Has there been any ETA given for the next LS9 shipments? Interesting to see if there are any delays on any promised date considering the reason given to change cabinet makers was to speed up the process for those still waiting.
I'm sure by now Ruben could've cranked out a couple of pairs but given Shifty's propensity for obfuscation, I can't help but think that problems making them in a timely fashion were not the root cause of Ruben becoming the
ex-Master Cabinet Man.
Given 123's well publicized past problems and their current problems in delivering product that is not defective regardless of the price, this does not inspire people to pony up a minimum of $4,500 to $6,000 (plus shipping) and up for the LS-6 and LS-9 respectively. At least not enough people. I just don't see the demand being so strong that you can bring the economies of scale to bear.
Besides if Shifty is going to avoid prepays, then he's going to have to come up with some fairly serious cash up front, whether it's to Lucid, Ruben, Colombia, or China in order to get cabinet inventory. To that we have to add all the rest that's needed to make the speaker. Now, the LS-6 is said to come in 6 finishes while the LS-9 comes in 3 finishes. So, what's a reasonable number of speakers to have in stock to get the ball rolling? Let's say 8 of each finish? Well, that's 48 6's and 24 9's. Then, let's take a guess at his total cost for each. How's about $1500 and $2000 respectively. Well that means he'll have to come up with about $120,000 to get that going. I really don't think anyone in their right minds is going to make the cabinets, veneer them, sell the drivers and everything else to Mark without him coming up with the cash. Only a sucker would give Shifty favorable terms like in the good old days.
Now, if we're talking about fulfilling existing prepays, well that's still means he has to lay out the money seeing as he's already blown the prepays on God knows what. Again, where's the cash going to come from? Everything he has is selling comparatively inexpensively as he clears out inventory trying to generate cash to meet other pressing issues. Once that's gone, he's going to have to restock things and likely it'll come at higher costs to himself.
Therefore I see existing orders being fulfilled very, very slowly. If it were me, I'd sue him for my money.
I think that Skiman was told to expect his rosewood 9's by or before 1/4/2010. He was supposed to help assemble his back in July, but they kept having to postpone assembly and then some time in August (while he was out of town for a few weeks) they lost or damaged at least one of his cabinets. The cabinets he's getting are now scheduled to be built by Lucid, I think.
We'll see. Think Skiman will actually get a chance to see his prepay getting put together? I predict bad weather will get tossed in there somewhere as well as problems with the Rosewood veneer that will have to get reordered.
