Packraft Kit Pre-Orders?

TL;DR: Normal order processing times are about a week, but I’m out of fabric, so packraft kits will be unavailable for several months. Sign up here to be notified when kits are in stock.

Happy new year!

Like many businesses around the world, DIY Packraft has been affected by the supply chain chaos that has swept the globe over the past two years. I started trying to order more fabric a year ago, but the raw materials required for making these specialized fabrics have been unavailable until now.

In the first days of 2022, things appear to be getting back to normal, but prices and minimum order quantities have increased significantly, and I might have to spend more than $100,000 USD to meet the minimum order quantity.

For a larger business, that wouldn’t be a big deal, but DIY Packraft is just me working in my garage. For more than five years I have been able to “bootstrap” the business, using profits from sales to buy more inventory. I dip into my personal savings when necessary to make ends meet, but I’m not rich and I simply don’t have $100,000 lying around, and with all of the DIY Packraft kits being out of stock now, there’s not much money coming in from sales.

I am committed to keeping DIY Packraft alive, but before I go to the bank to ask for a loan, I wanted to gauge whether or not people would be interested in pre-ordering packraft kits to help finance a fabric purchase.

I don’t typically allow people to order products that aren’t in stock because I really don’t like to disappoint people by making them wait a long time for something they’ve already paid for. There are always unforeseen production delays, and it usually takes several months for me to receive the fabric after I place an order because all the DIY Packraft fabrics are custom made. The whole order/manufacturing/inspection/shipping process can take about six months.

That means that a pre-order placed today might not be fulfilled until sometime in the second half of 2022 – that’s a long time to wait.

I would rather have no customers at all than a bunch of unhappy ones, and making people wait an unknown length of time seems like a sure-fire way to make them unhappy, but on the other hand, Kokopelli (one of the best known packraft brands) was built by offering pre-orders on Kickstarter.com, so maybe people are more patient than I assume.

I would really appreciate some feedback on this, so if you have some thoughts you’d like to share, please leave a comment below or send me an email through the Contact page.

Packraft kit prices will have to increase to cover the increased cost of fabric, so maybe offering pre-orders at current prices would be enough incentive for people to wait. What do you think?

Update: Thanks to the people who emailed their thoughts about this idea. I received some pretty positive feedback about the pre-orders (and some negative feedback explaining that people would rather get a kit now – duh), so it’s likely you’ll be able to place a pre-order soon. If you want to be notified when that’s possible, please sign up for the mailing list. Thanks!