JUCA has found it necessary to stop production of its products. If and when JUCA products are again to be available, it will be due to some separate company manufacturing them for JUCA. Sorry!
In our 29 years of manufacturing and providing JUCAs, we have always known how good they are and how popular they could be. At one point early in JUCAs existence, when we advertised, we were briefly the fourth largest manufacturer of woodstoves in the US. We gradually realized that we had become an "impersonal" company and in 1981, we stopped all adverstising. For the 16 years between 1981 to 1997, with NO adversiting, enough people still somehow found us (probably friends or neighbors of existing owners) to keep us occupied.
In 1997, we created our web site. We actually didn't do it to develop additional sales! Over the years, we had discovered that many existing JUCA owners could benefit from suggestions or additional knowledge of how JUCAs are designed and work. Owners are always so thrilled at how well they work that they seldom even think that they might perform even better! Well, the great majority of those earlier JUCA buyers were through contractors, dealers and distributors, and we really don't know where most JUCAs are actually installed, or even who actually owns them!
The web site was put up to give additional information to those current owners, and e-mail links were put in to encourage those owners to contact us, so we could learn where they are! We included price information, mostly for them, expecting that they would remain the conventional way people would learn about and become interested in buying a future JUCA. After all, in 1997, the World Wide Web was a novelty, with relatively few browsers, and very few businesses seriously thought about actually trying to sell anything through it. After all, who in the world would ever mail in over $1000 to a distant small company, for a product they have never seen! We really couldn't imagine ever selling ANY except to people who had already seen one work, in other words, a friend or relative of an existing owner.
This sort of explains why, in the thousand pages of our web site, we never actually try to SELL the units! (except on that one humor 'URGENT' page.) It's all just meant to be informative and helpful.
Well, then people like YOU started reading and understanding the logic behind JUCAs, and coming to want one! It is certainly a great compliment to us that people recognize the many advancements in the JUCA design. Even more, considering all the scam artists in the world, it's a wonderful compliment to us that people send in orders and money! We would never intentionally hurt anyone or let them down, but there's no obvious way that potential customers could know that.
Now, logically, with such corruption in the world, it would seem that only a rare order would be sent in. We are all (properly) taught to be cautious around strangers and to be skeptical of products that seem to be a lot better than competitors. Realistically, we should have gotten one order through the Internet every few months! Again, we appreciate the confidence that people place in us in the amazing number of requests for orders that we have received! Just imagine if we still had the 500 dealers we used to have, where people could actually SEE them first! And where they could take one home when they paid for it, like in those old days when we were a larger company!
Well, we REALLY like being a little company. We realize that there are a LOT of people who would want such superior products, especially since our prices are actually LESS than the prices for competing products that don't do as much. That's a problem! Just from the amazing interest in our web site, our company could be ten to twenty times as big as it is now. And, if we were to again encourage local dealerships, even more. But we really don't want to be a big company again.
The scale of this situation is amazing! Every week, for more than the past three years, around 10,000 people visit our site! That number is mind-boggling to us! A LOT of those visitors have been looking around at other products, and have been disappointed at what they were being offered for their $3,500 or more of hard-earned money, so they become very excited at our products and our prices. Since the middle of 1999 (and the millennium scare) we began to be faced with a constant demand of at least 25 times as many units as we could possibly build! Again, a wonderful compliment, but also a stressful problem.
We had to entirely stop accepting new orders during the Fall of 2000, (for around six months) so we would have a chance to get somewhat caught up. At that time, we started realizing that the "three week" construction time that we had always aimed for over the years had gone out the window. Rather than accepting new orders, we felt it appropriate to put all of our efforts into completing all of the existing orders first. That seemed like the ethical thing to do. We began again accepting new orders for ONLY B-3A, B-3B, F-9A, and F-9AX on May 1, 2001. All of the other JUCA models were put on hiatus, with no clear idea of when (or even if) they would again be available.
Very soon after that, we again had to hold off accepting more. We were able to accept a few hundred orders. Over ten thousand people wanted to send in money! (In case you're keeping track, that's around $15 million we could have received, in cash! What company would turn THAT down???) Again, the Internet is HUGE!
There have been several complications in recent years. One complicating aspect of all this (from our "whiny" point of view) is that there has been a significant change in these recent years. We began JUCA, and always enjoyed working on and participating in the construction and shipping of JUCAs, because we have a design that is tremendously more efficient than any other available woodburner. During the 1970s, nearly all of our customers were rural, poor people, who really benefited from being able to heat their homes with wood and who really needed and appreciated the low prices we have always had for JUCAs.
