More free stuff, please!

We get a remarkable number of soliciatations at the office. Please give me free things for my church auction. Please contribute to my cause. Please spend a bunch of time on the phone with me so I can sell you my thing. Etc. Here's the latest, a somewhat more inspirational request.

Hello,

I really appreciate UCO brand, it's cool! I use your products since many years whit great satisfaction, thank you! I would like to know if it is possible for you to send me some stickers. I am a true fan; I think I deserve it ! ;-)

Thanks in advance, best regards,

Jocelyne

What would you do? I'm undecided so I'm going to delegate to my sales guy!

math problem

Today I helped my brother-in-law with a math problem:

Consider a bridge over a river. The river is one-mile wide. The bridge (side view) is shaped like an arc of a circle, touching down exactly on the shore of the river on each side. The length of the bridge is one-mile-plus-one-foot. The question is: how high above the water is the center of the bridge?

This is not a trick question. It can be solved although it's not easy (unless I missed some shortcuts). The answer is surprising. I'll post it in a few days.

143 steps reduced to 16

One of our big customers uses a web-based program to order from us. The system notifies us of the order, accepts our inputs about packaging and shipping information, and notifies the customer when the order has gone out the door. It also prints the shipping labels we use on the boxes. When we were trained by the previous office manager to use the software it was on an order for 704 ice cream makers. There are 8 to a box so we were sending out 88 boxes. She showed us how we needed to enter the same information 88 times into the system. What a pain in the butt! "There must be a better way!" we insisted. She said no.

Today I handled the paperwork for the next big order from the same customer. She was wrong. I read the manual and called the helpline and figured out how to do the above task in a single entry. For today's order I entered 16 transactions where she would have entered 143. Victory! Unfortunately, while the software was user-friendly in this way, it was stupid in another way. It kept resetting itself to a bad setting so that the printed labels came out half-blank (or half-printed, if you're an optimist). I needed 36 sheets of labels. I got them, but I tossed about 45 in the garbage along the way.

a day too long

I was at work from 6:00am to 8:30pm today. I was roaring with excitement this morning. My production manager returned from a two-week vacation. We received an enormous order from a big customer (140-odd boxes required to fill the order). The computing guy came to get our network up and running. And so on. I stayed late to make a call to China. 7:30pm Thursday my time is 10:30am Friday their time. A good conversation with a tough negotiator. It will be interesting to see how things develop!

Another Amazon.com sale today and we further simplified our fulfillment process. What a blast!

golf club vise

One of our side businesses is golf club vises. Overenthusiastic owners seem to frequently break the handle when they're trying to remove the heads from their clubs. Here's a recent example. I like how the handle "has broken." If I remember correctly, that's the passive tense. I suspect that the process that led to breaking a 3/8" aluminum rod was not passive.

I own a golf clubmakers vise (and shaft puller) which is made by your company. The handle that locks the shaft into position has broken and I was wondering if I could get a replacement. I could also use some replacement rubber pads as mine are a little worn from hot shafts. Please let me know. It is a great product.

Would you send a replacement part? Should he pay for it? Is it worth the hassle to collect a few dollars from him?

Our first internet sale!

Steve, my marketing and sales leader, officially started his job just yesterday (unofficially, last week). One of his first acts was to set up an Amazon.com store for us since our new product, the ice cream ball, wasn't available anywhere on the Amazon site. Amazingly, we've already gotten our first sale! I have mixed feelings on the subject. The company has historically sold dozens or hundreds or thousands of items at a time to distributors and retailers. We're not really set up to deal with one sale at a time. However, we're getting signicantly more revenue since we're selling at retail (minus a stiff commission to Amazon) rather than wholesale. The jury is still out, but I have to say I'm excited about the whole thing! And, despite not having any processes in place to deal with this particular order, we still shipped it within two hours of receipt. Not bad!

A sad note

It's been a rough on the home front for a couple of our employees this week.

One called in today to report the death of his father. We're all quite sad about the news.

