Posted by Paul Fisher on 7/18/2021 to
Looking back on the first half of this year (2021), we can firmly say... we are still going strong. Demand continued to outstrip our production capacity, and we deeply appreciate your patience while we got orders filled and shipped. Today we have some good news and some non-good news to share with you.
Lets start off with the good news. We are caught up on production and have a very limited number of outstanding orders. After over a year of struggling to get even basic parts, the supply chain is moving, and all parts of the country are returning to activity again. As a result, we have finally been able to catch up on important maintenance and repair work, allowing us to return to full production capacity. At times we had waited for over 4 months for parts and that is now getting better. As a result, we are shipping orders out of inventory with increasing frequency, and our customers should expect this to continue (as long as we all resist panic buying).
Now the non-good news. We have to increase prices to $3.10/pound, up from our previous usual $2.80/pound. This means that a 15 pound bag of bullets will increase from $42 to $46.50, and our five (5) pound sample(s) will increase from $14 to $16.55. This represents roughly a 10.72% increase in the price. We have tried to refrain from increasing our prices so we can be as affordable as possible for our customers. We understand that we are not the only ones hurting from this recent inflation, we realize that this has made a large impact on our friends and reloading family also. But the current increase in prices for materials and other overhead is accelerating, and it is now clear that the full post-pandemic "economic recovery" is delivering real inflation at levels not seen since 2008. We hope that this isn't too much of a surprise and that this change can be accepted by most.
These new prices will go into effect, late evening, on August 22, 2021. This will give our existing customers reading this, immediately after the announcement, 6 days to get one last order in before the increase.
What is the impact?
The best way to show how this will effect you is with some examples that include shipping costs:
A note on shipping costs... we charge $7 for a small and $14 for a medium USPS flat rate box, compared to $9 and $16 that is typical of our competitors. We will continue to pass the cost on with no markup. We will continue to not use shipping (or "handling") as a profit center.
How do we compare to competition?
We have always managed to maintain the best pricing on lead bullets delivered to your door, and even with this increase we will continue to do so. The simplest way for us to demonstrate this is just to show you (in the table below) a selection of popular profiles comparatively to our competitor('s) "bulk" prices (including shipping costs):
As you can see, we will still provide extremely competitive pricing and still maintain our simple price-per-bag pricing structure. We don't want to take advantage of our customers and hope we do not have to increase our prices again. We feel we just have a great product, at a good price, all of the time.
Wrap-up
We really do want to thank all of our customers for their patience through the crazy year of 2020 and this first half of 2021. Our customers have helped us grow as a company and we really appreciate that your continued support. We try to keep it simple. We offer great prices year-round, so you no longer need to organize your purchases to order in bulk. Just order what you need, when you need it, and you can be confident that you are still getting superior quality at a truly competitive price year round.
As always, keep 'em in the X-ring!