catulle
04-25-2008, 08:39 PM
I found this piece on a knife forum and it refers to famed Randall knives. Some of it might be applicable to the backlogs of some framebuilders.
"I think if you apply a little logic, you may be able to figure a few of these things out. My own logic may be flawed, but this is the scenario I come up with:
Nothwithstanding WWII, the backlog was created back in late '53 when the shop got national exposure for offering a lot of value for the money in a True Magazine article. Then with the coming of e-bay came the speculators and an exponential increase in the backlog. A year or two ago the shop mitigated this phenomenon by imposing restrictions on the frequency and number of knives that could be ordered by one person (or family) as well as the number of options that could be ordered. However this could not be done retroactively with integrity, so the impact of these actions is going to be directly proportional to what the backlog time was when they were put into effect (I'm thinking another 2-3 years). There is of course another way to reduce the backlog, and that is to hire and train additional workers. However, the Randall shop workers have always been considered "family" (This goes all the way back to post WWII when Bo took in brass polishing work just to keep Bill Platt employed). If you hire workers to clean up the backlog, what do you do with them when the backlog is cleaned up? You don't lay off family ! Therefore, as I see it the long backlog is going to be with us a while longer and then we're going to start seeing it come back down to something that's manageable and tolerable for all concerned. Will it ever go to zero? That wouldn't be good for the "family" nor anyone who owns a Randall and cares about it's market value. Draw your own conclusion here."
"I think if you apply a little logic, you may be able to figure a few of these things out. My own logic may be flawed, but this is the scenario I come up with:
Nothwithstanding WWII, the backlog was created back in late '53 when the shop got national exposure for offering a lot of value for the money in a True Magazine article. Then with the coming of e-bay came the speculators and an exponential increase in the backlog. A year or two ago the shop mitigated this phenomenon by imposing restrictions on the frequency and number of knives that could be ordered by one person (or family) as well as the number of options that could be ordered. However this could not be done retroactively with integrity, so the impact of these actions is going to be directly proportional to what the backlog time was when they were put into effect (I'm thinking another 2-3 years). There is of course another way to reduce the backlog, and that is to hire and train additional workers. However, the Randall shop workers have always been considered "family" (This goes all the way back to post WWII when Bo took in brass polishing work just to keep Bill Platt employed). If you hire workers to clean up the backlog, what do you do with them when the backlog is cleaned up? You don't lay off family ! Therefore, as I see it the long backlog is going to be with us a while longer and then we're going to start seeing it come back down to something that's manageable and tolerable for all concerned. Will it ever go to zero? That wouldn't be good for the "family" nor anyone who owns a Randall and cares about it's market value. Draw your own conclusion here."