LiveLife
Member
After Brad stopped posting on March 23 on their facebook page, this got posted on April 15 - http://www.missouribullet.com/read.php
Looks like MBC is growing again to accommodate the demand for their bullets.
To Our Valued Customers
(and those who are thinking of becoming one, too!)
April 15, 2013
I hope you take the time to read this message before ordering bullets from us, as I need your help with a problem ... Following is what we are asking of you.
First, please understand that no, we can't always answer the phone. It isn't because we don't like you, rather, it's because something else is demanding Jo Ann's attention and she can't service the phone call. She's not slacking, believe me. She just can't answer the phone at all times, especially when she's already on the phone explaining something to someone who
A.) Didn't take the time to read our FAQ,
B.) Just wants to shoot the breeze or who wants to know “where's my order?? when maybe it was placed a week ago,
C.) Wants to know what kind of powder he should use for a particular bullet (buy a reloading manual or two like you're supposed to do!),
D.) Realized that he ordered the wrong bullet because his idiot cousin told him what he needed when it really, really wasn't (reference the “buy a reloading manual or two” advice), and so on and so forth.
We ask that you limit your phone calls to us so that we can make and ship bullets to you and to all of our other customers as quickly as possible. Likewise, emails. Read this statement before you order. Read the FAQ before you order. Use your common sense before you order. Please.
The word on estimated ship/lead time is this: The projected ship/lead time that you see on the first page of the website when you first visit and also when you are completing your order during the checkout process is a best-guess, good faith estimate based upon current demand/volume levels. It is an estimate and that why we call it an “estimated lead time.” Your order may ship before the estimate says it will or it may ship after the estimate says it will. This is not science. It is a best-guess estimate taking into account all known factors but not the unknown ones, which by definition are rather mysterious.
We are doing the very best we can to get your order out to you as quickly as is humanly possible. If you are not comfortable with having to rely upon our estimated delay time, and/or do not trust us to get your order out to you as quickly as is humanly possible, then do not order from us as neither of us needs the grief.
Here are some ways to get your order processed and shipped faster:
1. Enter it online. Phoning it in requires that we take time in our off-hours (that evening, maybe the next evening) to manually enter the order online for you in exactly the same manner as you would if you would just ahead and do it online. Doing it yourself is quicker and more secure. Why wouldn't you want to do it that way?
2. Order a small number of different bullets. When we get an order for one box of four different bullets, guess what the likelihood is of having all four of them on the shelf at the same time is? That's right: Very low. However, if it's a popular bullet you want, we can usually get 1-4 boxes of them out to you fairly quickly. Likewise, an order for two different bullets goes more quickly than an order for three, etc.
3. Don't call to check status of your order unless you believe that something has gone wrong. As mentioned, time spent on the phone directly detracts from time available for Jo Ann to manage the shipping operation and that is to no one's benefit. Once you have placed your order and received your email order confirmation, all is well – your order has been placed, acknowledged, and entered into the queue for manufacture and shipping. There is no need to bug us to make sure we got your order (if you received an order confirmation email, then of course we got your order and because you got the order confirmation email, we won't forget it) nor is there a need to panic if the shipping estimate stated 3-4 weeks and it's been 5 weeks. As mentioned, we are doing the very best we can and will get your order out to you as quickly as is humanly possible. Honest. You can trust us on this.
4. Do not call or email us to change an existing order. At the current time, we can't change orders after they are placed. Please be careful when you order and make sure that you are ordering what it is that you wanted to order. A moment taken to verify your order before submitting it will save grief later. For everyone. Shoot carefully. Order carefully. Thank you for being careful.
5. Do not call or email us to ask a question that is clearly addressed here or in our FAQ. We wrote the FAQ to inform people about things that people may have questions about and appreciate very much when people avail themselves of the opportunity to read it. Probably your answer is in there.
6. Do not call or email us asking for load data. We can't supply it. Really.
This is where we are, then. We're making and shipping lots of bullets every day and very much appreciate your business. We just need some help getting through the crushing demand that has hit us.
Please help.
Thank you.
Brad Alpert
President, Missouri Bullet Company
Looks like MBC is growing again to accommodate the demand for their bullets.
As you may know, MBC has a good reputation for producing quality products, shipping them quickly, and offering excellent customer support. Lately, though, the “shipping them quickly” part has become difficult due to (ahem) certain political realities. You are all aware by now of the unprecedented demand being thrust upon the firearms industry. We are not immune from it. Our volume has increased to truly unbelievable levels and we have made every possible effort to meet demand. At the moment, we have orders totaling nearly four million bullets so you can see that a bit of pressure has been placed on us to meet that demand. And we've already shipped over eight million bullets this year – half as many as last year's total – and we're only into the fourth month of the year.
And boy, we are trying. Here's what we've done in the past few months and are doing currently:
1. Hired 9 more employees and are in the process of interviewing more candidates
2. Added a second shift
3. Purchased property and are constructing a 7200 square foot building to put on it
4. Ordered eight new Magma Bullet Masters (have nine already) and six new LubeMasters (have nine already) from Magma Engineering in January. We paid in advance to get them shipped more quickly.
5. Ordered four new industrial-grade collators from Howell CNC in January and one from M-A Systems. Ditto on paying in advance for them
6. Ordering (and waiting a long time for; everyone's backlogged) duplicate full-mould sets of the insanely popular bullets, such as the 9mm Parabellum and the .45 SoftBall! Bullets so that we can double their production rate per unit of time
7. Upgraded our internal network infrastructure with a Sun Microsystems V240 server to run internal DNS and DHCP
8. Contracted in advance for four 22-ton truckloads of fixed-cost alloy from Mayco at a time, each truckload spaced for delivery 2 weeks apart (we've used 120 tons so far this year) and are in our 2nd contract cycle now, in mid-April
9. Purchased another shipping station
We expect the building to be ready in early June and the new equipment to arrive shortly thereafter. In the meantime, we are trying our best to hold on, shipping a steady average of 100,000 bullets five days a week to our retail customers and wishing that we could be shipping the 200,000 per day that will be within our reach, come June.
So in a nutshell, that's how we are trying to get our shipping speed back to the level of what it used to be, which was 24-48 hours from order placement to the current level, which can run out to 3-4 weeks or even longer, depending upon different factors. And I'm certain that we will get there, too. We just have to ride out the next couple of months and deal with the long lead time we're faced with.
And so, that's what we're doing to cut the order cycle time.
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