Patience.

This is a different topic for a Monday Morning.  Usually I'm excited to post the new products arriving for the week and the items we've marked down for the sale section of the store but today is a little different note.

Patience.

With all of the new items shipping from CHA each week, we are SO excited to get them in, fondle them and then start filling the orders you've placed.  We've always prided ourselves on a fast turnaround on orders but lately, there has been a change.

We added the Pre-Order system to the store to allow us to better judge the popularity of items.  Manufacturers are starting to only order so many of an item and when its gone, its gone.  Sadly, I wish I could offer everything forever but thats not how this industry works.  If you don't get the products now, you run the risk of not getting them period.

We have tried to judge in the past and sometimes found some products hard to keep in stock.  With Pre-order, we're able to judge the popularity of a certain item and then up the quantities.  This seems to be working {most} of the time.   We rely on the manufacturers to communicate with us when items are out of stock or if our order will not ship complete - the same as you expect from us.

There are times when even a manufacturer cannot judge the popularity of its product and will sell out.  This leaves us without product to ship to you and this causes us great distress.

Over the past few months, our business has grown.  Its tripled actually.  Its a good problem to have.  So with the growth, comes the need for patience.  We're able to offer better sales. More sales. Better stock. More stock.  We may not be able to ship within 48 hours like we used too but your orders are still getting out.  We've added more staff to help run the business and we've had to take time to train them in how we run things around here.

Patience.

We've also run into our fair share of issues.

Manufacturers shipping product to the wrong address.

Manufacturers shipping half of our order and not the other half.

Manufacturers giving us dates that product will ship and then pushing them back without warning.

Reorders not getting shipped.

Orders not shipping to us.

We've had manufacturers tell us our order has shipped when in fact, it doesn't ship for another 10 days.

Patience.

All of these play into how we handle the orders.  How quickly we can get your order out to you.  If that means shipping in stock items and holding anything on backorder, then we do that.  We cover the extra shipping so there is no extra charge to you for the things we have little or no control over.

I was a shopper before I opened this business 4 1/2 years ago and I know how hard it is to wait for new items.  I want them in my hot little hands just as badly as you want them in yours and we do our best to make that happen.  We're constantly trying to judge what's working and what isn't.  How can we change and make the shop better.  Judging by the business we see each week, something must be working.

So with a little patience, hopefully we can achieve our goal - to be a store you want to come back to.

We are working hard to get the orders out to you so that you can create and enjoy the hobby as much as we do.

With that being said, we have some items that will ship this week but we are waiting until we know for sure that they have shipped before we remove them off pre-order or start pulling back orders.