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An Open Letter to the Pinball Community from Illinois Pinball
We at Illinois Pinball Company would like to take this opportunity to share with the members of the pinball community – retailers, distributors, operators, collectors and players – an update on the status of Illinois Pinball and our acquisition of the Williams Industries pinball parts business. Over the past several months there has been increasing speculation about our activities with and intentions for the pinball parts business as well as tremendous frustration due to the lack of information and, more important, lack of parts in the distribution channel. With this letter we hope to be able to end some of this speculation and relieve some of the frustration.
As announced at Pinball Expo 2000, we completed our acquisition of the WMS pinball parts business at the end of October. During the subsequent weeks, while WMS prepared the remaining parts inventory for shipment, we established 14,000 square feet of office and warehouse space in Bloomington, Illinois. In mid December we finally took delivery of over 400 pallets of parts inventory and began the arduous task of unpacking, cataloging and organizing the vast array of parts we received. These activities consumed the bulk of our resources during the months of December, January and into February. Also during this same time frame we did our best to locate parts and information to fill new orders as well as to fill the backlog of orders that had been taken by WMS prior to our acquiring the parts business. Regrettably, some of these orders dated back to August 2000 having been stalled while the parts business was being sold.
We are very pleased to let you know that since January we have been actively filling distributor orders and backorders. We have completed organizing most of the significant inventory and have many of the common parts in stock as well as game specific parts including plastics, ramps, decals and translites. At present we are actively reviewing our stock levels and past demand to determine which parts we need to produce. We are working with WMS original suppliers to provide us with additional inventory as well as working to locate new sources for those parts that the original manufacturers are unable to provide. Last, we are about to complete the installation of a computer system to aid us with inventory management, production control and customer orders. It is our hope that these actions will allow us increase the number of items we have available for sale as well as improve our order turnaround time.
We cannot understate how much we have appreciated your patience through this difficult transition. We are committed to the future of pinball and realize that future depends on your ability to sell, operate, service, collect and play the wonderful array of Bally and Williams games that are already out there. We are as troubled as you by the ‘black market' prices to which the scarcity of parts has contributed. It is our hope that over the next few months we will be able to provide you with many of the parts that you are so actively seeking and earn your business.
While we continue to get the parts business into full production we would like to ask for your assistance in the following:
· Please use the existing distributors to answer your game and parts questions and to place your parts orders. At this time our limited resources are dedicated to picking and filling orders and working to replenish inventory.
· Please continue to be patient with any parts backordered due to being out of stock. Many parts were listed as NLA (no longer available) by WMS and many items were sold out during the final days of the WMS parts business. As mentioned above we are actively working to replace inventory through existing and new suppliers.
· Please understand that we may need to adjust some of our pricing as we incur higher production costs for replacement inventory. We will be producing parts in hundreds or thousands as opposed to the tens of thousands that were produced during the original game production.
· Last, we realize that intense demand and scarcity of parts have led some members of the pinball community to act to fill this demand. We respectfully request that any companies or persons engaged in the practice of manufacturing, distributing or selling ‘reproduction' parts or assemblies contact us to discuss our plans for manufacturing these items. As mentioned above we are seeking alternate producers for many items.
Thank you for your time in reading this letter and for your continued interest in and support for pinball. We invite you to mail or fax your comments to us at the address below.
Very sincerely,
Kim Carter
Illinois Pinball Company
Illinois Pinball Company
#12 Georgianne Lane
Bloomington, IL 61701
309-828-6993 (phone)
309-828-1182 (fax)
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