May 1-- Shouldn't Conid Be Back Today?

[AlecG]

On 2/21/2021 at 4:57 PM, Karmachanic said:

 

... poor management caused them to cease production...

 

I'm a bit annoyed as well, but poor management seems to hars to me. 

They had two events that hampered them.

First they had more demand than they anticipated. With the benefit of hindsight they should have stopped taking orders earlier, but well, it happens to the best. 

Second they made the decision to stop production because they deliver parts to medical industries. But they first fulfilled the open orders (excruciating slow as I understand, but they did deliver). 

 

What they really do need to improve is their communications.

I do understand you can't react to every email, but it can't be that time consuming to give a quarterly update on their website, Facebookpage or on FPN. Even if it is just a single line that you're still alive but nothing has changed yet. 

 

[A Smug Dill]

26 minutes ago, AlecG said:

They had two events that hampered them.

First they had more demand than they anticipated.

 

However, that isn't a single event, or even a cluster of events that happened in such a compressed timeframe to which the company could not possibly have reacted in time. Growing demand is a trend, and their production lagging behind and the backlog getting longer is also a trend, that competent management would have seen from the weekly if not daily reports.

[wimg]

On 2/27/2021 at 11:03 AM, A Smug Dill said:

 

However, that isn't a single event, or even a cluster of events that happened in such a compressed timeframe to which the company could not possibly have reacted in time. Growing demand is a trend, and their production lagging behind and the backlog getting longer is also a trend, that competent management would have seen from the weekly if not daily reports.

The poblem with CONID is that the main company owning CONID and the plant is not first and foremost a pen manufacturing company, but a company manufacturing medical instruments, amongst others.

 

Pen manufacturing effectively is a (passionate) hobby for them, which they do in slack time, although to the same standards as their main business lines.

 

It just so happens that they have been extremely busy with their other lines, probably understandingly so with the current pandemic, so have had very little time to spend on designing new pens and/or manufacturing more pens iof their current lines.

 

I have been told they should be back to producing new pens towards the end of the year, however.

 

HTH, warm regards, Wim

[A Smug Dill]

2 minutes ago, wimg said:

It just so happens that they have been extremely busy with their other lines, probably understandingly so with the current pandemic, so have had very little time to spend on designing new pens and/or manufacturing more pens iof their current lines.

 

That's perfectly understandable, but its problem with backlog of long lead times for and growing backlog of pen orders have been building up many, many months even before anyone has heard of the outbreaks in Wuhan. If CONID's production capacity is such that it can only make ten pens a month, then perhaps that's how many orders it ought to have limited itself to take, much like small artisan fountain pen producers only take so many orders and also make it clear upfront how long it's really going to take (or at least under-promise and over-deliver in terms of meeting customer expectations).

 

Most customers who have expressed frustration are not let down by CONID being a great brand failing to fulfil its potential of selling umpteen-thousand pens a month and knocking long-established brands off their perches. They are let down by CONID not fulfilling the orders it has accepted from them within the stated timeframe, and failing to spend sufficient effort updating them and managing customer expectations (and goodwill) in the meantime.

 

That I think can be attributed to poor management. They can always hire someone to at least follow up on customer orders and reply to emails, even if that extra non-technical staff member's wages cut into the company's profit margins as it tries to work itself out of this hole.

[Bobby Check]

I wish the company the best in these challenging times, and look forward to their return to pen production. 

 

I still mourn the end of OMAS. 

 

Bobby