Good Morning from Texas.
2020 was simultaneously an amazing and terrible year for Schiit Audio and 2021 has started off the same.
Schiit has backorders on about half of our product line. This includes Lyr, Hel, Vali, Magnius, Ragnarok, Modius, Gungnir, Yggdrasil, Loki, and Freya+. Amps like Vidar and Aegir are taking us longer to build. We have placed orders for all of the components we need to build these products- in most cases the orders were placed more than six months ago.
The reason we are out of stock is a combination of expanded demand, difficulty getting parts delivered as per schedule, limited capacity at our board house, limited capacity at our own shop to build quickly enough, extended lead times for packaging, and we've had several employees out at various times for quarantines.
What are we doing about it? I am in Texas working on opening a second production facility that will give us access to more space and more employees. We've added a second board house to add capacity and our primary board house is working to do the same. We have increased run sizes and frequency of run sizes where possible. Some of the items we have no control over- when we place a capacitor order six months ago and they tell us just before shipment that the order is delayed or the order is cancelled we're stuck scrambling to find an alternate part. When that happens the Freya+ that we were hoping to build and ship in two weeks gets indefinitely delayed while we look for parts. Freya+ has been hardest to keep in stock because demand it high and its supply chain is more easily broken. Please understand that we are working hard each day to solve these problems and get out of backorder. We don't like backorders either. It is a constant stress and pressure that we don't want.
What about distributors? We have been focusing on servicing Schiit.com customers. We have not been reliably supporting our distributors since the pandemic started. We are working on that too. If you have a backorder to a distributor they have no idea when they will be able to ship and honestly I don't either. We are building and shipping as quickly as we can and adding capacity as quickly as we can.
Why do you suck at communication? We aren't the best at this and we know it. We are working at getting better. First off, stop calling the phone number. We don't answer it. If you want an update on your order send an email. Our prices are lower than our competitors and part of the compromise is we don't pay for a dealer network and we don't pay for people to answer our phones. We have designated a person to be our backorder czar and she is responsible for making sure the website and status messages are more clear and up to date. She will also be responsible for getting backorders filled as quickly as I can build inventory.
The best answer I can give to this thread is I am sorry we haven't been better at this. We've really had to stretch as a company without a whole lot of warning or preparation. We are working on it and will do better.
Thanks,
Alex Martin
Operations Director
Schiit Audio
