Hi guys! It's been a LOOOOOONG time since I've made any posts on this forum, but this is an issue we need to address to everyone here -- to our customers, to those interested in the product, and especially to those who are disappointed that we haven't delivered.
Put simply, we dropped the ball, and we're sorry.
What happened? Well, it's complicated, but what it really comes down to is money.
As anyone who runs a small business knows, with a limited amount of operating capital, you have to make tough decisions about where you're going to use the money that's available to you.
If you've been paying attention over the last 8 years, you'll have noticed that many of our biggest selling products continually go on backorder. This is despite the fact that we've increased the amount of inventory on hand 6 or 7 fold from when we started, purchasing as much as our budget will allow.
When we started the amplifier upgrade project several years ago, we expected that at some point in the near future we would have "enough" inventory for our core products to meet demand, at which point we could redirect our capital resources to the amplifier upgrade project.
That day still hasn't come.
If we are going to continue to grow and thrive, we have to not only make great products and deliver great service; we also have to make strategic decisions which will be in the best interest of the business long-term.
And as a business, when you don't have enough inventory to fulfill the orders you already have, it just doesn't make sense to shift resources away to a project which has an unknown return on investment and an unknown timeframe for completion.
This has never been a question of our willingness to invest in R&D or a question of the complexity of the project. It's a question of resources.
All that said, we are CONSTANTLY increasing our operating capital, and we are hopeful that at some point in the near future, we'll have enough capital to keep enough inventory to fulfill everyone's seemingly insatiable demand for our current products, at which point we can use some of our limited resources to make this amplifier project a reality.
In other words, this project is on our roadmap, and it's not a question of IF it is coming. It is a question of WHEN. I don't have any firm timeframes for you, and we aren't going to give you any. We learned our lesson.
I will say that we have recently restarted development on this, but that is ALL that I will say. No timeframes, no estimates, no details. It will be available when we can make it work as a business.
Thank you guys for your patience and your understanding. We're sorry we've disappointed you, but we hope that when the final product is available, it will have been worth the wait.