We used to just put people "in line" for their order. Without having committed dollars to an order, we found it took a lot of leg work (multiple phone calls, emails, etc.) to track down payment for them. Most people would still want the order when it was ready, but they'd spend up to a week or more getting their payment together (transferring money to different accounts / credit cards). We found that when people have already paid for 1/3 of their order, they will quickly pay for the remainder when it is ready. That keeps the finished goods moving out the door quicker.

You can believe me or not, I'm the one that does the finances here and I can honestly say that we don't currently have a cash flow problem. That wasn't always the case though - as a new company we had plenty of "pinch" times in 2008 and 2009. If someone were to write us a check for a million dollars tomorrow, that wouldn't really help us speed up production as some of the necessary components needed are limited in the volume and time that we can get them (the biggest one being strain gages). As was mentioned by a few others, we also heard that Saris was backed up this spring (rumor we heard was they were waiting on strain gages too).

And gsteinb, I'm a girl... :-)

Mieke Meyer
Quarq Technology