again FIRST fails to provide a game piece that teams can actually obtain more of. I just got off the phone from a lengthy conversation with Gopher, manufacturer of the Deluscious foam basketball. The item was discontinued last FALL. I have BAD memories from traveling to 13 WalMart stores in Southern California in 2009 to obtain enough discontinued Orbit balls. Furthermore, I placed my order for 24 Gopher balls at approximately 9:30 AM on kickoff day and I'm still denied the opportunity to buy more. The company claims they had no idea about the volume of orders they would receive and FIRST gave them no information about it whatsoever. WHY do we continue to operate like this? As the teams who fund this organization, we should not stand for this type of unprofessional planning. You can have NDAs with severe legal consequences if you have to, but you need to tell the supplier about the need for their product. If Gopher cannot get these back into production, they are missing a huge business opportunity here.

Finally, AndyMark is also now out of stock...

EDIT: AndyMark is back in stock. I wonder how many they really have.

</rant>