It's been a pretty hectic June here at Cotic getting on top of orders as shipments have come in, and dealing with being a mechanic down coinciding with staff holidays. For those of you waiting patiently for your bike or frame, I wanted to update on where we are and the problems we face as parts become available.

We have worked really hard this month to get on top of frame back orders as we had several hundred waiting to be prepped and shipped at one point. It's been all hands on deck, with Richard and I in the workshop getting frames ready for Dispatch Queen Hannah to pack and ship. We are almost up to date on frames now, so if you've received your frame in the last month, I hope you're enjoying it and it was worth the wait. We have certainly had some lovely emails letting us know that's the case for some new owners. Thank you!

For bikes the situation is somewhat different. I know some of you have been a little bit frustrated with delay after delay, or finding your build pushed back after other parts arrive. We try to keep you up to date with what we're being told, and I know it's frustrating and the temptation is to shoot the messenger (or Sam and Paul in this case), but we're only telling you what we are being told. Production and delivery dates are still moving almost daily. Please be kind, and know that all we are doing is trying our best to keep you informed.

We currently have a temp mechanic, but only for a short time, and we are looking to fill that gap for the rest of the summer. Darren's broken thumb should be healed fairly soon so he will be back on it too, but even at full staffing, bikes do take a while. We currently have capacity for 20-25 bikes per week depending on the complexity of the builds. For a lot of June we only had Chief Mechanic Will on bike duty whilst we ploughed through frame orders, which means we're down to 10-12 bikes per week, hence the delay on some deliveries.

The other thing that drives our decisions - and can sometimes change what you have been told about your delivery over night - is the still almost completely random stock deliveries. For instance, we had the 29er hardtail shipment arrive at the end of May, we let several hundred customers know, and set out to get them out as fast as we could. Then Shimano and SRAM both out of the blue dropped 10 sets of each of some Escapade parts which suddenly unlocked 20 bike builds. We dropped straight onto them not because they were "jumping the queue", but quite the opposite. We have been waiting for some parts of months and months, and the arrival of these bits unlocked orders for people who had been waiting since October 2020 for their bike. So, whilst I can understand if you have ordered your frame in February or March you feel you have been waiting a long time - and you have - the fairest way we can see of working through this huge backlog right now is simply to work in chronological order of the builds that have been released to production.

This will continue to be the case throughout the summer. On the mountain bike side, we have imminent shipments of long ago ordered suspension forks, but these arrive in bulk. These "chunks" of stock suddenly release weeks' worth of builds into production, so we do take a bit of time to catch up with ourselves with these deliveries arrive.

Please rest assured that whatever the delay to your bike or frame might be, the only reason for that is that someone who has been waiting even longer for their order has slotted in ahead of you. At the end of the day, it's 8 of us doing our best to get your order out as fast as we can.

Thanks,

Cy @ Cotic