**FIRST EMAIL**/SMC Pneumatics and 2007 FRC Game Pieces Purchasing Information

[Joel J]

The way that sentence was written makes it sound as though FIRST is making the game pieces, and distributing them to teams (at cost).. is that the case?

[BrianR]

I think the idea is that they are either purchasing them (to prevent a lack of supply), or building them (to assure the game pieces are the same). Either way, it is an improvement over how it has been done in the past.

I'm giving FIRST credit for realizing that we deprived the children of the world of Poof balls for a long time last year, and they decided to compensate for that this year by buying enough in advance to prevent another catastrophic shortage of Poof balls.

[Mr MOE]

In addition to the benefits already mentioned in this thread, one reason might be economic. If the game pieces are "off the shelf" items, FIRST might have brokered a deal where they could purchase mass quantities at a significant discount. As long as some of that discount can be paid forward to teams, the benefits would continue.

I'm just interested on how FIRST will handle a significant volume of web or phone orders and how quickly the games pieces will be delivered.