Sam Yazdian, the president of Electronic Express in Nashville, Tennessee, is developing a sense of what it would be like to be a toy store owner who just ran out of Hokey-Pokey Elmos.
The difference is that Yazdian keeps running out of models of the thinner new rear-projection televisions which, with prices sometimes as high as US$5,000, are vastly more expensive than any toy.
"We sell what we can get our hands on but it's not much," said Yazdian who began stocking additional television brands in hopes of getting more of the new sets for his 15 stores. "We got just 30 percent of what we ordered."
A new generation of rear-projection televisions -- known as microprojection sets, or, more awkwardly, as DLP, for digital light processing, or LCD, for liquid crystal display, sets -- have become a surprise hit these holidays.
Microprojection sets have sharper images and less bulk than traditional televisions and earlier projection TVs. Moreover, most can show high-definition programming, which makes them particularly popular among sports fans.
As many potential buyers are discovering this holiday shopping season, manufacturers are running short. That may partly be a result of shortages of a major component. But many manufacturers acknowledge that the main problem is that they simply underestimated the demand.
"Since we launched this product in June 2002, we've continuously under-judged where the ceiling on demand for it is," said Steve Dinosian, the senior marketing manager for visual displays at the US division of Samsung, the South Korean manufacturer that is a leading producer of the sets.
It is not just small retailers feeling the pinch. At Sears Roebuck many customers are now buying TV's for delivery after the holidays on the promise that they will be on hand in time for the major college football bowl games and the Super Bowl.
"Demand is about two and a half times what we thought it would be," said John Schlenner, Sears' division manager for home electronics. "But let's be honest, the big game isn't until January, so a lot of customers are letting us order it for them."
Dinosian said that Samsung was still unable to fill all orders despite having doubled production at its factories in South Korea and Mexico since June. In the US, Dinosian said, Samsung has shipped 100,000 microprojection sets in the last year and a half but still has back orders for 30,000 -- a figure he says may significantly understate the actual unfulfilled demand.
"Consumers are calling me directly because they want their DLP sets," Dinosian said. "That's how crazy it is."
Microprojection sets may be enjoying their unexpected boom in part because of the excitement over flat-screen TVs. According to several retailers, consumers are turning up in showrooms eager for the flat screens -- until they see the price. Once they recover from the sticker shock, they are gravitating to the less expensive, widescreen rear-projection sets.
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