Cool, thanks Andrew. That works great. I’m 232.

Has anyone calculated how many orders ship per month on average?  I’m over 5 months in and started at about #370.  That would suggest under 30 ship per month and that at #232, I’m not even halfway after 5 months.  And with 800 on the list now, a 2 year wait for new orders.

I’m fairly sure about my #370 starting point. That was back when there were 200 per page and I was near the bottom of the second page upon purchase.  Admittedly there might be errors in my data, hopefully someone has a more accurate figure of how many orders ship per month.

I just remember when I purchased on March 1, they were fulfilling October orders.  Now the are on December after 5 months.

To the positive, I’d like a Zen Line Conditioner. If I order today I won’t have to pay for perhaps 2 years 😂

Wow, at 38 per month that gives me about 6 months more, or 11 months total.  And new orders at around 21 months.  I’m not complaining, happy for Steve’s success and devotion to quality.  But this does help clarify my Decware purchasing strategy.  Basically, do my part to make the wait yet longer 😂

I wonder what percentage of orders are not complete due to the intermediary death of the customer 😂

21 months!?  I'm sorry, that is not a viable business model.

The used market ought to be getting crazy.

Greetings,

As a small business owner (by choice), I would tend to agree with Dancing Sea. Controlling your orders/deliveries, managing expectations is as important as getting orders.

You are only as good as your last sale.

Keeping control of your delivery time is important, otherwise with long uncontrolled delivery time you risk having people selling their "spot" in the queue for $$ and at that point you loses control of the selling price and production line.  

Of course as the delivery delays increase the customer expectation's increase and that can be a compounding problem.
"I waited so long, it WILL be perfect, right?"

Moving Co. assets (people) from promotion to production etc, can be an option.

I would agree with a previous post.
9 months is an exceptionally long delivery schedule, only acceptable because this product is sold as a "boutique, custom item" but at 9 months it must still hurt the business model.

At a 21 months cycle it would likely be unsustainable to control business growth and QC, new orders could simply be refused to avoid clients frustrations, control pace, and future QC issues that would impede future production.

Lets all take a deep breath and support Decware, they will sort this out.
I am with 'it is worth the wait group'.

All this being said I am not even sure where the '21 months' figure is coming from or if it is accurate.

Cheers all,

a.

Hi Dancing Sea,

I re-read the posts, and Ha, I see.
Well I will think of this as a small consequence of the increase in Decware success and recognition.

This little bump in the delivery schedule will stabilize itself, I am certain they are keeping an eye on it. We also do not know what production 'capacity' Decware has.

Keeping the Quality Control as high as possible is always part of the solution so it does not bight you later... And carillon!
;-)

Cheers,

a.

I called to add a mod to my order and spoke with Sarah.  She said new orders are currently running about 34 weeks, which is 8 months.  They have run into issues with the supply of parts that have slowed things.  And they are considering having one tech to focus on the quick things like ZRocks, and other small devices to move those along faster, and free up the amp chain.

They are keenly aware of the situation and feel badly about it.  They are just a very small company and the run of multiple glowing reviews has overwhelmed them a bit.  I expressed our collective sentiment that we’re fine with the wait as long as quality remains as it has.

The part we neglected to consider in our original hypothesis is the covid related disruption of parts supplies.

My order was placed on March 1, 1978 (just kidding).  But it was on March 1st.  She said late October to early November was a reasonable estimate for shipping.

My understanding was that they had already hired extra techs, but are now thinking of different ways to utilize them.  I think her estimate of my ZRock2 order did not include the reorganization idea.

My guess is that they are assuming this is a temporary influx of orders that will ease up over time.  Magnepan had to deal with this on the LRS, but they are significantly larger company.  It’s difficult to hire a stable of new workers for a temporary influx, only to have to then lay off those workers.  I’m sure part of this equation is how to best serve their employees, as well it should be.

