Updated November 2011 . . .
With immediate effect, we can no longer guarantee to forward any out-of-stock item and, instead, reserve the right to refund any such item(s).
We are very unhappy at feeling forced into this position by some manufacturers, and apologise for any inconvenience. It is our sincere wish that this change will be temporary and can be reversed very soon. A fuller explanation follows below.
Although we carry a huge amount of stock we, like any company, can occasionally sell out of an item quicker than we can update the site so whenever this happens our policy has always been to post on any item we couldn't include with your order as soon as it arrives - entirely at our cost.
However, important changes within our industry mean we can no longer automatically send back-orders like this.
The cake decorating / sugarcraft / home-baking / cupcake market has grown enormously in the past couple of years. This is great news for all of us in the industry but has put pressure on small manufacturing firms, many of whom are now struggling to meet the increased demand. In other words, an item being out-of-stock is not down to us failing to order enough - it's down to the manufacturers not being able to supply enough.
An example: where we used to order 50 of a design of icing cutter at a time, we now order 500 . . . a ten-fold increase . . . and that's per design! We don't get a better price, we have to wait twice as long for orders to arrive and (more often than not) the order still arrives incomplete. This causes out-of-stocks. We don't want to let our customers down so we're doing everything possible to increase our stock levels, hoping this will be a short-term issue.
It's fantastic that cake decorating is becoming more and more popular and that we're busier than ever - please don't think we're complaining - not for a second!!! Our problem lies with certain suppliers who are simply unable to fulfill the orders we have been placing and in such a small, tight-knit industry as ours there are rarely alternative suppliers . . . eg only PME produce PME equipment, only FMM produce FMM equipment, only Squire's Kitchen produce SK products, only Napier produce Napier cake stands and the same goes for virtually every manufacturer we deal with.
There is no simple solution. We are placing massive orders to fill our new, increased warehouse space and have to rely on the manufacturers being able to fulfill these larger orders. In the short term we therefore have had to make this change to our out-of-stock policy and will endeavour to keep the stock levels shown on the site as accurate as possible. We are working with all manufacturers to acquire as much stock from them as they can produce but we're not the only people in this situation, so there is a real risk of "panic buying" within the industry, with competitors falling over each other trying to get their hands on any available stock - this will lead to increased prices for everyone, so is obviously something we're very keen to avoid.
Although this isn't actually a change in our policy (we've always reserved the right to issue refunds like this), nevertheless we are far from happy at feeling forced into this position. We promise to reverse this policy change the moment we feel the problem has been solved. We apologise for this but would ask your understanding.
Many thanks,
Alan
