What’s the deal with Animal Plastics these days?

[jmcrook]

They are worth every penny. Focus is also run entirely by a husband-wife team who basically are working 7 days a week. I have no idea how they manage to remain cheerful, friendly, and very responsive to communication but I've had consistently great experiences with them across multiple orders over the last few years. Plus they are constantly innovating and adding more features based on their own experience as keepers as well as customer feedback.

I am in no way trying to trash AP, as I don't question their enclosure quality. It's just that a couple of other companies (Black Box and Focus) are currently producing enclosures of at least equivalent quality and doing so while maintaining great communication with customers and reliable production and delivery times. I kinda feel like AP maybe got complacent based on their well deserved reputation, but they have real competition now and it seems like their customer service and communication around delivery time has maybe not kept up with that reality.

Oh I definitely didn't read into it that you were bashing them. Nor I trying to bash any new cage makers. Just saying that AP has a 22yr track record of quality product. Sure, communication could be better at times and their lead time has always been long and no one likes waiting. But a solid reputation for dependable products for over 2 decades is likely contributing to their consistently high demand which perpetuates the long lead time in spite of newer manufacturers being worthy competitors nowadays.

If I were in dire need of caging with a much faster turnaround I'd give serious consideration to Toad Ranch/Focus Cubed/Black Box. I just personally can't justify paying +/- twice the cost after shipping depending on the cage. If I ever do a full room overhaul for aesthetic reasons I do very much like the faux wood front paneling (and lack of center support beam on the 4' cages) of Toad Ranch cages though. Full walls of those cages stacked up looks super sharp.