Most dealers, as we used to know it, are dried up and gone. I was one of them. There used to be so many 'Local Dealers' that it was easy to visit them, check out products, and buy them directly. Some got their products factory-direct and others went through an independent Distributor. Some Distributors handled only one or two brands, others were multi-line Distributors. Generally, they filled a Dealer's order directly and the Dealer got the product to the consumer. There was very little drop-shipping from a Distributor. Those were the good days.
Today, and for the past decade or two, there are hardly any so-called "local" dealers around.
Most Dealers are On-Line Only without a storefront.
I believe a lot of them, probably most, get product drop-shipped.
So, at this point, IF All Dealers took pre-orders and only serviced those customers with business, and IF all dealers only used a Distributor, and IF that one or two Distributor source drop-shipped ALL ORDERS directly to the consumers ... THEN all pre-paid pre-oreders should be filled in a timely manner based on the order the Dealers submitted their customer requests..
HOWEVER ... If a savvy Dealer knows the product is going to be popular and sell well, and let's say they have 18 Pre-Orders, they might also have the $$$ to just order 25 or 30 new Simplex + models. The Distributor has an order for 25-30 and gets the received inventory in, sends 25-30 units out for that Dealer Order. The Dealer then ships off the 18 already sold pre-orders and then has 7-12 brand new Simplex+ units to advertise and offer for sale.
If the savvy Dealer submitted their "pre-order" for a number of units early on, then that order came first and before the folks who held off to place a pre-order or current order. The savvy Dealer was ahead of the game and has product off to the earlier pre-orders as well as having some "in-stock" before the Distributor gets in their own re-order to finish supplying the late-comers who ordered.
That's business.
