All these wonderful goodies on their way to me- what did you get?

[Antonia]

Thank you so much for the update, Darcy! I know you all are doing your very best over there, amongst difficult and competing factors, and you've all done a fantastic job. I love an update as much as anyone here, but I wouldn't want it to come at a cost to the wellbeing of TB employees, who work so hard and make such fabulous products for us to enjoy. I'd be perfectly happy for debuts to be released in whatever way is most manageable for you all, at whatever time of year. <3

[KathyH]

Wanted to rehit a suggestion from @Honey to allow backordering once an item is out-of-stock. If TB knows the restock will happen in a reasonable turnaround, then allowing a backorder will remove a lot of stress.

[Darcy]

Update! We have decided not to split the Icon, Monster Truck, and Firewood Carrier restock because of the following reasons:

- Splitting the debut stock means some bags or colors will sell out more quickly. While splitting the debut times gives people in different time zones and with different work schedules more of a chance to order, and while we would like to continue to split debuts in the future, there are situations in which splitting the debut (like in this case) could actually make for more of a frustrating experience.

- Logistically, it may be difficult for us to split the stock and ensure we can ship all received orders by end of day on 12/13 (last day to ship via UPS Ground to the Mid-West/East Coast or internationally for delivery by or on 12/24). Logistics include our production floor's schedule as well as shipping and customer service schedules. While it is a busy time of year and we're happy about that, we also try not to make it a harried time of year for our crew.

We will be sending an email later today to everyone who signed up to be notified with the time and day of the restock; we won't be sharing that time publicly, just to give everyone who has signed up via email more time to complete orders.

I am so sorry if the fact that the debut won't be split inconveniences people; I thought we would be able to split this debut like the first one. If this week's debut time doesn't work for you, we hope it is of consolation that the next Icon and Monster Truck restocks will include the new colors, so it may be worth waiting to see those anyhow!

@Darcy,

Since @MatthewR posted the update on Clear Organizer Wallets going into production in 525d Ballistic Nylon colors and 200d Halcyon colors, should we also expect to see these wallets in the new 525d and Halcyon colors that will be coming out later? I find that the wallets and pouches are a great way to check potential colors combinations of interest:

That's a good point! I don't think Clear Organizer Wallets will be available in the new colors right away, but they will be by early next year. Other pouches will be available in the new colors, though

Am I ready that set of commas correctly? GE S25, GE SN22, and GE SN30???

Indeed! We will be offering the following:
Guide's Edition Synapse 25
Guide's Edition Synik 22
Guide's Edition Synik 30

Darcy, I (I'm sure all of us) appreciate the efforts you and other staff are making to improve the shopping experience for us.

Will any of the improvements you're planning involve not removing items from shopping carts once we've clicked the check-out button and are typing in payment information?

Thanks, again!

Thanks for your understanding on this one. I've been slow to respond because, while we did our own research on this over the weekend, I'm reaching out to additional experts who may have more information for us to share with you. But, of course, it's a busy time of year in the e-commerce world and we may not hear back from those folks for a while, so here's basically the gist:

None of the improvements we're planning involve not removing items from carts; we don't have control over that with our shopping cart platform. By analyzing previous debuts and whether or not this frustration was experienced during them, and if not, why, we have concluded that the most efficient and effective solution to the "items get removed from carts" issue is to either offer items for pre-order when possible or make more stock when they are in-stock debuts.

Our shopping cart platform used to offer a five minute hold on shopping carts, but that functionality was removed at some point. Here are our guesses as to why:

1. Some people are most frustrated when they have an item in their cart but it disappears before they can checkout. Other people are most frustrated when they can't add an item to their cart in the first place, or if they go with a second color choice, checkout, and then later see their first color choice reappear! It can be difficult to communicate with people wanting to place orders to make sure they know they must refresh a page continuously for 5, 10, 15 minutes to see if inventory reappears, that in itself annoys some people, and many people don't do that, so they just leave the site. While each of us likely has a strong individual preference for which would be less annoying, it varies from person to person, so it's a difficult call as to what is less annoying for the majority of people.

2. Sites with cart holds can see their sales reduced because of the above second scenario. On the more nefarious side of things, apparently individuals or bots will sometimes add a ton of inventory to a cart just to hold it. Basically, that also requires some program that monitors site behavior and activity which would take extra processing power and, if has any false positives, could lock real people out of adding things to their cart.

3. It's a complicated thing to have a main inventory system and then basically a secondary inventory system and have inventory moved continuously throughout the day back and forth between the two systems. There is room for issues here. We used to experience more of those sorts of issues around inventory in our previous shopping cart. It may also be important to note that folks place orders over the phone or shop in our showroom. In those cases, our customer service crew could see that there is a bag on the shelf in the color that the (phone order or showroom) person wants, but can't sell it because it's in a cart. In that case, we might have to ask the person on the phone or in the showroom to wait for five minutes or more while we continually recheck the inventory numbers.

Changing e-commerce platforms is a huge undertaking; we know because we did this as recently as 2016 And our move to our current platform came with so many good things and improvements.... moving to a different platform, when we think we could solve this issue by pre-order or stocking more, and a new platform on which we could potentially lose our currently solid inventory system and customizations that allow us to have a more sophisticated pre-order system, is something we think would actually reduce the quality of the experience on our site overall.

wow! So excited for the new earth tone colors, thanks so much. The crew at TB are amazing, as always.

I’m glad you and other are excited for the new colors. I hope you like them when you see them. Especially for the green and brown, we were really choosy with the exact shades… we wanted them to be unique, yet classic.

Wanted to rehit a suggestion from @Honey to allow backordering once an item is out-of-stock. If TB knows the restock will happen in a reasonable turnaround, then allowing a backorder will remove a lot of stress.

