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Year has been strong overall on the sales side of things. Availability has been a challenge and I expect that to be the case for all of 2021. For 2021 I don’t think anybody will have enough. I have sizable orders in with both Watkins and Nordic. Caldera side I basically added 20% to what I did this year and ordered all at once at end of June. Have added a number of trucks to my order since. On the Nordic side I typically do about 60+ - of their tubs a year. I have 6 trucks of 20 tub orders with 2021 dates on them. I also sell Marquis. They are a bit more challenging with lead times. Expect to get one more truck from them this year and have a decent amount of there tubs on order for 2021. Have also been dealing with another line that has been filling in the gaps for me. If I get what I am projected to get for 2021 I should be fine. That being said I don’t know how much faith I have in getting what I have on order in by the end of 2021. Hopefully the supply chain improves over the course of the year.
Stock will be challenging for some. I feel eventually the inability to get inventory might be the demise of some smaller dealers. It's already happening, the largest accounts are taking priority from the manufacturers. Word on the street has it that Sundance / Jaccuzzi added a full production line recently actually shortening lead times in some situations. They are also producing their top end spas with an optional insulation downgrade, in turn for a shorter lead time.
What are you guys seeing for expected lead times on new orders? I heard maxx is 22 months! That can't be true is?
Back in July when I was shopping, most manufacturers were saying Nov/Dec. Just three months later, dates have moved out by a whole year. How much of that is due to demand vs. supply?I would think that production ought to be back to pre-pandemic levels by now, if not higher as manufacturers look to increase their capacity to keep up with demand. Those hot tubs have to be going somewhere. If you guys aren't getting product, where's it going?Or is this the lone industry that hasn't gotten back to work? Seems unlikely.
Caldera 47 weeksNordic January 2022Marquis January-February 2022Those are brands I carry
Quote from: Hottubguy on October 07, 2020, 02:30:11 pmCaldera 47 weeksNordic January 2022Marquis January-February 2022Those are brands I carryThat's insane. How are small dealers going to survive this? If you didn't order a bunch of inventory this summer, I'm not sure what you can do to keep the bills paid.
Are you suggesting that the biggest and/or weathiest dealers pre-emptively placed large volumes of orders and are effectively monopolizing the supply, and dealers who placed orders when they had buyers (as in a normal year) are screwed because they're backed up behind all these mega-orders? If so, I think it's short sighted for the manufacturers to allow that, because they're going to come out of this with a smaller dealer network. Wouldn't it be better for them to make sure all of their dealers get some share of production based on their sales volume in prior years?