Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Casey Flavin with CJS Securities.
Casey Flavin - CJS Securities
Question on the ion. Obviously big news a couple of weeks ago. Can you just update us with where you are in the final review phase and has their been any sort of significant feedback to note from customers that you’re currently working on?
Marc T. Giles
Well, there hasn’t been, I wouldn’t say, any dramatic news. I mean, from the field the reports back from the customers who are using the machine is extremely favorable. So we’re very, very pleased about that. I think at this point, or at least the last time I was updated, the machines that were operating at customer sites in the field, were producing somewhere between 20,000-30,000 s.f. of product sold for a variety of applications and the commentaries that we’ve gotten back from our customers has been positive. I think we posted one customer testimonial on our Solara ion website. And we’ve had others, obviously, from them.
On the production side, we continue to ramp up process pretty much according to plan. We continue to find and address ramp-up issues that we want to get nailed down before we go to final production mode, but that’s to be expected.
Casey Flavin - CJS Securities
And can you just give us an update on where you are in terms of your pre-order trends? I know you were at right around 200 at sort of last count. And how many orders do you expect to come out of DRUPA, if you’re willing to let us know sort of what the response was? It sounds like that show was very favorable. And have you had any success in firming up some of the soft orders that you had in hand?
Marc T. Giles
I’ll give you what I can here as of the latest. Right now we have approximately, shipped about 20 units, out into the field. We have another 15 units that are in backlog that are demo units that have yet to go out into the field, in Europe, for our Spandex business unit, so we don’t really count those in the dollar value of our backlog. And then we have, in firm backlog, right now to make up those 10 units, about 148 units.
No since we announced the launch, we have lost about 25 of our soft orders, for time purposes. Customers who couldn’t wait any longer to see their demonstrations, so we’ve lost some of that business. And we’re not accepting any more soft orders any longer. So we still have a backlog of soft orders. I don’t have the exact number but somewhere in the range of between 50-75 that are customers who are waiting to see the machine and demonstration before doing final commitment.
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