Guys;

Sorry, I'm coming late to the party but I have another job as well and as such just miss too much of the stuff that goes takes place here on Pinside.

I think most things have been covered over and over again but I'd like to highlight a few things.

1. Stu is a valued member of and a partner in CPR. Stu's talent is in artwork and his passion is pinball but Stu is also his own person and as we all know, when someone is passionate about something they sometimes don't always consider the full implications of what we say before we hit "send". That is the reason that reason we have stated in the past that Stu's posts don't ALWAYS represent the full opinions of CPR. His opinions are... well....his opinions and rather than trying to stifle Stu, which I assure you is a lost cause Kevin and I would rather have Stu tell it like it is. There are some topics we have asked him to be careful around, like licensing etc. Don't be fooled though by Stu's casualness on Pinside, he is a partner in the company and he does have more power than he lets on. Stu's opinions are highly valued and we have several times changed production schedules to meet Stu's desires. Like, does anyone think Sexy Girl and Miss World were high on Kevin's or my priority lists Stu has the ability to not only change the production priorities but to also get projects made that he and only he himself view as important. That being said all of our ArtTeam have some power in this as well.. albeit to a lessor degree than Stu.

2. Production numbers - We moved recently as most of you know and while it didn't really increase our production ability to a great extent it moved most of the printing and laser cutting of CPR out of Kevin's house. This meant that, while he spends his days surrounded by inks, paints and the smell of laser cutting PETG he no longer has to sleep with them. It also means that his house can now become a house and not a just a shop with attached sleeping quarters. The major issue with increasing production is still the parts needed to make the PFs. Stu did a fairly accurate analysis of two components, wood and inserts but there are many, in fact, many more as well. The main issue with increasing production comes from mainly the inserts as I cannot just order more and have them arrive next week. It takes as much as 9 months to get these from my main supplier. We also HAVE to order inserts for several titles at once to get the numbers high enough that the cost per PF drops to something affordable. So when I last ordered inserts we set the numbers at about 125 per each PF title some a little more, some a little less (50 for BadCats). That doesn't mean we make 125 at a time but it means we'll have enough parts to make 125 in the end, be it all at once or with a smaller rerun later on to use up the inserts. Kevin, Stu and I decided several months ago that we would foot the bill and order inserts in higher numbers than we have been which means our insert orders are about to get much more expensive. But the catch is...... all the PFs we have been making or are making right now are from an insert order I placed almost 2 yrs ago!! It took nine months to get the order, a further 5 or so months to get the missing parts, wrong colors/shades, incorrect molds etc ironed out and since then we are using up those inserts. There was simply no way to increase production on ANY PF made in the last year or so because we just don't have the parts. When I place the next order I'll order enough parts for immediate reruns if required and that should take some of the pressure off Kevin when we don't have enough PFs to go around. We still have Strikes and Spare and two very small filler runs to use up inserts of Xenon and Fathom in the queue to be printed as well as the Fishtales mini PF. We have inserts for ToTAN and Corvette, Medusa, Star Trek, and a few others and I hope I ordered enough ToTAN for everyone. Bally Star Trek is ready to start cutting but we are limited to the parts I bought almost 2 yrs ago and I suspect we simply don't have enough. CBS was very clear about the number we were allowed to make with the permission they granted and I ordered that exact number of inserts. Its not a large number. In general, It would be great to increase production but it gets terrifyingly expensive very quickly when the numbers go up. Every time I order wood and my wife sees the bill show up on our line of credit she just about has a coronary! The insert orders used to kill her too but I think I may have her conditioned to those costs now If I can only get her past the wood orders I'll be OK.