From the end of the 1970s on, an occasional doctor or lawyer would buy one. I supposed we should have appreciated the additional business, but we always generally knew that such people didn't really NEED to save on their heating bill, and that they were just getting a JUCA to show off to their friends that they had the latest and the best of yet another "toy". For several years, we tried to figure out if there was any way to either not sell to such people at all or to have double the price apply. Obviously, we couldn't do either of those. But fortunately, the number of such buyers was always a fairly small percentage of JUCA buyers, so we took consolation in that MOST of JUCA buyers were getting the benefits that we worked so hard to make available. Minimal quiet grumbling occurred!
Instead, it seems that a high percentage of the people who now want JUCAs are financially very well off, and they seldom actually NEED to save on their heating bills. Even worse, from our point of view, is that nearly half of people who ordered units in the last several years, made it clear to us that they didn't even care if they get significant heat from the JUCA! THEY had wound up ordering a JUCA because we (a) custom-build every single unit; (b) we are very, very good at creating designs for odd and unique applications where no other company would be willing to spend the time and effort in design time; (c) we clearly understand the field of fireplaces and woodstoves; and (d) we never charge exorbitant prices.
None of this has anything to do with being efficient or saving on heating bills or in any way, benefiting from all the technology we design into JUCAs! These many people just wanted something so unusual or so custom that no other company would touch it! Actually, many of them would probably have paid nearly anything for the unique products they wanted. As a result of nearly half of recent orders being like this, we were greatly delayed in producing and shipping the units for the people who might actually BENEFIT from a JUCA. Grrrrr!
Again, any other company would love this situation. More, more, more! Grow, grow, grow! Profit, profit, profit! We don't! We didn't begin this company to make expensive toys for rich people, and we hate doing that now. In the 1970s, we actually tried to get JUCA 'incorporated' as a non-profit corporation, because, even then, all we wanted to do was to provide good products to people who needed them, and we looked at the whole concept as a public service! It turns out that government officials consider 'manufacturing' and 'non-profit' to be mutually exclusive, so our request was quickly turned down.
There have been a few REALLY offensive situations. We assume that you probably already read a bunch of our 1,000 web-pages, so you probably know that the main heat exchange tubes go side-to-side in our L-8 Fireplace Insert units. In 2000, a customer said he wanted to order an L-8, but he wanted those (hidden) heat exchange tubes to run front-to-back rather than sideways! When we asked why, he didn't have any engineering or design reason in mind. (We had been making them that proven way for over 25 years). He just said he thought he'd LIKE it that way and so that's the way he wanted it. When we suggested that that would certainly cost a lot more, he was offended and insisted that we do that at our standard price. We tried to point out that it would likely cost us over $100,000 in research and development to adequately design and prove such a design, with a following comparable amount for the UL safety testing of it, he just seemed to feel that was our responsibility, because we offered to make a "custom-built unit" for him in our web-site! Astounding! We got the distinct sensation that he considered us to be his "slaves" to order around as he might wish! That incident was a number of months back, early in 2000, but my blood still boils as I write this!
No, we are NOT the personal slaves of anyone who considers getting a JUCA! (We know that MOST customers are considerate and realize that!) We are also not a custom fabrication shop that looks to make a huge profit on weird, custom-built products. We are just a little company that has a better mousetrap. We have built and sold around 26,000 JUCA units, each of which is likely to be entirely heating an entire home (except probably those doctors and lawyers). We thought it was a proper thing to do to offer as much buyer-input as possible, so we went to entirely custom-building each unit in 1989. That WASN'T to encourage rich people to have us build unique toys for them, it was to try to increase the VALUE to those who bought JUCAs for the "right" reasons.
Our recent experience caused us to try to find a reasonable resolution to this situation. It was our impression that only around 1/6 of recent orders had been for people who would likely regularly heat their house with their JUCA, maybe less. Again, we have no right to, but we were really are not happy about this. Since we think of the whole thing as a public service of a sort (both the informative web-site and the products), we like to think that our efforts are going to a good use. You know about all those people who donated $500 million to the Red Cross for 9/11 New York? And, how upset they were when the Red Cross decided to use most of it to buy equipment and other things totally unrelated to 9/11 New York? It's like, why go to the effort to try to do something nice for people if the results of the effort seem to be wasted? I know! I know! This guy grumbles a LOT! (Sorry!)
