(Looks up in the sky) "Crap, it's the CB Signal. I better log into
Controlbooth.com."
Yes, we had to discontinue the
TP220 XL
socket about 2 years ago now because when the factory went to reorder the small metal clip component they were told by their supplier that the company that made the component previously had gone out of business. When they attempted to find another source, all vendors had a tooling cost to make it- and that amount was such that it would have taken us >10 years of TP220XL sales just to recoup the tooling cost on a ~$.10 clip. So while the demand was still there, we could no longer make the
socket without tripling the price, and we weren't sure that was going to be viable. Not to mention the Min. order quantity the vendors were requiring on a stamped metal component. (usually 50,000 pcs.)
I think we are going to see a lot of the smaller volume sockets start to die out as materials become harder to reorder. For those where we feel we need to keep them active, the price is likely going to increase to make up for the declining volumes and to help
cover the increased cost of taking reorder amounts on the materials in smaller quantities. (If we make/sell only 2000 of a
socket a year, then having to buy 50,000 pcs. of a single component to make that
socket becomes harder to justify, so if we can talk the supplier down to a 5,000 pc. min. order qty., the price on the part goes up by a lot to us, which means we have to then pass on that increase on the final product to stay in the black. Uggh.
You do realize it's all your faults (I'm being very general here and talking about all the folks in the
ENT industry) for buying these new fangled
LED fixtures, right?
It's not too late. You can fix this. Go back to buying
Tungsten fixtures with lamps. PERFECT dimming, and no fans or electronics to worry about!
There are certain sockets where the volume is still quite high (TP22H sockets for HPLs, PAR-1 sockets for PARcans,
etc.) which shouldn't be affected as much or go away anytime soon I hope.