3. Working us harder - Stu is a "machine"... He eats, sleeps and ..... well..... if you checked out his john I suspect there'd be evidence of pinball in there too. Stu is the exception though, he's called me at ungodly hours because he has a pinball question and just thought that everyone was up at 3am working on pinball.. Stu.... we're not. .. Kevin and all the guys work full time now on getting parts made but there are only so many hours in the day. Kevin is a very hands on guy and yes it would be great if he answered every email within minutes of it arriving, but he just can't as and I hope you guys understand it's more important for him to actually make the parts that to sit around typing or talking about them. We really work as hard as we can. I am usually doing CPR stuff until well after midnight each day and several hours per day on the weekend. There are simply no more hours we have to give and no more space to do it within. Could we contract it out? ..... maybe? but then we'd be removing our critical eye from the process and we have always wanted CPR to be about "Pinheads making parts for other pinheads" and we still think that the most discerning eye is that of a real pinhead examining each and every part and looking for ways to make it better because the finished product just might wind up in one of his own games! I know its naive in many ways but that's the way we think and the way we have always run CPR and I don't think its something we are willing to compromise on.

Mike

DotheDoo says "I don't know the cost involved to retool and make another run of an item, but why wouldn't you if the first run sold out quickly and there's still demand? "

Its not that we don't reorder and plan to remake it again... we do!

For example Whirlwind, they sold out much quicker than expected and we immediately put the gears in motion to get the parts necessary for a rerun. IIf I JUST ordered inserts for this one rerun alone the inserts make the project cost prohibitive. So I have to wait until I have enough number in inserts to make not only this PF viable but many others as well. If I am just ordering inserts for a small rerun it could wind up costing $100-$200 or maybe even more just for that one title. Inserts are quite affordable..... in quantity. The main supplier has an absolute minimum of 500 of a particular insert.... need only 1 per PF....you still have to buy and ship 500 of each color/size combo. Have 3 or 4 unique sizes and colors per PF and you can wind up spending $5-7 per insert with minimum limits, color change costs etc!! Now imagine this on a PF that will have between 50-70 inserts! Of course, many of the inserts are more standard colors and sizes but to truly get any economy of scale you need to order 25,000 of a particular insert! That's just not chump change! We have to wait until I can set up an order that contains all the inserts for the next 10 or so titles in order to make the costs something more economical per PF. Of course that also locks in the numbers for those next titles, even if demand grows after the order arrives. Its just not an easy or cheap undertaking. Part bean counter and part Ouija board game is the best way to explain the technique used to order the correct number of inserts.

All this effort and months of wait time and all we have are the inserts, we still have to go through the steps of making a PF and that takes months too. So even as soon as we decided to remake Whirlwind it will easily take quite a long time before all the parts and opportunity are available to actually make the PF and it's pretty much 6 months from start to finish for any title. Of course we always have 3-4 titles somewhere in production and several more getting ready to enter production.

The only time we can quickly (relatively) make a rerun is only when I have inserts we didn't use the first time around. Like I stated earlier we haven't traditionally ordered many extra as it was just too expensive but with the views of the Pinheads being that we NEED to order more parts for reruns then we have decided to try and do so starting with my next order and group of titles which will also include inserts for many of the rerun titles we have been asked to make.

I hope that this explains why we can't just decide on Monday to do a rerun and then ship by Friday.

Mike

Why no Earthshaker??

Ok, I have seen this beat around long enough. We were initially tasked with doing ES and the title is near and dear to my heart being one of my favorite games. We asked for and received the proper permissions to make this PF several years ago. We even had an artist start the work on it and for quite a long time he was listed as a work in progress. In the end as happens all to often to many of us and our hobbies, life got in the way. The artist finally gave up and stepped back to allow someone else to continue his work. Jim Heck of Flash Gordon fame was given the nod to start work on ES when he finished Medusa. Somewhere over the past 6-8 months someone else, we are not sure who approached Rick at PSS and asked to do EarthShaker. Rick, like a gentleman called to ascertain where we were with the project. He was told that the current artist had backed out and that Jim Heck would take over once he was finished his current project. I believe at this point the wires got crossed and Rick went away thinking that we were not doing this anytime soon and he awarded permission to this new group to make ES. While, Kevin thought he had cleared it all up and we were doing ES. The long and short was that by the time we figured it out production had already been started by the others and it would be unfair to take it away and give back to us after they have already ordered inserts etc.....

There was no bad blood and the only person who is really out is Jim as he was very much looking forward to doing this title. I also really was looking forward to it because Jim is one of the best!

If the other group falters, we'll be there to have it made. But maybe these new guys do a great job and if so it will be available quicker than if we had done it ourselves.

Mike