An Update On Backorders

[Darcy]

As everyone knows, demand for our bags has been increasing steadily over the past years, and in an effort to meet that demand, we’ve been hiring more production crew, buying more sewing machines and other production equipment, rethinking the flow of production, and refining our procedures for increased efficiency. There’s all kinds of cool stuff we’ve been talking about and experimenting with behind the scenes such as LEAN manufacturing, making smaller batches of bags more often, and using Kan Ban bins. And, yay! We’re now seeing measurable results from all of those efforts: though we’re still growing and demand continues to increase, there’s only a few bags here or there that we don’t have in stock and usually that’s just one color combination out of many.

And we’re going to experiment with this too: for the time being, we aren’t going to put bags as available for backorder on the website.

If a bag is listed on the website in the drop-down color selection menu, it’s available for order and will ship same day or next business day.
If a bag isn’t on the website, it’s not available for order. If we know when it will be available for order again, we’ll post that information on that bags page along with a field in which you can enter your email address to be notified when it returns.

Will we take backorders again? Maybe. Time will tell if the improvements we’ve made in production will keep up with demand or if demand will outpace us as it often has.

We've created a new sticky thread and will edit and update the first post within that thread when new bags are added to the website for order:
New Bags and Colors Ready To Order

[gochicken]

Thanks for keeping us informed, Darcy!

[Sarha]

I'm so happy, I've wanted a Field Journal for my son!!
Thanks, Darcy, for letting us know.

[adalangdon]

Thanks for taking these measures, Darcy. I truly appreciate that you guys are aiming to grow slow and steady and focusing a lot on increasing productivity rather than only expanding willy-nilly; IMO it is a win-win for both TB and its customers in the short and long term. Love how you guys run the company-- 'nuff said.

[backpack]

Darcy, can you tell us more about the rhythm associated with LEAN manufacturing so that we can time our orders to said tempo.

A more elaborate post, or even better, a blog post would be welcomed.

Speaking about the blog, Tom post about the vintage jacket is wonderful!

[capncat]

so exciting and increasing demand is a good kind of problem to have, for certain!

these developments unite two of my biggest sources of nerdery, bags and manufacturing process improvement & scaling (the latter being a big part of my career thus far!*)!! I'm basically hand flapping and hyperventilating over here thinking of all the possibilities / wishing for more detail

*applied to building heavy equipment rather than bags. I'm sure there are many differences! the possibilities are endlessssssss