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We would like to thank you for your patience as we have been working through the production of our new Natural Shade Collection sample book, and we apologize for the production delay. We have seen such incredible growth from our woven wood factory over the past year, thanks to your continued support of our collections. As we grew, it was important for us to know that our factory had production and communications regarding your orders under control. As a result, we prioritized your orders to make sure that we and the factory were taking care of you and your customers. Sample book production did become delayed in this process, but we are pleased to announce that book production is now well underway. We expect to begin shipping books by no later than January, and we will be shipping book orders in the order they were received. With these new books, we are adding 23 new natural shade fabrics, 4 new colors of edge binding, and a new light filtering black liner. Keep in mind, these updates will only be offered in the new books, and will not be available in a sample pack update. Please remember should you choose to continue working from our current Woven Wood or Natural Woven Collection sample books, all the fabrics shown in these books will remain available until December 2022.
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WOVEN WOOD AND NATURAL WOVEN COLLECTIONS
We were made aware this week of production delays on five high volume patterns in our Woven Wood Collection. They are: Alton Natural Nassau White Sand Sanibel Flax Sanibel Wheat Morocco Inkwash Current orders in these patterns will be delayed. If you have a current order with us in one of these patterns, we have reached out to you separately with more detailed information about your order. New orders for these patterns will require an 8-week production time until the factory builds back inventory. All delayed patterns are currently being woven, and we have sufficient raw materials to weave them. We will be switching more looms to these popular patterns to meet the demand, restock our inventory, and avoid any future delays. Unfortunately, weaving got behind because of power outages at the factory’s major yarn supplier, and because these patterns are slow to weave, the lack of yarn has backed up production for orders. We apologize sincerely for the late notice on orders we already have in house. We have talked to the factory several times this week, and they have adjusted their ERP system and how it calculates material needs to improve the accuracy of forecasting in the future. They have committed to keeping us better informed going forward. Please note we will also be extending the production time for our Woven Wood and Natural Woven Collections to 4 weeks. All patterns in both collections that are not included on the list above have roll goods in stock and a 4-week production time. Ring Ready Drapery panels will now be shipped with 8 pins per single width panel instead of 9. This change was made to align better with your hardware purchasing needs when planning for your installation. Thank you for providing feedback on how we can make our collections work better for you! Ring Ready pins* by panel width:
 Small S-Pin (return side) and Large S-Pins (installed to rings) We regret to inform you that our stock of Smart Home Collection hubs has been depleted for our shade collections.
We are working closely with the hub manufacturer to replenish our stock of hubs, and will advise the restock date once it is confirmed. If you have a current Smart Home Collection hub on order with us, your hub will be shipped normally. Until our stock of Smart Home Collection hubs has been replenished, please order hubs through Rowley, or consider ordering Inspired Shades standard motor options with the Connector Hub. We are currently experiencing longer than usual transit times with orders that ship through Shanghai with UPS. While our production times remain stable for our shade collections, you may find that tracking numbers take an additional 10-14 days to move after the order has been turned over to UPS.
This is due to shipping backlogs caused by COVID 19 related shutdowns that are slowing UPS' shipping capacity. Starting September 15, we will begin noting order and shipment confirmations with a reminder about these shipping delays. You will continue to receive order confirmations that include your order's expected ship date from our factory; this date reflects our current production time. You will also receive shipping confirmations with tracking information once the order has been shipped from our factory and is received by UPS or DHL. Once tracking information is received for your order, please allow an additional 10-14 days to see movement on the package. As always, we advise to hold on scheduling installation appointments until you have orders in hand. Multiple Shades on One Headrail Maximum Width The overall maximum width for multiple shades on one headrail has been reduced from 106” to 103”. We have reduced the width for this shade style to accommodate the packaging required to ship these large shades safely.
We will be making a specification change for waterfall shades ordered from our Woven Wood and Natural Woven Collections. Starting September 15, waterfall shades ordered without a liner or ordered with a light-filtering liner will include an interior valance that will be added between the shade fabric and components. The interior valance will hide the shadow of the shade components from being visible on the front of the shade. The interior valance is made from black-out Soft White liner fabric and is 4” long.  Because the valance is made with black-out fabric, the part of the shade in front of the interior valance will look darker than the rest of the shade when light is coming through. See examples below.  We are now able to accept orders for wide width roller shades and dual sheer shades with a per order net surcharge of $150 USD/$195 CAD. This has not been an easy process as UPS and FedEx both require any package over 108” to ship by cargo service, which has huge minimum charges and longer delivery times and is subject to space availability. While our express service is also subject to availability, it is a premium service, so those packages ride first and the cargo shipments wait. This is not ideal for you or us. However, we have been able to secure the ability to ship longer packages by DHL express, but with very significant surcharges per box. We feel a per box surcharge does not help you understand your costs well, so we have translated this into a per order surcharge. We regret that it is as high as it is, but we cannot get a better rate than this as the freight companies are all actively trying to discourage longer packages that cannot be sorted automatically on conveyors and are more likely to get damaged. Please see below for details for each collection. ROLLER SHADES AND DUAL SHEER SHADES Roller Shades can now be ordered up to 115” wide, and Dual Sheer Shades can now be ordered up to 110” wide. Check individual fabric widths before placing shade orders. A $150 USD/$195 CAD oversized net freight surcharge will be applied on a per order basis for shades wider than 100” from these collections. For orders with multiple shades over 100” from the same collection, the surcharge will be applied only one time. Because our shade collections ship from different factories, the surcharge will be applied once for each collection on combined orders with oversized shade requests. For example, when ordering oversized shades from both the Roller Shade and Dual Sheer Shade Collections on a combined order, the surcharge will be applied for each collection. When placing your orders in ePIC or Touchpoint, the oversized surcharge will be applied by line item. The surcharge will appear on each line of the order that includes an oversized shade. Please note, the surcharge will be applied only one time on your final invoice, and any additional surcharges will be backed out by our order processing team. WOVEN WOOD AND NATURAL WOVEN SHADES Woven Wood and Natural Woven shades remain available to order at a 96” maximum width with no oversized freight surcharges. The overall maximum width for multiple shades on one head rail has been reduced to 106”. Woven Wood and Natural Woven shades in this style can be ordered up to the new maximum width with no freight surcharge applied. PRODUCT GUIDES
Our product guides have been updated to reflect this change. Visit the Franchisee Toolkit to download the most up to date product guides. >> US Product Guide Downloads >> Canadian Product Guide Downloads We have placed Sanibel Flax (IN-L004) from our Woven Wood Collection on a short, temporary ordering stop as we rebuild our roll goods inventory. We will begin accepting orders again for this fabric on August 8th.
This short ordering stop will allow the factory to weave the goods they need ahead of time for expected orders and keep this popular fabric from being on an extended stop. Fabric stock-outs can become extended quickly if not addressed when the issue first arrises, as we have seen from previous fabric stock-outs this year. As a result, we are working closely with our factory to monitor our roll goods to keep them in stock and plan ahead for potential stock outs. Thank you for your patience and for allowing us to continue to improve our service! Shades from all of our collections can now be ordered with slightly wider widths. See below for details.
Dual Sheer Shades can be ordered up to to 100" wide. Roller Shades can be ordered up to 101 1/2" wide. Woven Wood and Natural Woven Shades can be ordered up to 103" wide. We will keep you updated as we continue to see improvements on width restrictions over the next several weeks. |