Steve mentioned recently that they have two shifts of technicians working at this time. Also, when they first came out with the Zen Line Conditioner there were a lot of orders. Steve had one of the newer techs dedicated to building these and they increased turn around on build and shipping.

So while I understand the wait can be difficult, please folks Steve and his crew will do everything feasible to get orders shipped w/out sacrificing quality builds.

If it's too much, try buying a used unit or inexpensive drop in during the wait. Your patience will be rewarded in time.

HK

@Thermionic - Well, there were several questions I wanted to ask, but sensed she was busy.  And after all, this isn’t a Frontline investigation 😂

I wanted to ask how they came to that 8 month wait conclusion.  Possibly it’s based upon the notion that they are currently fulfilling Dec 2020 orders.  I see 67 remaining December orders on the list.  And this is August.  That comes to about 8 months for the wait.

However, if their orders per month has increased substantially then the 34 week (8 month) figure might not be accurate because it’s based upon a period in which they had fewer orders per month.

I see the following:
Dec = 67 orders remaining
Jan = 70
Feb = 87
March = 100
April = 177
May = 108
June = 75
July = 76

How all that shakes out, I’m not sure.  There seems to be a spike Feb through May (4 months), and then it’s coming back down.  My non accounting background speculates that the 34 week wait might be an underestimate, especially after the spike.  

I also wanted to ask how many orders ship per month, but it felt like an overreach on my part in context of the conversation.

I’d be thrilled if my order came by November, which would be 8 months for me.  But I’m guessing it might be more like January.

Either way, it shall be what it shall be.  No worries either way on my end.

Yes, we don’t have the data to reach an accurate conclusion.  We don’t know by what degree production has been increased.

I can say that I entered the list with 370 on it, that was March 1.  I’m now 228.  That’s 142 orders in over 5 months.  At that pace, the 34 weeks is off by quite a bit.

April had the Andrew Robinson YouTube video.  That must’ve caused that spike.

Actually something drastic needs to happen, and happen right now.

The current status quo is going to cause problems with existing orders. At the current rate of output, a large proportion of orders are still 12+ mos. away from shipment.

The current way of business isn't working. Blah blah blah aboit the supply chain. The workforce is necessarily going to have to expand significantly.

I put my order in at the beginning of May, and I'm #510 on the list. Thats almost 4 mos. ago. And now Im still looking at something like 13 more mos.

Yup, something very, very drastic needs to change, and pronto.

Hopefully Steve will make some sort of announcement about this really soon.

DancingSea, I agree.

Bottom line: He needs several more techs, like right now.

I made my order 1/6/21 and parts pulled this past Monday! Its been quite a test of delayed gratification, very happy as is what I expected. When I ordered I anticipated receiving in mid July to end of. I should recieve before months end and am fired up. It is totally understandable not only due to the Plauge, the economic crisis due to obvious reasons, and the explosion of interest and sales of the Decware products. Steve didn’t get here by luck, he is a very smart Dude and certainly is feverishly working to get to where he needs to be and at the sme time maintaining the same quality in the process. So why dont we chill out and back off the pressure for answers to his problems so he can focus on what he needs to…..

Wow..........

And I placed my Cybertruck order late November 2019.
I'm in the first 250K out of a million plus.
I wonder how long I'll have to wait?

Its going to soon be about 15 mos. for those who ordered during March and thereafter.

We are actually making some real progress behind the scenes. We doubled our techs around a year ago when the cat was let out of the bag and have been running two shifts since to make things happen. This winter we will be training more help and finding places for them to work.

Our normal build sheet for the past 15 years has been an average of 75 amps. We are now well over 750, despite shipping more product this year than ever before. That's 10 times the load that this ship was designed for.

As things move along we will begin to transition our list into layers. Simpler items will be built sooner to reduce the overall size of the list, which will shorten build times for everyone.

This artisan business model is not scalable. If you want artisan quality products vs. mass produced, and you live in todays CoVid handicapped world, you're going to have to wait for it. Our commitment is simply this: It will be worth the wait.

