new 5 5 availablility

As you are aware the new ISE 5s should have been with us this week, late on Thursday last week we received an e-mail from Vestle UK highlighting that the machines have not been shipped on time.

Since this e-mail we have been trying to establish why they were not shipped and when we would receive them.

I have just returned from a meeting with Steve Waddilove (UK Managing Director for our producer Vestel) who has clarified the situation.

Vestel are a massive production company making a wide range of purpose built products sold all over the world, working to very stringent quality assurance guidelines. Vestel UK work with companies such as ISE to bring to market products tailored particularly to that customer’s needs and as such only see a fraction of the products their parent company manufacture.

Mid and low specification washing machines with spin speeds below 1400 are manufactured and shipped with the odd sample put to one side for testing. This means that the normal lead time for Vestel manufactured products coming in to the UK is eight weeks (including two weeks shipping). Machines such as ours with very high specifications, especially those with high spin speeds are all individually tested prior to leaving the factory to ensure all components particularly spiders and bearings are functioning perfectly, this is obviously increases the production time. This process rings true as it is akin to what Asko do with the ISE 10 which have a minimum lead time of 13 weeks.

What I have learned today is that we are the first people in the UK to ever take a washing machine from Vestel beyond 1200 spin so the UK side of the business would not have known that higher specification products have a longer lead time and that the ISE 5s had not been shipped until they were expecting our machines to arrive for customs clearance last week.

This means that our machines will not be realised from the factory until the 14th April. As a gesture of goodwill Vestel UK have agreed to bring the machines overland with two drivers thus shortening the transport time to around 5 working days.

This means the new ISE 5s will be in our warehouse between Friday 19th April and Monday 21st April. Thankfully we have already ordered container 2 for delivery early June. The production of these machines has been brought forward to allow for individual testing so we will have no problems with continuity of supply.

I can only apologise to you and your customers for the delay on the delivery of these machines, had we known the machines had a 13 week lead time we would have organised ourselves accordingly and you would not have been mislead.

As soon as we get them in, we will get them out and that will include myself and Sean collecting from Hi-way doing emergency deliveries as soon as the stock touches down.

Your patience is greatly appreciated.

John