Halifax, NS
Hey Guys;
I just thought I had to post here and hopefully give you all some news on what's been happening at CPR this summer.
- Kevin had to shut down his home based part of CPR as we just totally outgrew it. We started with a small section of his basement and when we shut down a few weeks ago he calculated we were using 2600sqft of his house!! His entire basement, living room, hallways and at least 2 spare bedrooms were completely full of CPR stuff. Even one of his bathrooms has PFs stacked against a wall! So we found a new location not far from his place and he's been moving in over the past few weeks. He tells me he'll be fully up and running this Monday..... he's a very optimistic guy 
Once Kevin said he was shutting down and I blew a board in my CNC I took it as a sign for me to also take advantage of Kevin's print shop being down and I dismantled the two small shops I had been operating out of for many years and decided to build a new two story shop that will have almost 3x the combined space of the old shop. It'll have proper power and decent insulation so anyone working there won't freeze in the winter or have heatstroke in the summer. I was told by my builder that it would be ready this Friday.... but so far all I see is a foundation..... another demented optimist
In the past year or so since Stu became a partner at CPR and he agreed to take on the roll of Art Director and he's been posting and fielding many of the questions posted online of CPR. Even though Stu's opinions are just that... Stu's opinions, whenever he stated a fact it was backed up by the knowledge of being a CPR Partner and having total access to the inner working of the menagerie that we call CPR. I was very disappointed when he recently decided to stop posting in the name of CPR because that was a very valuable asset to us that was lost. I have implored Stu to continue posting as it gave unprecedented access to all of you into where we were going. Hopefully he reconsiders and begins keeping you guys up to date once again even in some limited capacity, as having me update the CPR website once every few months.... OK, every several months... or even worse was just not doing anyone any favors.
- Preorders- The idea of preorders was a way we came up to initially gauge the demand we might expect for a PF. When I first started making PFs we took deposits but the logistics of tracking hundreds of emails with changes of addresses, emails, changes, etc.. was a nightmare. When CPR formed the preorders just seemed the best way to do things. It gave us a rough idea of how many PFs might be wanted which allowed us to make an educated guess and order the number of inserts we needed. The real issues was the long lag times for inserts. It many cases it's been 10 months to get an order and that order might have 6 months or more of inserts for planned PFs. So at least some of the PFs are 18 months away when we place the order for the inserts. Lots can change in 18 months, the artwork might not be ready yet, guys sell off their games, you name it, it's happened. we actually have inserts for many PFs which we later decided not to make or inserts for PFs that we couldn't get licenses for. Anyway, the preorder system worked as well as could be expected given the obvious limitations. It actually worked much better that we ever expected. As the list got older more and more guys would drop off, not responding to their call for payments for many many reasons. Sometimes a guy moved or changed emails etc but since we go through the list top to bottom changes like this are very hard to track, impossible really given our limited spare time. However, this gave guys at the bottom of the list to get a PF he might never have gotten. In almost all cases everyone that had showed an interest would get a crack at one if their email we had was current. I think Playboy and WhirlWind were the only ones that we completely ran out of before everyone got a shot. However, Stu has been very influential in us deciding that the preorder lists might be more of a curse than a real use. We'll retain all the data we have from our current lists but I doubt we will regularly use them except in special cases from now on.
Lastly I was going to rewrite this but decided to just cut and paste from a post a made a few days ago. It was a post that wanted us to add carts etc to our website and some other suggestions. I hope this sheds a little light on how we have ALWAYS done things.
<paste>
We're a few pinheads trying to make parts for you guys. .... carts? While shopping carts are available at the local grocery store we really haven't figured out a way to get them set up on our website. Seriously, until...well... this weekend we were a couple of guys who make this stuff "solely" in our basements. Our first and truly most important task is to actually make the parts. Then we have to find a simple way to have you guys purchase them....hence the website. Beyond these basics we think its more important to show good pictures and discuss how we make parts rather than spend a huge amount of time learning how to code the website for carts... etc..... I hope you all understand.
I have repeated this many... many times. CPR is about pinheads making parts for pinheads. We have to make a few bucks to keep the business afloat but that is NEVER our primary goal. We make many parts that we lose money on and we know this even before we give the project a go ahead. That's OK as long as the next project is able to cover the loses on the previous. That's why you see us make parts that you all know we're gonna lose our shirts on... we'll make it up on the next run.. well, hopefully. CPR was never designed to come in and take the cream of the crop, like others do. CPR was begun for Kevin and I to be able to make the parts we needed to restore our own games. Later, after we had set up a functioning system, we expanded that model to include the parts our friends needed and then to what it is today where the Art Team gets the parts they all want to have made, and hopefully you all need the same parts. It's been super because as more of you want these often obscure parts we are able to make more and more of them. We are often and I really mean often are criticized for not concentrating more on the high value parts. The reality is the high value parts will get made because.... there is profit in them. If we only based our business model on profit then at least half of our projects would have NEVER been done. I know it's not the way to make money but it's in my opinion it's the best path for the hobby, my hobby and hopefully, yours too.
Mike P.
Albury
Conyers, GA
