Demand is Still High

Demand is Still High

The CMP reports via email:

ORDER BACKLOG. Normally, we average receiving 2,000 - 3,000 sales orders per month and ship an order in 2-3 weeks. However, these are not normal times. Since October, 2008 we have been receiving 5,000 - 10,000 orders per month, which is several times normal. As a result, we are very backlogged and running several weeks behind on processing orders. Our staff is working up to 12 hours per day 7 days a week, and only today finished the 4,000 orders we received on 1 December alone (except for those 1 Dec orders with credit card or other problems). Customers with outstanding orders should expect orders to ship approximately 100 days from the date the order was received by CMP. We expect to recover from this surge in another 3-4 months (assuming the number of orders being received drops somewhat).

COMMUNICATION RESPONSE DELAYS. CMP is receiving hundreds of calls a day, as well as hundreds of emails. Each morning there are dozens of voicemails from the night before. Because of the large volume of constant calls in the daytime, it may take a few days for response. We have a state of the art phone system for a company our size, but the volume of calls is causing the system to do unexpected things. We apologize for any delay in responding to emails or telephone calls.

CMP STORES CLOSED 15-31 MARCH, 2009. In addition to the heavy volume of mail and estore orders, the shopping activity at both stores has been significantly higher than last year. As a result, we have had to divert more sales staff than planned from processing mail orders on the days the store is open. Both CMP stores will be closed 15-31 March. The Sales staff at both locations will work on processing mail orders in an effort to quickly reduce the backlog and shorten delivery time.

ORDERS OUT OF SEQUENCE. In normal times, CMP processes sales orders in date sequence as received, regardless of item being ordered. To help reduce the mountain of orders, we are separating the rifle orders from non-rifle orders. We have dedicated two of our staff to process the non-rifle orders without regard to dates of rifle orders still in the queue. This will result in an out of sequence delivery time for many orders, but will reduce the amount of pending orders quickly.

BUY NOW FEATURE ON CMP AUCTION. We have started using the "buy now" feature for selected items on the CMP Auction site. We are listing the M1A1 carbine, one at a time with this feature. Buy now price is $3,000. We will also list some M1A1 carbines for the regular bidding process.

LAKE CITY. .30-06 SOLD OUT. On 20 February, we posted the Lake City .30-06 ammunition as sold out. We fully expect to be able to fill all orders already in house and those in the mail on 20 February. It may take another 100 days to ship some of the orders just received.