Brad

Custom, handmade products, take a while to produce. You aren’t buying something that’s being churned out of a factory that has millions of dollars worth of assets and resources.

One of my other hobbies, besides cigars, is firearms. If you want to order a holster from Milt Sparks, or Matt DelFatti, you better be prepared to wait. About 6 months for Sparks, and that’s with a team of 4 full time guys. DelFatti, about 2 years! Heck, in this example, Milt Sparks only accepts X amount of orders per month, and no more. In some cases, like DelFatti, they just quit accepting new orders all together, for months at a time. Demand can be very high for goods like this, no matter the price.

Companies that provide custom good are fairly unique, you can’t run an ad on CareerBuilder and hire Joe Blow at $10/hour to do this kind of work. Most of the guys in businesses like this have been doing it years, are master craftsmen, and it’s not something you can teach someone how to do in 2 weeks. I would imagine it’s even harder with Chas, because he’s a one man show. Running a full time business, plus doing all the crafting of the product, purchasing the raw materials to make it, shipping, answering emails, order management, keep the books in line, etc, etc, can be very overwhelming for just 1 person.

I don’t see long waits as a mark of bad customer service when you’re dealing with this type of product, it’s expected, and if it’s something you can’t live with, you can always head down to Walmart.