Waitlist Update and First Wave of Enhancements Planned

Our new website has been live now for just over a month. Time for an update and a look forward…

So as I mentioned in my last blog post (Our New Website is LIVE!) we had some bugs when we first launched that caused some headaches, but since then I would say that we’ve fixed 90% of the issues. There are still problems that primarily revolve around some customer Crate 1’s - which are the combination of inventory and subscriptions that came over from the old system - but on the whole, things are now running pretty smooth. (If you are having issues I recommend first checking out our FAQ for a solution then contacting us if you are still having problems - we’re happy to help!)

With the major fixes out of the way it’s now time to do two things: open the virtual doors to new customers, and get the first batch of improvements scheduled and deployed…

Waitlist and Opening Up to New Signups

You might not realize this, but as of this writing, we have a waitlist of 1,847 people who want to sign up. Not many companies can say that! But our advantage is we have a very unique service that is still able to provide ammo in a systematic way even during this ammo crunch. So, starting in April we’ll begin sending out emails to prospective customers on the waitlist to sign up. Our plan is to limit new signups to 200-400 per month in order to balance new customer volume with our ammo supply.

Ammo Distribution Process

The good news is that we can handle an influx of new customers because our new system is even more efficient at distributing ammo than the old system. Here is an quick overview of how that works:

As a customer, you build an ammo crate and set a budget. In your crate, you pick all of the calibers you want and assign a percent of your budget to each caliber. Now that everything is set up, you can change your budget any time and the dollar amount going to each caliber will change automatically - you don’t need to add a dollar here or two dollars there, just tweak the percentages and change your budget as needed.

When your payment is processed, your caliber quantities are added to the Queue using the price per round on that day - so you know exactly how many rounds of each caliber you’re budget purchased. The benefit here is that you are “locked in” for those rounds at that price - no matter what craziness the market throws at you.

The ammo Queue is not just your queue but is a global queue for everyone. It tells us how much of each SKU we need to allocate, and in what order.

If we already have ample supply of a caliber on the queue, then we’ll allocate to your inventory within 24-72 hours (this is currently done manually, so there could be a longer time lag) eventually it will automatic.

Once ammo is allocated to your inventory (we call it “fulfilled”) it now becomes available for shipping.

In the cases where we don’t have enough of a particular caliber to allocate immediately, you’ll see it on your queue for an extended period of time. This could be days, weeks or even months depending on the supply situation. Right now, as I’m sure you are aware, some calibers are simply impossible to find at anything other than nosebleed prices.

We understand people don’t like to wait, but we also understand people don’t want to pay an arm and leg either. Our philosophy on this is that if you need it right away then you can always buy it online from a retailer that has it (or bid for it on Gunbroker) selling at 3x the market rate. Our job is to provide you a good value for your money. So given the current circumstances we’d rather wait it out and get you fairly priced ammo. But sometimes you can’t wait and that brings up the first big enhancement:

Next Planned Enhancement: Credit for Queued Ammo

One of our first big improvements in the new system will be the ability to get a credit for ammo sitting in your queue. This isn’t the same as selling ammo that is in your inventory, which as been allocated to you (and purchased by us). Instead you’ll just get a credit back for the amount you paid so you can use it on something else with less of a delay. This feature will be available on a line item basis so you can better control your queued ammo. We expect this to roll out late March or early April.

Enhancements for April: Shipping Themed

The theme for the next batch of updates will be Shipment Improvements. These will generally make the interface for requesting a shipment better. However, the BIGGEST update in this group is a simple but critical one: force the shipping trigger to use your shippable inventory in its calculation! We ran into a problem that required us to turn off the emails for shipping triggers because it was using a customer’s Total Inventory in the trigger calculation and not just their Shippable Inventory - there is a significant difference because of fractional rounds. So not all the ammo in your inventory may be shippable yet.

Another BIG enhancement that we’ll launch in April will be the ability to ship SOME of your inventory from a crate. Right now it is all or nothing, but soon you’ll be better able to control what is shipped. (In the future we’ll have the ability to combine ammo from multiple crates but since that is actually a pretty complex operation in our system we had to bump it to a future update. Until then we have a workaround.)

Other enhancements next month include the ability to select either UPS or Fedex for each shipment, updates to insurance going from a flat rate to a percentage, adding a local pickup option, and other small improvements around the shipping screen functionality, addresses and an address book.

So after a month in operation, we’re starting to get our heads above water and can look at the horizon a bit more. Over the next few months you’ll see a dramatic improvement in our new AMMOSQUARED 2.0 platform as we start to unleash its true potential to turn the ammunition world on its head and bring ammunition into the digital age!