If all this makes any sense to you, then you will understand that we greatly appreciate the interest shown for our products, but we decided to make certain rather "discriminatory" choices early in 2001. (1) We decided that we would put off any orders that were to be shipped to super-southerly locations, until other orders were finished. In our opinion, such locations do not require the sophistication of a JUCA, and nearly any competing product should work great. If necessary, we even offered to help such people select an appropriate competing product. (2) If units, particularly F-9A units, were desired specifically and exclusively to be custom-built to match some specific mantel or other "decorative" reason, where heating is clearly a minimal consideration, then like above. In this case, we realize that the customer probably doesn't have an alternate source for such a fireplace, but that wasn't really why we began our business. Maybe a good local mason could build a keyhole-shaped fireplace, or the other such things that people have asked us to build for them. Often, they then would say "Oh, could you make it without a blower? We don't want any heat from it!" If you have been paying attention, I probably don't even need to say Grrrrrrr! (3) This one was harder for us to identify, those rich people who just want the latest toys, again, like above. About the only clue we would see toward this direction is when prospective customers mailed us in house plans for essentially a mansion! Or if their name was followed by DDS or MD or Atty!
Wow! Have you ever heard a company whine and cry so much? And about too much Prosperity, at that? What a goofy company!
This pretty much left the B-3B, the B-3A and the F-9A and the F-9AX as the units that we focused on. It was our hope that potential customers would use thoughtful judgment and determine if they actually NEEDED a JUCA, and, if not, to defer to someone else who would actually benefit more from getting one. In a perfect world, this could have reduced the demand for JUCAs to a level that we could manage.
But, due to human nature, that did not fully happen. Many people then wanted one even more, because of the "rarity" of them, kind of like diamonds. Some people were intrigued by such an unusual company as ours, and felt even more compelled to get our products. We appreciate the sentiment, but they were not doing us any favors by increasing our burdens! We know that kind-hearted people would want to give us their business, because of the kind of business we aspire to be. But, our plate is full! Actually, the table around the plate is full, too. And, the floor of the room with the table? Full, too! As odd as it seems, each additional order (or request for an order) for our JUCA units represented additional cause for stress at this end!
We realize that our web-site seems to tend to build up readers' enthusiasm for getting JUCA wood-burners. We hope you found this BAD NEWS link before getting too attached to the JUCAs!
While our phone number was still in the web-site, many hundreds of those people would then call to plead, or yell, or threaten. It's not enjoyable to get dozens of such phone calls every day, when we knew that there was absolutely nothing we could physically do to solve the situation. Our solution? We removed all of the phone references from the JUCA web-site!
But that did not fully solve the situation. In many months, our secretaries would receive as many as a hundred letters in the mail, which contained Order Forms and checks (usually for the whole amount) from people who had been told that we could not build units for them. Apparently, such people figured we were a "normal" American business, which would NEVER turn down "cash-in-hand". But, between our ethics of not wanting to ever let anyone "cut in line" and the fact that we couldn't build more units anyway, our secretaries would usually laugh as they remailed those large amounts of money back to the senders! There were even MORE extreme cases! An occasional letter like that included a check for $500 or $1000 or even $2,000 MORE than the cost of the unit! Whatever the technical term for that is, we saw it as an attempted "bribe" and sent those back, too! The most was a $5,000 check for a $1389 B-3B unit! (mailed back, of course!) And what was our eventual solution to this situation? Yes, we felt it necessary to remove our mailing address from all of the web-site, even including the various Order Forms!
Finally, earlier versions of the "Bad News" and this Time Schedule pages seem to caused another unexpected result. We realize that there ARE a lot of people who have great personal difficulties, and who might greatly benefit from having a JUCA. But we were amazed at receiving many dozens of heart-rending e-mails every single month. They seem to regularly involve six to ten children, recent unemployment, and often some extremely serious medical difficulty like cancer. Now, we realize that some of the people who sent in such notes were being honest in describing their situations. But the enormous numbers of such notes caused us to wonder if we had just caused some people to "compose" such notes, in order to try to persuade us to give special preference, as our comments in this and the Bad News link implied. We don't want to accuse anyone of anything, but we are somewhat surprised at so many people who describe such dark and hopeless lives all feeling that getting a JUCA would solve everything! There have been so many such notes that our full production could not even build enough units JUST FOR THEM!
If and when ethical and customer-centered businesses come forward, we will again be able to keep up with the demand. Actually, a group of people from Kansas, in 2001, worked at learning how to build two JUCA models efficiently. They eventually seem to have given up on pursuing it. That's sad. After them, seven other prospective manufacturers have come forward, and then soon disappeared after discovering how complex it is to build JUCAs!
E-mail to: JUCA1@mb-soft.com