I'm often asked why I do Stock Warning / Updates / etc, when we're a pre-order business. 

Good question.

Short answer:

Making a FRAHM is already complicated and expensive enough, without repeating those processes more often, causing us to massively increase prices & taking our eye off the maximal quality ball.

Longer answer:

Pre-orders could be infinitely flexible, in theory. We'd love that.

In practice, producing tiny batches of garments month by month, in 11 sizes and many other options, means our manufacturers are left constantly planning for us and changing their production lines to FRAHM ways of working.

Our standards are so high, and we are so particular, they'd simply refuse, or charge us quadruple, and I'm not sure I'd want to sell £3,000 waxed field jackets.

Then you've got negative economies of scale with stuff like fabric - which would be produced in little packages that are very hard to move. Transporting fabric is a specialist thing - it really should be done on huge rolls of about 200 metres a go - which we can do with yearly drops.

Instead, we plan even further than a year ahead, with as much room to manoeuvre as possible. If we launch a new colour like Honey Tan, and you love it (this happened) we can buy some extra, maybe 8 months ahead of arrival, but no later.

So we 'pencil in' capacity for the fabric, zips, snaps, factory space, etc, and as we pass through final-order gates, the pre-order options for them dwindle.

That's why we say "Order as soon as you can". We may, for instance, be about to hit a deadline for a very specific YKK type. After that deadline, we'll shut off pre-orders for that jacket.

.... 

That discipline is the balance we've learnt from 7 years of FRAHM. Each style once a year. Simplicity and clarity, so we can focus our efforts into eagle eyes on the production line; at prices, whilst expensive, that aren't silly.

Right, let's see how that pans out in reality for 2025...