Fire It Up said:Being heavily involved in large company's integrations and acquisitions as a project manager there could be a variety of reasons for this issue. First item of any merger type business deal is to keep the customer first and try to reduce any influence in supply and product quality. I doubt seriously that this was just a miss calculation in ordering and supply inventory as well as a result of intentions to just stiff the customer. Oversight in production output, delayed orders being processed, etc is a possibility.
My assumption is that we are seeing the failure of an organization realignment. You have a VP of production or sales that on X date was dropped a fire in his lap. He showed up for a meeting and was told with the rest of the company that he would now head up not only what he was doing, but now also Harman, and on top of all this he would be in charge of the integration of both entities. He probably dropped the ball due to inexperience, or he was not paying attention to work because his wife was cheating on him, or his kid just broke his arm skateboarding, or he just lost his house in a fire due to a Harman stove, etc. We can only assume.
That being said, it is what it is, and people should have a contingency plan if they are not getting a Harman. Gotta deal with the punches being thrown.
Ironically the last quarterly statement shows a big drop in the hearth division's sales due to the decline in new home construction. But they hope to make up some of these losses via the growing alternative energy sector aka multi-fuel stoves.