Hello, and welcome to our second week of shipping updates!
Last week, we dove head first into where we were at with production, what shipped, and what would be shipping. We received ample feedback which has been super helpful in creating clearer updates going forward. Big thank you to everyone who took the time to reach out.
This week, we want to dive a little deeper into what we see on the manufacturing side of things in order to provide a clearer view on what's going on behind the scenes.
There are four main components which make up every headrest. The arm stalk, the back plastic, the trellis piece, and the cushion.
Arm Stalk
The arm stalk we have ample inventory of, and we are continuing to build with the supply we have, so we are able to ship quickly once we receive cushions.
Trellis
This piece goes on the back of the cushion to secure the back plastic. We have ample inventory of this part, and we are continuing to build these up for quick shipping.
Back Plastic
Cushion
The cushion inventory is constrained. Right now, we are experiencing a delay as a result of supply deficiencies with the cushion portion of the headrest.
Our expectation going into this pre-order was that we and our suppliers would meet capacity and have everything shipped in 4 weeks. We've got it down pat on our end; however, we are looking at closer to 8 weeks for the whole backlog due to the supply issue. Our supplier is continuing to ramp up to the capacity needed to meet demand. Last week, they reached about 15% of requested capacity. This week, they reached 30% of requested capacity and are continuing to increase their output. We're doing as much as we can on our end to fill in gaps, keep production increasing, and the shipments flowing.
We've seen the concern about shipping in order of the queue and batch production, so we'd like to share some tidbits about the manufacturing/production process to help shed some light on why we are shipping the way we are. When our supplier manufactures the cushion, they load an entire roll of fabric, cut enough fabric for a hundred headrests, then they install. Then that batch is delivered to us and we begin the assembly process. It would be incredibly inefficient for us or our suppliers to produce a single headrest at a time.
That being said, we are not leaving anyone on the back burner, common color or not. We will be rotating higher volume colors in and out of production as we work our way through the queue. We will be doing batches of the less common colors in between batches of the more popular colors.
This week, we made a dent in the Black Rhythm Graphite Frame (EG1G13014) pre-orders; dipped into the Black Rhythm White frame(EG1T3014), Berry Blue Rhythm, both white (E91T3005) and graphite frame (EG1T3005) orders; shipped the first batch of Galaxy (E91TGLZ1823); and continued to ship Black/Cyan(EG1TCY3SY12) Gaming and Black Sync Graphite frame (EG1G13SY12) as many as we had the resources for.
On deck, we'll continue making progress on the colors we've dipped into this week, and see Twilight Rhythm along with a few other less common colors on the horizon next week.
Thanks for reading our update, and be sure to check back this time next week for another update on where we're at with things!
With gratitude,
Your friends at Atlas Headrest