Another employee's son (3 years old) broke his leg a couple of days ago. He's got a cast from the middle of his foot to the middle of his thigh. At least for now he can't even put weight on the leg. We saw a picture of one miserable looking child.

China

We also had a great conversation today with the American sales rep for our Chinese suppliers. He gave us some great insights into dealing with them as we try to negotiate improved financial terms for our relationship. He strongly recommended I go to China soon and I think he's right. I suspect I'll be there by Memorial Day.

Critical pricing data

I did an interesting little experiment today. Having recently ordered an entire pallet of tealight candles, I became curious about whether I'd gotten a good price. I would have guessed that buying tens of thousands at a time might get me quite the bargain. For comparison, I picked up a bag of 100 Glimma tealights from Ikea. I paid $3.99 for the Glimma bag or 4.0 cents per tealight. It turns out my pallet came in at 5.6 cents per tealight, plus I paid for shipping. Hmm. There's some room for improvement.

But what about aesthetics and performance you ask? Our tealight does look better. It's got a nice little flower design molded into the top of the candle. The Ikea candles have a plain and boring flat top. Ours also performs (marginally) better. I lit one of each on my desk at 9:00am. The Ikea one went out at around 1:00. Ours lasted about half an hour longer, snuffing itself out at 1:30. Not bad for a dinky little candle. And, unfortunately, nobody will really care that our candle lasts a few minutes longer.

Maybe I can get a deal from Ikea if I buy a pallet from them. 3 cents each?

What would you do?

What would you do if you received this request?

Dear Company !
My name is Oskar and I'm from Poland. I have recently read about Your products in Your Website. They likes me very much. I'm interested in colecting free samples and promotional items. I would be most grateful if You could send me some of that kind of free stuff (t-shirts, promotional clothes, catalogs or other free marketing items).
I do hope You will be able to help me and therefore take this opportunity to thank You in advance for your kind attention to my request.

I think we'll pass on the opportunity to send Oskar free stuff.

Meeting the customer

Today's big event was a meeting with one of our biggest customers. It was an excellent meeting on several levels. I had met the buyer twice before, both times in social settings, both times due to the efforts of the seller of UCO. This time was all business. He wants a new variation on one of our products so we discussed the details, colors, costs, delivery dates, etc. Then he gave us a huge stack of data. Everything we sell to him with all associated sales statistics for 2005 year-to-date, 2004 and 2003. Excellent information! It's easy to see the steadily declining market for candle lanterns (we could already see it in the historical data for UCO) as LED lighting systems begin to take over the world. It's also easy to see how the ice cream ball (link is to the Amazon store we're building) more than made up for the drop in candle lanterns. What fun!

I also learned more about getting our goods across the border into Canada. Kathy had handled all the paperwork so I could deal with the trucker when he picked up the two pallets of goods at 5:30pm. Unfortunately, he and I had to deal with three different customs brokers as we tried to set him up for a smooth border crossing. The first one was the wrong one; the second one was right but closed for the day; the third one covers for the second after-hours. Whew!

Fan mail

This one is fun...

I am so impressed. We just watched Kilomanjaro so I'm all hyped about camping and exploring again. You are creating such cool things. Go get 'um.

Of course, that's my step-mom. But still!

North Yarmouth

The North Yarmouth Academy is having their spring auction next week. Here are the contents of one of the baskets for the silent auction...

6th Grade Class Basket #3 "Seaside Sleepovers"

6th Grade Class

This wicker basket holds the keys to fun when you're on the go! Includes: "Play and Freeze" Ice Cream

Maker, Game Boy Advance SP, Amish Popcorn maker kit, L.L. Bean duffle bag, Red Sox book and more!

Without the internet how would we ever had known?

Whole cream

Whole cream makes even better ice cream than half-and-half. Tracy from Bremerton, WA writes:

I just purchased the ice cream maker and used whole cream in my ice cream. The family loved the flavor,texture, and process in making the treat. Good job, great product for young and old.

Thanks Tracy!