Things are running pretty tight around here, and despite all the pressure nothing is going out the door with defects and our creative energies haven't been stifled in fact quite the opposite because as we create new ways to deal with this, we keep accidentally having ideas for new products or product improvements.

The future looks bright, as we hope to bring more audio joy to all of you. Both on the speaker end and the amplifier end of things.

Our friends at Lii Audio have been exemplary with their drivers and reference cabinet. They have helped us place what seems like at least a 100 pair into peoples homes around the world so far and we plan to see a lot more offerings from them as we all spend more time in the listening room! Their F15 and Crystal 10 drives that we have incorporated into our Zen Master Series Baffles are flooding the DIY circles with our plans and we have built many pair of these wonderful baffles this year for those who don't do DIY not to mention our affiliate Randy Rash of Caintuck Audio's contribution with his highly affordable small size baffles that simply defy reason...  

And then there are Tube Tots. I have thought about calling them Face Melters, but it's too many letters ; ). These $1200 exotic stand mount almost tiny speakers defy reason when you hear the sound stage and resolution. Some of the best midrange you've ever heard.  Like QUAD quality midrange...  They are in production now with 30 pairs planned for inventory this fall.  Hear them at DECFEST, or make a listening appointment. Also we will start to leak YouTube video speaker demos of these little gems this fall.

We are now getting ready for DECFEST 2021 that all of us who know about DECFEST desperately need after not getting to have one last year due to Covid. It will be wonderful! When people who have never attended one hear the 2 watt Zen Triodes on 100dB speakers and then hear 20 watt Zen TORII's on 93dB speakers that only cost $1200 a pair there will be more than a few sleepless nights trying to figure out which way to go.



Oh yea, we've been doing in house hydrographic paint jobs on both amplifier chassis and our Tiny Radial speakers. These will be starting to appear for sale this fall. It has so far been a lot of fun learning all the many ways to fail at it, but that's how you get good and we need it to be good if it's going to be Decware.

We also have several other things in the pipe that will happen as we move into next year

I have waited over 2 years for custom pieces, guns specifically. My previous vehicle took 16 months from deposit to delivery, my home took 1 year from deposit to keys in hand, it took me 18 months from job offer to the first day I walked in the door. Good things, quality and most importantly hand made specialties take time. I too suffer from, " I want it now" attitude, I have learned to deal with it. Thank you Steve, just keep up the good work, I DON'T want a product that has been rushed and then performs poorly or worse yet has issues out of the gate...

I have no problem with the wait, totally fine with me. I think the actual legitimate issue is a customer service one.  That the wait times quoted at sale are widely inaccurate.  It’s a matter of attention rather than anything that would speed up production.  It’s not difficult to quote a far more accurate estimate.  More an issue of good form than anything overly significant.

Indeed.

Here is the operative phrase that a few here didn't care to hear about at all, and made it pretty clear their underlying thinking is that no one else should have cared either:

Quote:


The above excerpt from Steve's post will be the next difference maker along with the shift in assembly priorities and exactly what I trying to find out as to whether it was in the get well plan.

Derekinla, congrats on the purchase!!

It’s funny how the waitlist psychology can work.  I got on the list for the ZRock2 in March not entirely sure I wanted, or needed, a ZR2.  The wait was about 5 months at the time, thought I could decide before parts were pulled.  As the 5 months have come and gone (transforming into a fuzzy unknown) my thinking has shifted from “do I really need one” to “if I cancel the order and change my mind, I’ll be #999 on the list”!  The exponential list growth has completely done away with any notion other than acquiring a ZR2, needed or not 😂

True. And ironic.

Do the dates on the wait list correlate with the order date? I placed my order on 8/21/21 and I see that an order from another customer was added to the list today with the date of 8/23/21. I don't see my order yet but I'm guessing my order will appear within next few weeks?

On a positive note, since the 27th of last month I’ve moved up 53 spots as of today, so that eclipses the current monthly estimates on this feed.  :)