Our recent release of the Cloud Breaker 2 showed us that we still have work to do in order to make these high demand releases a success. As we stated after the recent Mystery Box release, there are many factors that go into the current situation. As we continue the spirit of transparency, we wanted to address two of the most popular items we've seen from your feedback.
First and foremost, we continue to hear you and you are right. We are not shooting our best round right now. You aren't happy. We aren't happy.
Cart Reservations
One of the most common suggestions we've heard is adding in the ability to have a cart reservation feature.
For those unfamiliar, in this situation, once you add something to your cart a timer countdown begins and until that timer runs out, no one else has the ability to add that same specific item to their respective cart. If the cart is abandoned, that item is returned to the store, or if it is purchased, it obviously never returns to the main inventory.
The Discmania Store is powered by the popular Shopify ecommerce platform. Cart reservations are not a feature currently supported by Shopify directly and they have no plans to change that. The only time Shopify reserves an item for you is when the payment is processing.
There are "Shopify Apps" that would enable this feature, but there is a fatal flaw in their design based on how Shopify is built at its core. If we were to enable this feature, the item would be reserved for a set amount of time. Once you begin the checkout process, the items are technically released back into the inventory where it could be added back to someone's cart (and reserved again). We have thousands of people on our site during these high-demand releases. In the time from you hitting "checkout" and actually initiating the payment process too many things can go wrong to bring even more confusion to the user.
Supply and Demand
We've previously addressed the supply/demand issue we're currently facing, but wanted to add on a few additional points. The global pandemic has thrown a wrench into supply chains in nearly every industry including ours. Original manufacturing dates have been pushed back, available time for manufacturing has shrunk, and everyone is playing catch up.
At the fault of no one specific person or company, the Cloud Breaker 2 was originally planned for much earlier than now. Our order was placed months prior with an increased number of discs compared to last year. We planned on an increase in demand, but failed to accurately judge just how much the demand would actually increase.
We have made adjustments to our production schedule, kept in communication with our manufacturing partners and refine our release plans to help bring balance between supply and demand.
We also applied a limit of five Cloud Breaker 2s per order. After looking at all the sales data, the average sale included just 1.8 Cloud Breaker 2s. The majority of the sales included just one or two in their cart.
Scalpers and Flippers
The current marketplace (low supply, high demand) is exposing our products to scalping and we will not tolerate that.
We will not authorize the scalping actions taken by many who were able to purchase a Cloud Breaker 2. Many were able to remain honest sellers and operate as they always have with past releases. One too many though took advantage of the current situation and take advantage of customers everywhere. This is not what we stand for.
You should not have to pay 2-4 times MSRP minutes after a release because it is the only way to get it. We are making changes to create a more fair way to get our most popular releases at the intended price. We will communicate these changes to those who have access to our Dealer Store.
We Will Be Better
The demand you have created for our products is overwhelming and we thank you for that. We are falling short of meeting your expectations.
We strive to provide existing products at a fair price. Moving forward, we will initiate changes on a case by case basis to ensure that we are being the best we can be.
Words are empty without actions. We will make changes. We will be better.