We know we have been very quiet on the highly anticipated release on the LIMITED EDITION Cordless Senior Clipper here in the USA. We have great news for you all! The Cordless Seniors have (finally) started to ship to distributors as of last week and will continue to ship out the rest of the month! Here is some insight into the situation:
- We are very thankful that the demand for this product has been so overwhelming, but we really did not know how the message about this tool would spread so fast around the globe. We have been working hard to become a truly global company and build a loyal social media following around the world. We launched this product through Wahl UK and during their big beauty/barber show in October of last year…and were trying to test how this product would do in only this market (and Wahl Japan). The social message created in the UK spread incredibly quickly around the world…and we loved that.
- We started our launch in the UK and Japan (both high voltage markets (220volt) first because those markets have never had access to our traditional corded Senior. The corded Senior is a safety issue when run through high-voltage electricity, as the metal case can spark at that level and hurt people. So, we wanted to see how popular the Senior brand name was in a market where we never distributed this product and fill this void for them first.
- We were actually not planning on shipping a version of the Cordless Senior in the US until October/November of this year. We thought with the demand for the Cordless Magic Clip and having the various corded Seniors in the US, we could build our capabilities to truly meet the demand everywhere without overly-stressing our manufacturing facility.
- We do make our professional tools in the US, unlike many of the new tools from our competitors who have wholly-Chinese new tools or Chinese tools with US-blades. We are hiring nearly 100 more people for our Illinois-based factory to meet global demand and have spent millions of dollars on more capital equipment to meet all of our potential demand. We have not completed all of these new hires and do not have all of this equipment in place quite yet.
- We had an issue with one component in the clipper that we worked on thoroughly to resolve. We halted all shipments on the product that we know may fail. We sold some units at a recent Atlanta and NYC show and thought all the clippers were perfect, but we are getting some returns. Inventory was put on hold to make sure we truly had the right fix in place before shipping out more product. It was quite an extensive process to make sure the tools worked properly and to build an inventory to be able to ship out to all distributors requesting the product.
We truly wish we could ship this clipper (and others) to any customer in the world that wants a Wahl. We are honored that customers like you want to have a Wahl and we want you to have a tool that lasts you for years! We would love to be able to ship everyone from day one as well, but we do have a learning curve to make tons of this new clipper in a short amount of time (like we can with our electromagnetic/vibrator clippers). We will get there.
We are dedicated to the beauty and barber industry and we focus on the what we know. We are also dedicated to US manufacturing and are responsible for many families in our community in Illinois (with more adding on) and we truly enjoy being stewards of our craft and making you and them proud of us.
We are sorry we have let you down but you are going to love this clipper (and some of our other new tools coming). We truly appreciate your patience and understanding in this process.
