I have not been able to get onto the boards for a long time. I have been to Japan, Malaysia, Tanzania, Taiwan and Malaysia again in the past few weeks. When I have been in Thailand, I have had visitors out of town every single day.
The visitors are mostly coming to talk about NorhTec computers. We have one company that is interested in $3 million USD worth of computers per year. We have signed up partners in Dubai, Japan, Singapore and Africa.
There are many projects and all of them require proposals, followups and visits.
I have received many e-mails asking me if I am abandoning audio. The answer is always the same. I have no intention to abandon it but I have never made money from nOrh. I invested in nOrh and created jobs through nOrh. All the labor I put into nOrh is free.
I do the website newsletter, the photography and product development free. I invested my own money so that other people can have jobs.
The biggest thrill for me is when I get e-mails from people who love our products. My biggest downer is when I get a negative or nasty e-mail. The irony i that most of these e-mails are not from customers. Much of the hate mail comes from Le Amp 2. People are tired of waiting.
I always explain where we are and what is going on but often I get e-mails back telling me that they hope we go out of business or wish me personal harm.
We have never charged anyone for products we didn't ship. This is a firm policy. I do not want people to have their cards charged unless products are on the way.
Some companies live off the float. They charge credit cards, pay bills and then deliver. We pay cash. In six years of opertion, we still operate with no debt. We pay cash for everything.
I have written to each customer personally what is going on with Le Amp 2. I will post it here.
We wanted to have a new amplifier for Le Amp 2. We wanted something with more power and we wanted something that would really set a new price standard. We contracted with a supplier who was building amplifiers in Thailand. This supplier was making power supplies for NorhTec. Up until then, we had no problems with him.
We gave him money upfront -- not a deposit. We paid for the amplifiers in cash. We expected amps in one month. We got a prototype that we took to Ohio.
Everyone agreed the amplifier sounded great. We were told the amplifiers would be done in a month.
A month later, we were told that the cases were not done yet. We asked to speak to the case vendor. The case vendor told us that they were owed a lot of money from our supplier and would not build the cases unless they had cash. Our problem was we had paid cash already. We agreed to give the case vendor money to build the cases.
A month later, we had the cases. We got a couple of amps built. The sounded great and looked great.
Our supplier said we would get 30 units the next week. We got a total of 10. We tested these amps and shipped them out.
After the first 10, we didn't get an more. We were having a harder and harder time getting in touch with our supplier. Once I called and I was told that someone from Chaing Mai was in his factory forcing him to build his order. From what I was told, it was like a gang had come and under threat of pain or worse, our supplier was forced to build for someone else.
Our supplier told us he didn't have all the parts or the money to buy the parts. We had him sign a contract and we paid for the parts he needed directly.
We then learned he needed even more parts. Once again, we paid more for parts.
It always seemd that with just a bit more money, we would finally be able to get the amps and ship them out.
We got the word that our supplier took his family and ran away. It appears that someone had taken out a contract on our supplier's life. Even his brother didn't know how to contact him.
Our supplier's lead engineer started his own company. He has helped us build another 17 amps from the parts that we have and we are organizing a new build.
This has been a very painful experience for us financially. I do not know in the end how much each amp will cost us. None-the-less, the amp sounds so good and is such a good value, I do not want to give up on it. The customers who have their units, love it.
Even while we continue to make more investment and take huge losses on this project, I get e-mail from people who wish me, our staff and our company personal harm. None of these people have lost any money. All of them are welcome to cancel their orders if they want to.
This weekend, I went out to dinner with Curt (he treated). We had a great time together. Curt played music on his system and it was great to listen to music.
nOrh has survived for 6 years doing something unique. We have delivered high quality products directly to customers at excellent prices. We try to never let problems become customer problems. We have a good reputation for support and service.
I have many ideas for audio and I do hope that once we get through this Le Amp 2 drama, we will introduce more products.
In the meantime, our 3.0s, 6.1s and 4.0s are selling very well. We also sell quite a few SE 9s and SE 18s.
In summary, we believe we have Le Amp 2 situation under control. The engineer who is doing the LE Amp 2s was in charge of the project for the previous supplier. The previous supplier had a successful design and had he not gotten into such desperate financial straights, he could have delivered us what we needed.
For the first time in two months, we are really able to deliver more Le Amp 2s. For those who wait, they will get one of the best audio values ever. I really want to bring this product out because I think the market needs it. If we don't bring it out -- who will?
