VEXPro Out of Stock

[Paul Copioli]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

I placed an order for dog gears on January 9th. Will we receive them, or are we out of luck for a while?

Anyone who placed orders while they were in stock will receive their gears.

[Sparky3D]

Any chance of getting a firm shipping date on the 3 CIM ball shifters? We've been given 3 different dates so far and all of them have passed. Maybe next week isn't a very confident answer when our drivetrain has been sitting for a week just waiting on gearboxes. I'm not trying to come off as a jerk, but we are behind schedule due to this; and if the ball shifters and WCP gearboxes aren't going to be available we are going to need to make some significant design changes to try to accommodate some other gearbox.

[Paul Copioli]

Originally Posted by Sparky3D

Any chance of getting a firm shipping date on the 3 CIM ball shifters? We've been given 3 different dates so far and all of them have passed. Maybe next week isn't a very confident answer when our drivetrain has been sitting for a week just waiting on gearboxes. I'm not trying to come off as a jerk, but we are behind schedule due to this; and if the ball shifters and WCP gearboxes aren't going to be available we are going to need to make some significant design changes to try to accommodate some other gearbox.

I apologize for the inconvenience we have caused and I am confident we will be shipping your gearboxes out next week.

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli

I apologize for the inconvenience we have caused and I am confident we will be shipping your gearboxes out next week.

Paul, thanks for keeping us updated on the status. We just placed our order today for the 3 CIM Ball Shifters. Not in a rush at the moment but even once we get the DT done we have other sections to work on so next week is still good.

Originally Posted by ksafin

For anyone else on the VexPro Team -

After the new shipments come in next week, will you be stocked for the rest of the season? Or will sporadic shipments continue?

I ask because we'll very likely have to order more VersaChassis gussets and channels and I wanted to know if they'll be in stock (and we'll be able to order on-demand) or if we need to order in advance in order to "get in line".

Bumping Kirill's question because I have the same - There are parts of new mechanisms I've designed that are made of VersaChassis gussets and tubing, and while I'd really love to use the Versa system for these assemblies, I can't afford to wait if the remainder of this season will be affected by the popularity of the products in the beginning of the season. That being said, 95% of our robot is Versa stuff, so we gotta thank y'all and WCP for making such a great framing system.

[nuttle]

Just for the record, we had an order that included VersaFrame 1" x 1" ship on Friday -- we'd only ordered it on Wednesday evening and were pleasantly surprised since the website had indicated this was delayed. Thanks!!!

[Paul Copioli]

Originally Posted by nuttle

Just for the record, we had an order that included VersaFrame 1" x 1" ship on Friday -- we'd only ordered it on Wednesday evening and were pleasantly surprised since the website had indicated this was delayed. Thanks!!!

The shipping confirmation stated that at least some of your order shipped and to check your packing list for what actually shipped. I can tell you with 100% certainty that the 1 x 1 tube did not ship because we did not have any to ship on Friday.

We are due to receive more this week, but until we ship out the currently received orders we will not be putting that particular item back in stock.

Originally Posted by ksafin

For anyone else on the VexPro Team -

After the new shipments come in next week, will you be stocked for the rest of the season? Or will sporadic shipments continue?

I ask because we'll very likely have to order more VersaChassis gussets and channels and I wanted to know if they'll be in stock (and we'll be able to order on-demand) or if we need to order in advance in order to "get in line".

The answer to your question depends on which products and how many people order after they come in stock. The gussets and tubing have out sold our expectations by orders of magnitude so I can't make any promises of how long they will stay in stock. However, the gussets are made by IFI manufacturing on our same campus here in Greenville so we can just keep making more after they run out.

Paul

[ksafin]

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli

The answer to your question depends on which products and how many people order after they come in stock. The gussets and tubing have out sold our expectations by orders of magnitude so I can't make any promises of how long they will stay in stock. However, the gussets are made by IFI manufacturing on our same campus here in Greenville so we can just keep making more after they run out.

Paul

So gussets will primarily remain in stock and the stock of tubing is uncertain?

Besides the tubing, the main part I'm curious about is versablocks, which to my understanding still haven't shipped - will those remain in stock or is that up in the air?

[nuttle]

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli

The shipping confirmation stated that at least some of your order shipped and to check your packing list for what actually shipped. I can tell you with 100% certainty that the 1 x 1 tube did not ship because we did not have any to ship on Friday.

Yeah, sorry about that -- but thanks anyway for turning around the partial order so quickly.

[IndySam]

I know it's hard to forecast things some times, especially with new products, but it's bad never having any 3' hex shaft in stock and darn near unforgivable being out of stock on something like 1/2 hex Versa Hubs.

[Paul Copioli]

Originally Posted by IndySam

I know it's hard to forecast things some times, especially with new products, but it's bad never having any 3' hex shaft in stock and darn near unforgivable being out of stock on something like 1/2 hex Versa Hubs.

The 3' Hex shaft will be in stock Monday. We sent too many to one of our distributors and they sent some back to us.


Ok, so in your eyes its unforgivable to not have hex VersaHubs. How many would you keep in stock? I'm curious, how many? I will also give you the same information I had going into this year. We sold a total of 800 all last year (from release in December, 2012 through October, 2013). I will tell you how many we ordered for this season if you tell me how many you would have stocked if you were me.

[geomapguy]

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli

The 3' Hex shaft will be in stock Monday. We sent too many to one of our distributors and they sent some back to us.


Ok, so in your eyes its unforgivable to not have hex VersaHubs. How many would you keep in stock? I'm curious, how many? I will also give you the same information I had going into this year. We sold a total of 800 all last year (from release in December, 2012 through October, 2013). I will tell you how many we ordered for this season if you tell me how many you would have stocked if you were me.

If I were you Paul, I would have ordered 800-900 or so considering last year's numbers. So I'm assuming you order more and they just sold like hotcakes

[PayneTrain]

Regardless, it's nice to order basic, interchangable parts like what you can get from Vex Pro before a season anyway to avoid any issues. The VersaBlocks are special in that they are a new product, but as long as we get them soon I'll be ok.

[Richard Wallace]

Kinda depends on when you needed to make the call, Paul. I'm going to guess you had to do that several weeks ago; i.e., before BuildBlitz showed so many FRC teams how these parts can be used in both drivetrains and scoring mechanisms for Aerial Assist robots.

My team is among those that will need to wait a while longer before we get some of the VexPro parts we ordered last week. We aren't waiting on VersaHubs -- our key items are VersaFrame 2x1, and VersaBlocks. If they don't come in time we will develop another approach, and learn from the experience.

Both suppliers and teams have to make plans based on incomplete data. This is one of the factors that makes the FRC much more interesting than a homework exercise or a science project.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by IndySam

I know it's hard to forecast things some times, especially with new products, but it's bad never having any 3' hex shaft in stock and darn near unforgivable being out of stock on something like 1/2 hex Versa Hubs.

But it's also very silly for a company to have 10x their annual sales on hand too, so Vex is in a tough spot.

Order too much, that's a big hit to the bottom line and cash flow. Order too little and you get delays.

It's easy as a customer to demand the supplier be perfect in everyway, but Vex's market share is growing and constantly changing so it's not trivial.

They've also already admitted that they have learned a lot from this process, and will do better next year. They're being incredibly transparent and doing everything they can to keep customers happy it seems like. Aside from using a time machine to reforecast for the 2014 season, there isn't much else they can do to rectify the issue.

We've been happy with Vex overall, and will continue to purchase their products.