Why so much overstock?
As you're likely aware, we're currently hosting an in-stock apparel sale due to vastly overstocked inventory. Many of you have been asking, why do you have so much inventory on hand when all of your events have been cancelled?
Why so much?
Anyone in the ultimate business will tell you that it's very seasonal. VC operates at full capacity from February to July – what we call our "busy season", and we slowly quiet to a turtle's pace after the Canadian Ultimate Championships in mid-August. We do see occasional increases throughout the fall and for the holiday shopping season, otherwise it's very quiet in our production department... except that fall/winter is when we do all of our planning for the year ahead.
In order to effectively manage and produce orders during our incredibly busy spring/summer, we manufacture all of our stock blank apparel (used for screen printing and spot sublimation) for teams and events during the winter. Fabric is purchased in December, and purchase orders follow at our local factory in January and February.
This means that all of our blank apparel orders were submitted to our production partners in February... and then the pandemic hit.
Why not cancell the POs?
We believe that successful business is built on a foundation of trusting partnerships. We've lived through really lean years at times during our 21 years in business, and our suppliers were there for us with support and credit to get us through.
We also believe that this goes both ways. VC has evolved into a sustainable business with proper financing, and it was our turn to do the right thing.
What would have happened to our main manufacturing partner if we had submitted orders for thousands of units and then cancelled them? Team members would've lost jobs in the short term and new clients would have to be found in the long term... which means lower capacity for VC when we get back rolling again.
Every order honored
If an order had been started in any way - i.e. had made it to the cutting floor - we honored that commitment. This means almost 10,000 extra units (above our standard in-stock inventory levels) delivered over the past few months.
We're not exaggerating when we say there is apparel everywhere! Even our boardroom has been turned into an online store stock room, but that's okay - in-person meetings are so 2019.
In a normal year, we merchandise on average 30 events. In 2020, each of these, ranging from small league tournaments to world championships, have been crossed off our calendar – leading us to offer these goods up to our community at unheard-of pricing.
Thank you
Every order is helping us liquidate our overstock and keep up going until we can set foot on the fields again. Thank you for your support; we appreciate you!
