Guys;
I wish I could say we would be all things to all people. But as its been mentioned, many of us at CPR do it because we love pinball as a hobby and a passion.... but not as our main income. I could never ever.... make a living from CPR, its just not there.
As for not getting email responses from emails sent directly to us.... I don't understand that as we have a person to do just that. Russ looks at every email that comes in and is supposed to respond to them. I know that often he can't fix every problem, BUT he's supposed to respond none the less.
When you place an order you should get a few automated emails..... thanks we received your order.... thanks your order has been shipped, and then a confirmation that your order was delivered. If you are not getting these emails we have some holes in our software.... again guys keep in mind this is mostly still a errr..... company of pinheads making pinball parts we care about in our spare time. The whole, how to be Amazon for pinball parts is not where we excel.
Neil, the guy who wrote the software is first a pinhead who had a great collection, Tanner, my CNC operator has a great collection of games and more half finished projects than anyone I have ever met. Blake , who looks after the inserts and finishing before the PFs going out to print is one of the most dedicated and meticulous people I have ever met. Kevin is a former color specialist with Xerox and knows more about color matching than many artists. Stu is a professional graphics designer who's former clients include some legendary companies like Fender Guitars and many others . Stu is the most lunatic pinhead I have ever met. I may have fallen asleep to him and Kevin shouting at each other over two Pantone colors my eyes are unable to tell apart. They both are crazy dedicated to doing it perfectly. For me, I fly a Boeing 777 internationally and CPR has always been an opportunity for me to buy cool machines (silk screen machines, 3d Printers, Laser cutters, crazy big printers, CNC machines etc) and have fun making things I cared about. But, its not my main focus in life.
We have made many projects over the years that were made because we thought it was needed, not because we were might to make any money on it. In fact, historically we make money on less than half of the projects.... hopefully this evens out over the long run. Often a project gets green lighted because guys need it, not because it was ever going to be profitable.. Thinking of Barracora backglasses and a few others that were always going to be money losing. But our idea was not to make EVERY project profitable because that's not what I have learned from pinball. For every Centaur guy out there that thinks his Centaur is the best Bally title ever made there is someone else who loves a different title, a title not worth $5000, but they need parts too.
So as a company, CPR is a bunch of pinball misfits who first, care deeply about pinball and hope to make enough on this project to pay for the next which hopefully keeps the company running for a few more months. We have been on the brink of going out of business for years and if we hadn't of switched to digital printing we would have been gone last fall.
I truly understand that in this day and age people think that everyone has the resources to be just like Amazon, we don't. I have a hard time dressing myself every morning and even worse..... am very representative of the rest of CPR. We all love pinball, but until very recently we didn't even have to worry about it being a viable business because it wasn't.
We'll try to do our best but please keep in mind who we are and where we came from.
Thanks
Mike