Geddes Loudspeakers  New Business Model   Recent circumstances and realizations are forcing me to change my business model to better serve my customers. I will outline the reasons and the changes in this document. First and foremost, the lead times for my speakers is getting out of hand.  Despite a dramatic increase in throughput, lead times have not gotten shorter.  A major reason for this has been the rash of shipping damage that I have seen in recent months.  In my last six or seven shipments damage has occurred in every case, despite the fact that several changes were made to the design to make it stronger and the packaging to make it more protective.    To address these shipping issues, future orders will need to be charged more for shipping to increase packing etc. and I will be shipping the woofers and the back panels separately to reduce the weight of a single shipment.  The end user will have to screw down the woofers, connect the drivers and screw on the back panel. This is the only way that I can lower the weight and reduce the likelihood of damage. I also have to note that the bottleneck in all of this is obvious, it is me.  I just have too much on my plate to give speaker assembly the time that it needs, and to make matters worse assembling speakers is what I do that nets me the least profit, so I cannot justify making that a priority.  The suggestion that I always get is to “hire someone”.  I have tried that and it isn’t a complete solution nor does it even work very well.  I do not have the space for two people to work in my current location so this doesn’t actually add much if any improvement in throughput.  Basically without my moving to a larger facility I cannot see how I can really increase my throughput. However, that is a big jump and just like any businessman in the current environment I do not think it wise to step up my investment, and risk at this time.  That may happen in the future, and maybe not, but it is certainly not going to happen in the short term. What I need to do is to focus on those aspects of my speaker construction for which I have a significant value added to the process and to make those a priority.  In my design the baffle boards, waveguide, foam plug and driver mounting plate(call it the “Baffle”) are all unique and some are patented.  This single part contains virtually all of my Intellectual Property and most of my trade secrets.  This Baffle is not available anywhere else and it can never be because of patents.  Clearly this single part is where my value added is and where, justifiably, my greatest compensation should come from.  Henceforth, I will put a priority on making these baffles. What this means to the product is that I will build baffle orders first and then fully assembled products.  Baffles take me very little time to construct so this should not have a major effect on slowing down the fully assembled orders, but it will dramatically speed up my fulfillment of kit orders.  I have been shipping baffles only to Europe for a long time and they build them up there locally.  This has worked well for all parties.  I get a decent compensation for my work and they get their speakers in record time.  It was one of these customers who suggested that I change my whole business in this manner as he could not see why I built up the speakers when so many other people could do this just as well, if not better, than I. In order to do this I needed to re-price my offerings to better reflect this new model and to better compensate me for my time when that is desired or required.  The new pricing is actually the same for “kits” and the various other parts as it has been, but a recognition of the true costs for me to assemble them, test them, package them and ship them has been added to the assembled price.  Basically, I am encouraging customers to find a local shop that will assemble and finish these systems.  Cabinetry is not my expertise and I need to stop doing it.  I am also hoping that someone or several people will come forward who are willing to assemble these speakers and make a small profit for themselves.  By necessity, this must be a fairly distant relationship for me since I cannot be in the middle between an assembler and the customer.  The assembler is responsible to the customer and I will not take any responsibility for the assembler.  The customer buys the parts from me, I ship the parts to the assembler, and then he is responsible to the customer for the remainder of the project. I am hoping that this will lead to a more reasonable throughput of finished products to the end user than I have been able to do thus far.  The new pricing is reflected in the table on the Loudspeakers page.