Survival

Before we closed on the business on April 1, I set my goal for the first month: to survive. Why? We faced so much change in a short period that I believed that surviving the change would be sufficient. So far...

• Kathy and I, the new owners, moved in on April 1...
• into new offices (previously full of the personal belongings of the seller's family)...
• with one new computer (not enough)...
• and just two weeks to learn the job of the office manager before she left the company.
• The production manager, a key player, left for a long-ago-planned vacation to see his parents in Europe. A two-week absence just two weeks after we took over.
• The woman who handled shipping also left after a two-week transition.
• We brought in a new bookkeeper who was familiar to us and trustworthy, but not familiar with the new software.
• We've also got a new corporate name, new bank accounts, new emails, etc. We are still working to familiarize our customers and vendors with the changes.
• And so on and so on and so on......

Did I mention that my new sales and marketing director started this week?

I'm three weeks into the one month survival period. How's it going? Except for exhaustion, it's really going pretty well. Kathy picked up Rachael from school yesterday (2:30) and brought her back to the factory. We stayed until about 8:00 taking care of dozens of tasks that needed attention. Rachael had a great time using one of the rolling office chairs to roll around the factory without touching her feet to the ground. She solved the dirty hands problem by getting latex gloves from our assembly area. I didn't like being at work so late on a Friday night but having Kathy and Rachael there made all the difference. And getting the work done lifted a weight from my shoulders.

A final note from a financial perspective. Cash is very tight but things are going swimmingly! We've already shipped 40% more than the target for April and there's still a week to go! Over the next 30-60 days the cash from those sales will begin to flow in from our customers and we should see some relief on the cash issue.

Unhappy customer

If I'm going to tell you the positive I'm going to tell you the negative (or some of it, anway). I received a call today from a customer who had "a lot of fun" with the ice cream. However, she had a couple of suggestions. First, we should take a closer look at the screws that hold the two halves together. While playing with the ball, her son-in-law cut himself somehow. They actually weren't sure where the cut came from, but they suspected the screws might be the culprit. Also, we should include a plastic scoop in the package and mention "don't use a metal scoop" more prominently. She pointed out that the message is on the box but not on the instruction sheet so people are likely to throw away the box and miss the message.

I apologized profusely. "We don't want anyone to get hurt using our products!" It was nice that after her feedback she mentioned that despite the problems they still had fun. I appreciated the call.

sales and more sales!

I've hired my first (non-heritage) employee, a director of sales and marketing. He started yesterday. Today we had an enormous sale of ice cream balls! Yeah! Coincidence, yes, but a nice one.

I also hired a consultant to help me with our Chinese suppliers. He speaks several dialects of Chinese and can provide good support on how to approach the cultural issues, in particular on how I should negotiate. We need to improve both the financial terms and the price on our supply arrangement. Lots to do!

Happy customer

Carole from Paxton, Illinois writes:

I own your Candlelier lantern and think it's just great. easy to use and stays clean. thanks for making such a fine product!

Nice!

Our first process improvement

We did our first process improvement activity in the factory today. It took about 90 minutes. I introduced the concept of a kanban to everyone. Kanban is a Japanese word for signal. In our case, it means that people will not perform any process that has not been called for by their downstream customer.

Let me be more specific. We take aluminum tubing and cut it into pieces which are formed, punched, burnished and then assembled into the candle tubes inside the Original Candle Lantern. In the factory today, not counting the raw material (tubing on the shelf in our receiving area) we have enough product to serve our customers for 92 business days, or about 4 months. Ultimately, I'd like for that number to be just a few days, but the work we did today in 90 minutes should drop 30 or so days from the total. It will take about 8-10 weeks for these changes to propogate through the system so we won't see the results right away.

To explain what we did, let me compare before and after:

Before: Everyone would build as much product as they could with the raw materials they were provided. They looked upstream for signals to build (are there any raw materials for my step in the process?) and they would work until they drained all the upstream materials. Partly as a result, there are enough candle tubes which have been punched but not burnished to last us for 10 weeks.

