IP: Crunch Time for Y2K Suppliers

[Vladimir Z. Nuri]

From: believer at telepath.com
Subject: IP: Crunch Time for Y2K Suppliers
Date: Thu, 05 Nov 1998 11:22:46 -0600
To: believer at telepath.com

Source:  Wired
http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/16035.html?3

Crunch Time for Y2K Suppliers
 by Declan McCullagh 

 4:00 a.m.5.Nov.98.PST
 The phones are already ringing when Steve
 Portela arrives at his office every morning.
 Orders are piling up as they never have before.
 Walton Feed, his bulk food company, doubled
 its workforce this year to 125 people and a new
 warehouse will open in late November. 

 It isn't enough. Orders placed today won't be
 delivered for six months. 

 "I'm falling further behind every day," Portela
 complains. 

 The source of Portela's woes? Widespread
 worries about the Year 2000 computer problem.
 The looming bug has sent thousands of
 Americans scrambling to load up on bulk food,
 generators, solar cells, and gold coins. Some of
 the products, if ordered today, won't arrive on a
 customer's doorstep until spring 1999. And
 delays are expected to grow. 

 Spikes in demand are nothing new to Portela.
 The Mount St. Helens eruption, the Los Angeles
 riots, and the last major California earthquake all
 spurred people into grabbing their credit cards
 and phoning Walton Feed. From a perch 6,000
 feet up in the Idaho mountains, the company
 has grown into one of the nation's largest bulk
 food suppliers. 

 But nervous jitters caused by those disruptions
 are peanuts compared to growing fears that Y2K
 will snarl electric power, telecommunications,
 and the banking system. 

 "Add it all together, and Y2K surpasses
 everything," Portela says. 

 This time it's not just survivalists stockpiling
 sealed barrels from Walton's extensive selection
 of wheat, rice, and other dried foods. 

 "It's common everyday folks, people just like
 you," Portela says of his customers. "We're not
 talking about any radical people." 

 Other food companies have similar bellyaches. 

 "The demand is amazing -- 99.99 percent of the
 people we deal with are preparing for Y2K," says
 Tamera Toups, office manager for
 Montana-based Peace of Mind Essentials." 

 Unlike Walton's, Peace of Mind Essentials
 doesn't boast a storeroom full of towering bins of
 grain. Instead, it places orders that are later
 filled by warehouses. Toups estimates volume
 has leapt 500 percent this year. 

 "If anyone doesn't have an order in by the end of
 April, their chances of getting it before 2000 are
 pretty slim," she said. "The window might be
 even smaller than that." 

You'll still be able to buy bulk food after next
 April, of course. America Inc., a food exporter,
 has plenty of it. But Walton Feed makes a niche
 product prized by Y2Kers: sealed 50-pound
 drums of food with the oxygen removed, a
 process that delays spoilage and eliminates
 grain-munching critters. A year's supply tips the
 scales at 600 pounds and costs $300, plus
 shipping. 

 Trying to procure a diesel generator, on the other
 hand, is shaping up to be increasingly difficult. 

 Loren Day, president of China Diesel Imports,
 spends a good portion of each day puzzling out
 how to crank out more and more generators to
 meet a swell of Y2K orders. Shipments of his
 company's most popular 8,000-watt model are
 already running six months behind. 

 "Orders are up about 1,000 percent since the
 first of the year," Day says. "And the amount of
 people who will want a generator now is nothing
 compared to the amount of people who will want
 a generator later." 

 Day, whose 50-person company is the largest
 US distributor of diesel generators, usually sells
 to rural customers who live beyond the reach of
 electric power lines. 

 "Now with this Y2K thing it's gone crazy," he
 said. He said he now has the both of the world's
 largest generator manufacturers running at near
 capacity to satisfy US demand. 

 Why don't Y2Kers simply pick up a $500
 gasoline generator at Home Depot or their local
 hardware store? Day believes they're so worried
 about the oft-criticized reliability of the portable
 units, that they're willing to pay diesel prices,
 starting at $1,750. 

 "The main thing is the longevity and fuel
 economy of the diesel," he said. Diesel fuel is
 an oil, so it keeps longer than gasoline, which
 spoils after a year. 

Those Y2K consumers who dread running out of
 fuel are also turning to renewable energy. 

 "We're totally swamped by Y2K," said Laura
 Myers, a sales representative for solar
 equipment distributor Sunelco. "We're beginning
 to see some lead times on some of our
 products. By next spring it's going to be insane."

 Sales at the Hamilton, Montana-based Sunelco
 have tripled because of Y2K, Myers said. She
 predicts that orders placed after next spring
 won't arrive until 2000. 

 "It's been a huge increase," said Davy Rippner, a
 vice president at Alternative Energy Engineering,
 a California-based firm. 

 "The things that we're out of and we can't keep
 in stock are the Baygen [hand-cranked] radios
 and the Russian-made hand-dynamo
 flashlights." 

 Then there are the full-blown home solar
 systems, which start at $3,000 and can range
 up to $30,000. 

 "A lot of small installers around the country that
 have been struggling to make a living are now
 booked for months in advance," said Karen
 Perez, who publishes Home Power magazine
 with her husband Richard from the couple's
 off-the-grid home outside of Ashland, Oregon. 

 The Perez family won't do anything to prepare for
 Y2K -- except spend time handling the sharp
 uptick in recent subscriptions to their magazine.

 "We're six miles from the nearest phone and
 power line," she said. "As far as Y2K with us,
 the only thing that I'm planning on doing
 personally is getting a stash of non-hybrid
 seeds." 

 Non-hybrid seeds are particularly prized by
 Y2Kers who stay up nights worrying that
 potential widespread computer crashes could
 disrupt food distribution. Most hardware store
 seeds are hybrid varieties. They grow well, but
 they can be sterile. 

 Since seeds from hybrid plants may not
 germinate, some Y2Kers are stockpiling the
 non-hybrid varieties. 

 "[We've been] getting calls about bulk seeds and
 buying in quantities and packing them for
 storage for some period of time," said Dave
 Smith, vice president of Seeds of Change in
 Santa Fe, New Mexico. 

 "We definitely think that there will be an
 increase in sales because of this problem." 

 Burt Blumert doesn't need to speculate. The
 Burlingame, California, company he owns,
 Camino Coin, has seen sales of precious metal
 coins double from last year because of Y2K
 jitters. "It's widespread now," Blumert said. 

 In May, Blumert began to run ads for a "Y2K Life
 Preserver," a $3,500 collection of coins that
 includes British gold sovereigns, silver dollars,
 and pre-1965 silver dimes and quarters. 

 He markets the collection as a kind of financial
 Y2K insurance policy, just in case banking
 glitches or more widespread problems call for a
 permanent currency. 

 "When people buy gold, they're dropping out,"
 he said. "This is the ultimate dropout, when the
 institutions themselves aren't working." 

 Copyright © 1994-98 Wired Digital Inc.
-----------------------
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is
distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and
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http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
-----------------------


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