We too noted that suggestion from @Honey and revisited that idea; our current system can’t accommodate it. This will be an ongoing conversation here at TB; we can certainly work over time to evolve our systems to better manage our production capacity and what we offer.

[ServeNVolley]

I have inbound a Grass Mini Ghost Whale, a Nebulous Gray/Island Side Effect, and some key straps.

[kmw]

In addition to thanks for always providing copious information, @Darcy, I'd also like to say thank you from anyone whose ever worked anywhere ever for this:

While it is a busy time of year and we're happy about that, we also try not to make it a harried time of year for our crew.

[Skirata44]

Indeed! We will be offering the following:
Guide's Edition Synapse 25
Guide's Edition Synik 22
Guide's Edition Synik 30

Welp, this made my day. Time to sit around hitting refresh on the forums and blog for the next few months!

[backpack]

I believe that the need to hurry to get new things at debut days, might have to do with the fear on loosing out on limited edition colors.

If the widest inventory of color combinations could be sustained for a month or two after the debut, some people, I am one of them, would rather order after the debut rush.

Especially if the debut is combined with the Holidays, the Spring debut/break or early summer debut/beginning of short weekends getaways, mid-summer travel luggage acquisition for mid and late summer as well as early fall destinations. Back to School debut to plan change of school settings (from elementary to middle to junior to senior to college to a year abroad or interning) and big family/couple/individuals winter's "trip of a lifetime"

Acquisition deadlines and the fact that TB Inc is now, widely popular, which is wonderful, (because everyone deserves a beautiful, well made bag/luggage/accessory that, isn't going to flake on a user/traveler like a politician caught taking an embarrassing selfie), make for too much of a debut rush.

[MyJourneys]

Thanks for your understanding on this one. I've been slow to respond because, while we did our own research on this over the weekend, I'm reaching out to additional experts who may have more information for us to share with you. But, of course, it's a busy time of year in the e-commerce world and we may not hear back from those folks for a while, so here's basically the gist:

Darcy, I'm so impressed with the time and effort it must have taken to research this, and then taking the time to explain it so thoroughly. I do understand not having a time hold on the shopping cart. However, I do wish there was a software function that wouldn't remove things from carts after customers commit by clicking the check-out button.

It seems that people with nefarious motives and bots could be thwarted by not allowing customers to check out with 100 items in their cart (just an example - I don't know what your usual stats are, so whatever it is, plus add some extra capacity as a cushion).

But I'm not a programmer, so it's probably easier said than done.

So, again, I appreciate the time and care you took in your reply. Thank you!

[panda2mama]

@Darcy When will other pouches be available in the new colors? Are we talking about Clear OP, mesh OP, ballistic OP? Both halcyon and 525 ballistic?

Mars Red COW available now!

Sent from my SM-N950F using Tapatalk

[Sstj315]

“We will be sending an email later today to everyone who signed up to be notified with the time and day of the restock; we won't be sharing that time publicly, just to give everyone who has signed up via email more time to complete orders.”

Darcy, was there a link or a thread where signing up for notification of the restock was announced? Thank you!

[Darcy]

I do understand not having a time hold on the shopping cart. However, I do wish there was a software function that wouldn't remove things from carts after customers commit by clicking the check-out button.

That makes sense to me as well. Our shopping cart only takes items out of inventory once the payment is submitted; my guess as to why is because there may be a significant rate of "abandoned carts" in online stoes even during the checkout process. That is a guess though.

It seems that people with nefarious motives and bots could be thwarted by not allowing customers to check out with 100 items in their cart (just an example - I don't know what your usual stats are, so whatever it is, plus add some extra capacity as a cushion).

We prevent people from buying 5 or more of the same item in the same color. However, someone could unleash 1000 bots that each add 1 item to their cart. I don't think that is incredibly likely or anything, but then again, we have seen some weird stuff in our day.

It will be good for us to get more information about this from the experts when they get a chance

@Darcy When will other pouches be available in the new colors? Are we talking about Clear OP, mesh OP, ballistic OP? Both halcyon and 525 ballistic?

Mars Red COW available now!

Our goal will be to have some pouches -- probably Ghost Whales -- in the new 525d colors when they officially debut. There should be enough scrap generated from making big bags in the 525d to make these and offer them around the same time No plans for new color Halcyon pouches until later down the road.

“We will be sending an email later today to everyone who signed up to be notified with the time and day of the restock; we won't be sharing that time publicly, just to give everyone who has signed up via email more time to complete orders.”

Darcy, was there a link or a thread where signing up for notification of the restock was announced? Thank you!

Sign up on any of these pages: Icon, Monster Truck, Firewood Carrier

I will go ahead and automatically add you now.... just in case. If that's *not* ok PM me and I'll remove you.

[Sstj315]

Thank you, Darcy, that is perfect!

[haraya]

Re: Cyber Monday - both DH and I were online on Monday (doing things other than shopping) and noted that everything was slower, due to the shopping rush. I was just in France and noted that some shops had "Black Week" advertised - sales from Sunday to Saturday.

What if you were to split debut days and make them two consecutive days, at different times? Sunday and Monday, or Monday and Tuesday? That way the volume is split between days, and different groups of people get to try for items? - I'm sure there's some overlap in almost any scenario, and I bet you've already considered a multiple-day launch. Y'all are smart cookies over there on the Mothership.

[Ellsass]

Will there be any restocking for the Synik 22 before Christmas? Still hoping to get a duty-free Navy Parapack while I'm in the US...

[G42]

Will there be any restocking for the Synik 22 before Christmas? Still hoping to get a duty-free Navy Parapack while I'm in the US...

You may want to contact the fine folks in Customer Service to get a faster answer.