After: The new rule is that people will only build if there's an empty bin from their customer available to receive their product. Otherwise they should stop (meaning: work on something else). Because we will limit the number of bins in the system, it will be physically impossible to carry more than 2 weeks of tubes between punching and burnishing. We'll have to wait 8 weeks for the excess inventory to burn off, but after that we'll have lower inventory, more space on the shop floor, and we'll still be able to deliver the same amount of high quality product on time.

I swear it's like magic!

Actually though my favorite part of the day was when I gave some general guidelines for improving the bins. The guys in the shop used a single sheet of plywood, a two-by-four, and four screws to (a) cut the capacity of the bin in half from 2 weeks inventory to 1 and (b) make the bin easier to use and empty than before. All this by simply making the plywood into a ramp which sliced the bin in half from the top of one side to the bottom of the other side. (This clearly needs a picture. I'll work on that). I was thrilled that they took my general/vague instructions and turned them into a wonderful improvement!

oops

I had a great conversation with one of our European distributors this morning. He loves our candle lanterns and the ultrapods we distribute. He said he rarely talks to our company because we always ship the right stuff at the right time. He was very complimentary. However, he had taken a look at the ice cream maker and it just wasn't the right product for his market. We Americans have more of a sweet tooth. Rock salt is hard to find in Europe. So, forget it. One more note: this distributor is our sole outlet in this particular country.

Not three hours later I received an email from a potential customer in the same country. "We're interested in the ice cream maker. We want thousands. Please contact us so we can figure this out!"

Funny!

David

We have a feedback form on our website. David used it to great effect...


OK, I'M A HUGE FAN! THESE LANTERNS GO EVERYWHERE: CAMPING, ON THE LIVINGROOM MANTLE (DECORATIVE/EMERG. LGHT'G), THERE'S ONE IN THE BACK OF MY TRUCK WITH THE FIRST AID KIT. IN THE GARAGE. THEY'RE EXCELLENT FOR HEATING "4 SEASON" TENTS IN THE WINTER (CAREFUL!), THEY'RE EVERYWHERE, ALL THE TIME!

I'VE GOT 4 SINGLES (1- PLAIN - UCO (MY FIRST! FROM EMS - NO LOGO)), 1- EMS AND 2- REI LOGO MODELS - ALL SILVER), ALSO, I'VE GOT 1- 3 CANDLE MODEL (RED). ALSO, 4 OF THE TEALIGHT HOLDERS - I GOT THE NEW L.E.D. BOTTOM LAST SEASON - VERY COOL!, I HAVE NEOPRENE SOCKS, A PACKABLE REFLECTOR (THAT I PERSONALY SPENT A FEW HOURS POLISHING TO A "MIRROR FINISH" ON THE UNDERSIDE - CUSTOM!), THE WORKS!!

OK - MY PROBLEM. I KEEP 2 LANTERNS HANGING IN THE GARAGE NEAR THE WORKSHOP. 1- SINGLE AND THE TRIPLE. THERE WAS A SMALL ACCIDENT IN THE GARAGE - NOTHING SERIOUS, BUT... 2 DEAD SOLDIERS - VERY BAD! ONE OF MY OLDEST SINGLES GOT MOSTLY CRUSHED - VERY SAD! IT WAS HANGING BY THE CHAIN, OPEN... AND WENT DOWN. THE TRIPLE ALSO FELL BUT NOT AS BAD AS THE SINGLE. THE TRIPLE IS BENT BACK AND IS OK, EXCEPT FOR THE GLASS - THE SINGLE WILL TAKE TIME AND PATIENCE TO RESHAPE THE PARTS BUT IT WILL LIVE TO BURN AGAIN ONE DAY!

SO I WRITE TO SHARE MY PERSONAL TALE OF CANDLE LANTERN DESTRUCTION AND SADNESS AND ASK IF YOU COULD PLEASE SEND ME 2 REPLACEMENT GLASSES (1-SM / 1-LG). I'D BE GLAD TO PAY FOR THE PARTS.

