Extended lead times on our roof cover range

We launched our tailored roof cover a few months ago after being asked by a wide range of customers for a solution that was lighter and easier to fit than the full storage cover. We spent a long time ensuring that these two elements were achieved and are thrilled with the response so far we have had to the cover.  We still recommend 2 people to fit the cover and remind customers that there is still a lot of fabric to get over the top of your caravan. 

We had started the roof covers off with a small range of caravans that we could accommodate and at the time we hadn’t patterned them all. For a small Buisness the investment in design time and prototyping is often under valued and the costs never fully recovered. All our roof covers are tailored therefore we have to remeasure and create new patterns for every caravan we offer this cover for, which is hundreds. 

With each pattern taking at least 2-3 days to complete in CAD which does not cover the time to gather the dimensions and create the CAD model, you can appreciate this is a long process. We also didn’t want to create patterns for caravans that were never going to be used. We hoped the initial wave of orders would give us a clear idea, if the product was of interest to our customer base and which makes and models where the most popular, ensuring our design time was used to the best effect.

This is also a very specialist product to create and still very new to our team who are working their way through all the patterns however we also rely on them for many other areas of the business. We are looking to recruit more CAD technicians but as anyone with a small business can tell you it is a slow process and training takes time.   

Once the patterns are created production time is significantly faster and we are currently producing covers on a 2 week lead time. 

However due to the high demand for the roof cover, which we are so grateful for the support from our customers we have an unprecedented volume of patterns to complete. This has pushed our lead times to 8-12 weeks which we appreciate is a very long time. With over 12 weeks of patterning work already scheduled on orders we do not want to mislead or disappoint new customers looking to order with us. 

We had hope that this wouldn’t be the case but due to our current work load we have had no choice but to extend our current lead time to 8-12 weeks. If you are interested in ordering we would recommend you call our Customer Service team who can check if a pattern for your caravan has been completed. We appreciate your understanding, patience and support in this matter and would like to remind any one that is on a tight timescale that we also have our full storage cover available with over 40 years worth of database to support. 

Thank you 

Katie MD