We’re getting very near (approx 1 week) to the regionals, and we’re still short of some critical parts for the robot.
The teachers in charge have repeatedly attempted to contact the local person in charge of product sales, and the official distributor Asian distributor in Hong Kong (as directed by Vex sales) but could not get any response.
I must highlight that parts sales and support in the asian region is quite bad as of now, and ordering parts from the Vex site wouldn’t justify for the shipping costs from the states. We plan to do some mass stocking up after the Elevation competition to avoid such situations in future.
Sounds like you already got the right idea. Buy in bulk at the end/beginning of the season. Also I’m assuming that you are not the only team there, try ordering in conjunction with those teams to further cut down on shipping costs.
We are very aware of the difficulty of acquiring VEX parts outside the US and are in the process of setting up global distribution to solve this problem. Currently there are no resellers who stock the full assortment of parts in Asia. In addition to opening our own facility to serve the Asia Pacific region, we are opening up distribution into the EU.
Expect to see significant improvements in product availability in Q2 2009 and beyond. This will also lower the overall cost of acquiring VEX parts as we achieve efficiency in shipping.