Hope this finds you all well and hanging in there. It has been a wild year with smashing sales records and recovering from the global pandemic. I wanted to take a moment to thank you all for your hard work and dedication to Waterworks during this successful and challenging time.
With the unprecedented demand, we have seen a shortage in select valves – something we don’t normally experience. Our President, Ralph Bennet, has been back and forth with our European vendors to collaborate on any ways to bring these items in faster. We are already air freighting delayed items as to avoid time consuming ocean transit as well as backlogged US Ports. Even air freight is taking longer than usual. Our VCs are coming into stock in smaller quantities, but there is a large backlog to fill first. I encourage placing orders as soon as possible to get in queue for these items. The GULV29 (our new valve for one hole wall mount Bond faucets) is especially delayed. It is currently expected in February. We have also experienced a significant delay in the Vintage Brass finish as part of the raw materials/supply chain issues. More of this info is on the portal – posted October 18th. We are working to offer reselection options on affected orders and loaner items in cases where it is applicable. Please feel free to reach out to me to address any of these concerns and to explore alternative options. For anyone looking to order Vintage Brass, PLEASE stress that the estimated lead time is 26+ weeks at this point. There is no chance of this arriving earlier than that, and a decent chance it will be longer. This is for new orders. For existing open orders, we are working daily to improve lead times and complete production and will have new updates weekly on this status. Please reach out to bporderstatus@waterworks.com for order updates.
https://boutiques.waterworks.com/page/post/important-vintage-brass-availability-action-plan-update/
For any orders not impacted by these aforementioned issues, there is no possibility to expedite production beyond what is quoted. With these constraints, factories are at capacity, and we hope to recover from this sooner than later and at this time cannot accommodate rush orders of any kind
Please share this news with your sales teams. Over-communication is best. Melissa and I are here to help in ways we can, but many circumstances are beyond our (Waterworks) control. We have always been able to work our ‘magic’ when possible to allocate items when stock is limited, but that is not a present option for us. It is always my goal to be transparent and authentic with you all, even if the news is not ideal. We appreciate your patience and understanding.
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