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NVRAM Inventory Update
Posted on 11/04/2021

Some types of NVRAM are OOS at the moment.  Will be rectifying this over the next week or so & will try to have most or all available again in short order.

Limited time for pcb assembly has meant thin inventories on NVRAM most of the year, but the more common types (6264, 6116) usually don't usually go OOS for more than a few days.  Will have some 5101 NVRAM available again over the next week too, but due to the assembly time on those only a dozen or two are built out at a time and expect them to go OOS *relatively* quick due to limited quantities available.

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June 2021 Update - Inventories
Posted on 06/17/2021

Currently a few NVRAM items are OOS, but we should be getting that resolved over the next 1-2 weeks.  We're also working on another batch of PIGGY DEUX which has been OOS for the last few months -- building a larger batch out this time so inventory should last a bit longer.

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April 2021 Updates - NVRAM Pricing / LED Displays
Posted on 04/17/2021

Pinitech has offered NVRAM for quite a few years now.  As one of the first few suppliers of these product(s) we were on the ground floor before many people even knew the benefits of eliminating batteries from their machines once-and-for-all.  Pricing has remained competitive over the years, but that hasn't always been easy.  From 2014-2015 we had sourced nvram at $6-8ea from US distributors while selling these modules in-bulk for just a few dollars more (and this is after hours of assembly, testing, time spent packing/shipping, etc).  Not a very sound business decision, even if selling in higher volume.  After transaction fees and about 45% combined in business taxes it was more of a break-even scenario. In terms of remaining competitive with pricing & actually being able to sell products, we had to find a supplier we could trust that was offering cheaper pricing in order to not be phased out completely by new competition in the nvram market.  We did find a supplier we could trust in 2016 and had used them since.

Unfortunately, as of January 2021 our trusted supplier no longer has stock of these nvram parts.  We were also down to our last remaining reel in January & this was looking like the last year we might be offering nvram products.  That's the bad news.  But there's some good news..

The good news is we were able to track down a single full reel from a US vendor at pricing well below the $6-8 we were paying in 2014-2015.  Still, the latest order of parts has a per-nvram cost that's more than double what we had paid for the last 5 years.  These costs are having to be absorbed into pricing changes on the nvram modules, what we can offer for bulk pricing, etc.  Further pricing changes of our nvram modules are almost guaranteed over the next 6-12 months as future availability of these products will depend completely on whether we're able to source any additional reels from trusted US suppliers cheaper than $6 per part.  So it may be less bulk options available, or only offering a single price on the modules at some point, or pricing changes to quantity discounts, but there is very likely to continue to be some adjustments made as time goes on and we feel out whether we'll be able to source more parts at reasonable pricing going forward.

So that's the NVRAM update.

Now, onto something a bit different.  LED displays..

Surprisingly our Classic Bally/Stern LED displays haven't sold in much volume even when generic digits were being used, cheaper pricing offered, and assembled options (also competitively priced) were available.  Literally a handful have sold per month most months since 2018.  Whether people are buying the better-known LED displays through major distributors or just making due with their plasma displays on Classic Bally/Stern machines doesn't really matter -- the proof is in sales figures which have been relatively low.  We've heard this from others offering DIY Kits for these displays as well.  The market is apparently pretty saturated on the product.

We made a mistake from an inventory perspective with these LED displays in ordering red digits and blue digits prior to understanding the demand.  Initially we were just going to go with ORANGE and WHITE (with color filters) and leave it as that.  Some customers had wanted native blue digits, or native red digits and so we ordered some of those in as well.. but minimum order quantities of 5000x digits.  After a few years of sales, it's apparent that we'll have red and blue digits for the next decade or longer and it really wouldn't matter if we priced these colors cheaper (not to mention certain color digits are more expensive due to the leds being used) -- people just aren't using native blue or red digits as often as they're using ORANGE or want the versatility of switching our colors with the WHITE digits.

Speaking of WHITE digits, in 2021 we noticed our WHITE digit supply was dwindling.  Since we hadn't placed digit orders with the led manufacturer in two years, for all we knew they might have thrown out the tooling we had paid for on the digits -- they do this after not receiving orders for multiple years sometimes.  We seriously considered whether we should even attempt putting in another order, since overall sales figures have been low on this product.  With minimum orders of 5000x digits and 4x colors, quite a bit of inventory room is taken up on a product that isn't selling often.

Well, let's put anyone's mind to ease that has enjoyed our unique LED displays.  We did contact the led manufacturer & were able to place an order for some more of our custom WHITE digits.  Since these come from overseas, it's not 100% guarantee until we receive the order -- always a chance for something to get screwed up or possible for the order to never show up. But, the order is in & with any luck in 2-3 months we'll receive the new order and have stock for another 3-4 years at least.  Until the new order comes in though, we've adjusted pricing on the WHITE digits to account for only having enough for another 1-2 dozen sets.

Hopefully this provides a bit of insight into some recent pricing changes on these products for anyone curious & what goes on behind-the-scenes with sourcing parts on niche products.

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March 2021 Update
Posted on 03/18/2021

Hey Folks!  Time for a quick 1st Quarter update :)

Some emails have come in asking if certain out-of-stock items will be available again.  The answer is YES.  NVRAM will be getting re-stocked first and the common types (6264, 6116) should be available with some bulk options again over the next week.  Other nvram types listed as out-of-stock should be available by mid-April, but possibly 1st week in April.   It's tax season, so between that and running on thinner inventories these days with less time to dedicate to pcb assembly, we're just throttling back some of what's available for a short period of time.  These items WILL be available again though :)  Sorry for the inconvenience if an item you're interested in is currently out-of-stock, we'll be re-stocking most of these items soon!

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