@SDHUNTER looks like others covered it, but yeah, if you massively underestimate demand at first its really tough to dig out quickly if you dont own the factory. In addition to needing to order parts from different suppliers and have those shipping to the manufacturing facility with their own lead time, you also have to book factory time which is often easier said than done, especially for seasonal products where lots of companies all want manufacturing time at the same time. As someone mentioned they may be getting small runs now due to that being the extent of parts or factory time that is available before a longer lead time. Then they have shipping times for parts and finished goods, if they arent air-freighting them ($$$) it can take well over a month for each leg of their journey. I havent worked in optics, but in other industries Ive worked in, in order to have reliable supply when we need it, we actually do need to book factory time with a $ commitment and order materials over a year in advance based on our estimates of volume, then place production orders 4-6 months ahead of when we need them. Some of this often requires prepayment too, so it becomes a significant cash flow issue if you order too far ahead or too much. Some of this may or may not apply to maven, but in a general sense its fairly standard in manufacturing, it just takes a lot longer than anyone thinks in large part because the parts suppliers and manufacturers arent just sitting there waiting for your order, they are busy doing work for other customers more or less all the time.
The question for maven now is whether they are trying to ramp up their ordering on this scope thinking this is the sustained level of demand they’ll see, or if they are hedging their bet and assuming this is a abnormally big demand spike and doesnt represent the level of long-term demand they can expect. Depending on their margin and cash flow situation they might be erring in one direction or the other. Or they may have paid a premium for a couple smaller rush batches of scopes and figured they’ll see how fast these sell a few months after the initial rush, and make a decision about the anticipated long term volume for a bigger “proper” production run after they have another data point.
The question for maven now is whether they are trying to ramp up their ordering on this scope thinking this is the sustained level of demand they’ll see, or if they are hedging their bet and assuming this is a abnormally big demand spike and doesnt represent the level of long-term demand they can expect. Depending on their margin and cash flow situation they might be erring in one direction or the other. Or they may have paid a premium for a couple smaller rush batches of scopes and figured they’ll see how fast these sell a few months after the initial rush, and make a decision about the anticipated long term volume for a bigger “proper” production run after they have another data point.
Last edited:
