Don't mind if I comment on some of your points in separated quotes
Beyond products, what else did we do right? Lots of stuff.
- We reacted to COVID very early. I think we were the first audio company to sound the warning, the first audio company that outlined what we were doing to ensure our people and your shipments were safe, the first to make business plans to ensure continuity in case it became an ongoing thing. Paranoid? Sure. But I’ll take scared and alive over confident and bankrupt.
- We got even more paranoid as things got weird. As COVID ground on, we saw lead times increase and excuses proliferate. As a result, we started buying lots and lots of parts that were critical for making our products. That really saved our bacon (or vegan bacon, if you don’t do the meat thing) when the AKM disaster struck.
- We took steps to make sure we were around. In big-corp-speak, this is "business continuity planning." When the first round of stay-at-home orders hit, we were lucky enough to fall into a “communications” exemption in the state of California. A couple words difference would mean shutdown—as in, no support, service, or sales until the state said yay. This didn’t sit well with us, so we started looking at other places to be. At first, we opened a satellite office with our purchasing partners in Salt Lake City. Later, we did a more exhaustive search and settled on a funky little town in Texas called Corpus Christi. Now, we have a building there. Soon, we’ll be making the smaller, less expensive products there. Eventually, we’ll be designing there as well…without having to leave anyone in California behind. And that means we’ll be there to support you, no matter what comes (well, except maybe alien invasion, zombies, etc…come on, give us a break if any crazy crap like that happens.)
- We decided to focus on infrastructure while we were at it. Two facilities is a whole lot more work than one. So we started putting things into place to make sure we could coordinate. Which had lots of great side-effects, like finally getting B-stock ongoing updates, better and more efficient shipping, and increased warehouse visibility. Boring? Sure. Necessary? Absolutely.
- We continued with R&D. Yes, despite everything, despite the craziness, an amazing amount of R&D got done this year. This means the new product pipeline is still full (beyond the delayed 2020 products) and we discovered some really cool new things we’ll be playing with in the future. In addition, parts uncertainty, especially in terms of the AKM fire, has pushed R&D to new goals.
- We responded to the end of SchiitrMeets with a new video series. Yeah, yeah, yeah, everyone and their dear old dog has a video series now, and I’d much much much much rather be doing in-person meets, but until this whole COVID thing has blown over, this is what we got. At least you can watch me drink wine and say stupid things—and I’ll drag in others from time to time.
I hate to go back to the old “intangibles,” metric, but here’s the thing: we feel great at the end of this year. Last year, we were beaten, exhausted, ready to take a looooonng vacation. This year, people are laughing and joking around, despite the workload, despite COVID, despite everything. The mood is wayyyy up. Everyone’s looking forward to the future. And the Texas expansion is the most exciting thing we’ve done since we started. I’ll be spending time in Texas and California, designing products both here and there…count on it!
Jason, thanks for making things right on these. Not many companies, be they audio or not, have managed to do so. I mean, you are acting even more astutely than some of the bigger and/or more experienced companies out there for starters
This means that high chance I will be going for the end-game Schiit stuff once I am more ready since all of these mean that I will be paying for well thought out products and a company that will be around to help with my purchases down the line.
Hell, who else has a year of AKM parts in the year the factory burned down?
And that last line is one of the biggest flex I have ever seen in any of the tech domains that I have been!
Being honest, a couple of things:
- We could have fixed our infrastructure before the looming prospect of two manufacturing facilities forced us to take a hard look at it. There’s no reason we couldn’t have assigned someone to deal with b-stock before this. There’s no reason we couldn’t have integrated our shipping and inventory systems before this. There’s no reason that, 10 years after we started in a garage, there were still aspects of our operations that were stuck in that era. The good news is that we addressed this. The bad news is it took a global pandemic for us to fix it.
Sorry for being honest here, but as someone who got bummed out over some issues with purchasing B-stock Eitr recently (and also seeing some comments here about similar issues with purchasing B-Stock items here), I hope more is being done to look into these inventory management issues lest there be more disappointment down the line.
(yes I know, it's also on me for not realising sooner that I can still get B-stock Eitrs as soon as March this year when I was active here, before having to take another hiatus for some reason)
But at least, your staff did help mitigate the issue such that it would not inconvience both sides too much. Same can't be said for the other companies I am dealing with now over similar issues
Analog Yabetcha:
- Lokiest. Still not sure what to call this crazy-ass, all-LC-filtered, remote control, relay stepped, Nexus equalizer, but it’s much more than, say, a “Lokius.” It will be at least 10x the cost of a Loki Mini, so don’t get super excited. But this one is ready to rock and roll.
Darn, now I am really conflicted. Sounds like the Loki Mini is for me in terms of budget, but in terms of usage the Lokiest is more suitable
Will there be a middle ground Loki that can cover both sides (i.e. a bit less on the usage side than the Lokiest, but cost just a bit more than the Loki Mini)?
Thanks again to all for sticking with us through this crazy year. I hope you and yours are doing well, and I look forward to when we can all meet again!
Thank you too for willing and able to spend time on this thread where I get to talk about Schiit and other stuff with other fellow-minded people. See you all soon!
