[Elecraft] OT: IDIOM PRESS

[Dyarnes]

Hi All,

What a lot of folks don't realize is that a great many of the amateur radio 
suppliers, and especially the QRP type suppliers, are "one man operations"! 
As such, they don't have a particularly organized and sophisticated ordering 
and shipping process.  Accordingly, if you are in a particular hurry, or 
need something quickly from one of these very small companies, you should 
talk to them personally and make sure you are going to receive your order in 
the timeframe you are expecting.  There are a thousand reasons why it might 
take longer than you expect to fill your order.  Most of these little 
companies are operating out of their garages, or similarly small space, and 
parts coming in versus things going out can be an issue.  I'm not making 
excuses for bad service, but so many of these operations are reliant on 
their receiving the necessary parts, which they really can't control.  They 
can't afford to maintain large inventories of parts, so a sudden rush of 
orders probably means a lag time that would normally be considered 
unacceptable.

By all means, you should talk to the supplier personally and find out if 
there is going to be a delay of any significance.  Most of them will tell 
you whether or not they have everything you want in stock.  Some of these 
folks are doing this "on the side", in addition to their regular job, so 
don't be surprised if it takes a little time to fill an order.  It may 
involve a good bit of personal effort to make sure what they send you is 
correct.  It's entirely different from being a full blown manufacturing 
operation where they have employees specifically responsible for making sure 
that everything needed is on the shelf and ready for shipment.

Some QRP suppliers, like Dave Benson and Steve Weber, are good examples of 
this.  Both of those guys usually "geared up" for a production run of "X" 
number of kits.  However, if more orders than that came in, they typically 
had a hiatus of time in order to re-stock the necessary parts.  The NorCal 
kits were the same way.  They could handle the number of orders they 
announced, but if interest exceeded that, well, it was probably going to be 
a wait of some time before they could handle the orders received.  I don't 
know that much about Idiom press (they have been around for a long time), 
but I suspect they are in the same category.  I'm not sure what they sell is 
sufficient to qualify for being a full blown manufacturing operation with a 
staff sufficiently large to make sure everything necessary is on the shelf 
and ready for shipment.

Bottom line, if you are in a big hurry, call them and talk to them 
personally to find out what delay might be in the offing!  I know, some of 
these operations promise more than they can handle, but most of them, I 
think, try to be reasonably forthright in their advertising.  In any event, 
if time is of the essence, I'd be verifying things them personally.

Most of these small operations are incredibly innovative in what they offer, 
so don't expect too much too soon!  Even Elecraft started out to be a 
somewhat laggard operation, but the quality of their offerings soon made it 
possible for them to rise to "big company" reliability.  Not every QRP 
supplier will achieve that level of success, so you have to be a little 
patient.  Usually that will be greatly rewarded, but it is a bit 
frustrating.  If you can't stand to wait a bit, then maybe you should be 
looking elsewhere.

I have no clue as to whether Idiom Press meets the criteria I describe 
above, but I'd be almost willing to bet that it does.  Over the years I've 
seen dozens of companies like this with the same "lag time" issue.  On top 
of that, much of the delay can be because various personal issues arose 
which complicated their ability to devote the necessary attention to this 
"sideline" business.  Hey!  That's just part of the mix!  I will tell you , 
though, that rarely have I been unhappy in the end.  It's just that the 
timeframe has been disappointing.  Your expectations are not unreasonable, 
but the basic fact of life is that you should verify the validity of your 
expectations when dealing with any small company.  There is just too much 
that can interfere with achieving a satisfactory result when you are 
patronizing small suppliers.  Too many things can go wrong for them to not 
hit a bump here or there.  Just think about it!

Dave W7AQK