We are going to transition directly from a pre-sale, to just selling. The only thing making this a pre-sale is that we are not shipping the Cera's for another week or so. Once the parts land, we are just selling. We will provide as constant a stream of Cera's to as many people who want them. If you order a Cera on Christmams Eve 12/24, it it will ship 12/26-12/27 etc. We will back to a 24-48 hour turn-around from order to ship (unless there is some laser etching work that is custom).
We will be seriously geared up for New years. Always a good opportunity for us to try and reach out to poeple smoking cigaretts and let them know we are a potential alternative, that we think would be highly effective in helping them never smoke again.
There will be a Cera for you if and when you want one. We have one for you, just tell us when and if you want it. No rush. The Cera is the product of 9 cermic tools that cannot be changed, this is what she will be like, forever.
We had a long discussion with our Ceramics guys on the 6th, an our machinist for SS and the other machinist doing Ti yesterday to purchase and fix our cost for 2013. So there will be NO PRICE INCREASE or DECREASE in 2013. Because of the extremely high cost of the materials in the Cera, and based on the overall cost of building high end mechanical devices that our hand assembled in the USA, we will have predictable yearly price adjustment of the Cera product line. So this time next year the Cera will increase in cost/sale price by 2%-5%. Based on our model this is as conservative as we can be. Plan for a yearly price INCREASE of the Cera by a minimum of 2% every year, and no more then 5%.
So yes, the prices are going up, 12/1/2013 all Cera prodcts (anything with Ceramic or Metal) will go up. They will go up again 12/1/2014 again. Best case a Cera will cost you 4% more starting 12/2014... worst case is 10%.
This is just a side effect of dealing with rare, expensive, US sourced materials usually reserved solely for use in implantable medical devices, complex sensor arrays, military and defense applications, and aerospace. We do not make that many raw materials here in the States, and the ones we do such as Magnesia Stabilize Zriconia, Sulfur free High Grade SS, and High grade T1 go up in price yearly as inflation, feul costs, labor costs, etc. etc. continue to rise. Companies that make fine Jewlery struggle with this same issue, yearly there will be a variation in the price of the raw materials required for them to produce their product.
An example would be Van Cleed & Arpels, every year they raise their pricies a fixed amount to account for the multiple factors that increase the cost of doing business and/or producing the durable good.
Difficult to make another analogy because everyone else who uses these materials are using them for a far different application. Implantable medical devices, military/defense/aerospace. That stuff cost more and more money each year but the data is hard to get on how much they increase the price of the products they make. Anyone know what the year over year cost increase in defense satellite manufacturing is? I do not.
So we rely on fixing our costs as early as possible for the year ahead so we know what we can sell the Cera for.We also know we have to adjust that price yearly to stay uin business.