Story dated 22nd May 2001
Illinois
Pinball has released an open letter to the pinball community designed
to address some of the questions and concerns we have had about the
availability and future prospects of spares.
The
letter follows IPB's acquisition of Williams' spares business last
year but does not address the future (if any) of IPB's proposed new
pinball game Pool Player, shown at last year's AMOA show.
Here
is the text of the letter:
Subject:
An open letter to the pinball community
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)
There's
nothing exceptional or unexpected in the letter, but it does seem
that IPB will be concentrating on the supply of spares for the foreseeable
future and we welcome their commitment to that.
It
is also interesting to note that the name of the company has been
reshaped again from "Illinois Pin Ball Inc" to the "Illinois
Pinball Company".