On Sunday, November 29, 2020 at 8:23:36 AM UTC-8, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 11/29/2020 10:55 AM, jbeattie wrote:

There were and are supply chain issues, but it seems like the demand planners really fell on their faces, too.
I'm not sure we can fault them. Bike sales suddenly jumped something
like 75% over the previous year. Even if a bike company had all the
necessary stock on hand - which would be impossible - it would be very
tough to ramp up production by such a large amount.

"Just in time" inventory control can normally save companies very
significant money. But it makes it much harder to respond to this
once-in-a-career surge.

That's fair. I'm reacting to some post hoc decisions based on assumptions that demand would go down during the pandemic. I would have hedged, but hindsight is 20/20. It was a black-swan event.

I was riding today with my friend who is VP of design/manufacturing at Yakima, and some of their shortages resulted from demand planning but most were supply chain, domestic and Chinese. Once a plant shutters, its not that easy to get it back up and running. Some employees go elsewhere.

-- Jay Beattie.