THANKS VERY MUCH,
DAVID


Such a loyal customer will get our red carpet treatment!

Wesley

Last week I talked with Wesley. He's a fifth-grader and a boy scout. He called to report that he had used the ice cream maker ("we followed the directions exactly") and it made only a milky soup. Since I know the ice cream maker works if used properly, I advised him to try again, following the directions on the web site carefully. I also suggested an upgrade to whole cream. He told me that he would be entering a cooking contest the next day and ice cream from the ball would be his entry. I asked him to call me back with the results.

The results were wonderful! Of 11 entrants, Wesley placed 3rd! He was delighted and "very excited." He won a trophy, a ribbon, and a steel barbeque set! The judges told him that they were "moved by the ice cream." He says the winners had better presentation, but he felt his ice cream was the best.

Way to go Wesley!

Details details details

I spent several hours yesterday morning processing an order from a company in Britain. The first problem was they ordered a product we no longer stock. That one's not too hard to deal with ("Sorry, we no longer stock that."). The bigger problem was a wonderful and large order for a new product we've never sold before. Unfortunately, back in January, we gave them a quote that didn't properly reflect our costs. As a result, we're charging too little. And it turns out that deciding the "correct" price is anything but a science. After much consulting, thinking, spreadsheet building, etc., I picked some new prices. My note to them told them we'd honor the old prices for this order but future orders would be at the new prices. Oh, and by the way, "Hi, I'm the new owner!" Please send your money to my bank account, wire instructions attached.

Two more days of transition training and then the office manager leaves. I imagine it will be sort of like zooming down a nice paved road and suddenly finding yourself zooming down a bumpy dirt road. I don't expect we'll crash but it's going to be bumpy for a while.

History

Just a bit of history for the inquiring mind...

I spent seven years at Boeing as a manufacturing manager including jobs in Manufacturing Engineering, Process Engineering and Quality. I also did a stint on the shop floor managing the crew that builds the floor grids and empennage (tail) for the 777. After a lot of introspection I quit the company last year with the express intent to purchase a small manufacturing firm. It's taken me almost a year, but I've finally succeeded!

Ending the week on a good note

Today was as busy a day as I've ever had. At one point I was working on the accounting system with my bookkeeper while a potential sales and marketing leader sat nearby waiting for a chance to talk with me. The office phone was ringing at the same time as my cell phone and the seller of the business dropped in to see how things were going. Yikes!

Most importantly, the seller checked with his bank and confirmed that they had received the money and it would be credited to his account by midnight tonight. Since one clause of our deal said he could cancel the whole thing if I didn't pay by today, hearing about the deposit came as an enormouse relief to me. I first met him in early November last year. That means it took almost exactly five months from the first introduction to the closing of the deal.

I also answered a wonderful phone call. A boy on the other end asked to speak to our "customer service department." "That's me!", I answered. "We followed the directions on the ice cream maker exactly but all we got was soup," he explained. I could hear his mother coaching him in the background. I gave him some guidance and suggested he upgrade from half-and-half to whipping cream. Specifically I sent him to our webpage for more detailed instructions, recipes, and pictures. The best part was at the end. He explained that he is a Boy Scout. There's a cooking competition tomorrow and his entry is going to be ice cream made in the ice cream ball. I asked him to call me back and report on the results.

There's amazing variation in shipping from day to day. Yesterday we shipped about $50,000 of product, today about $250. More rooms got painted, more furniture moved, more computers installed and software upgraded. All the blinds disappeared from the windows to go out for cleaning. The wonderful displays of the entire product line (including historical items) were re-established in our entry area.

I think I'll be going boating with the seller and one of our biggest customers on Sunday. This involves riding the air chair, an event I find more intimidating than buying a business!

Today is a big day. A HUGE day. ENORMOUS!

Although we signed all the paperwork for the purchase of the business a week ago (April 1, insert April Fools joke here), today the bank is finally going to make it real! Last night the transfer of funds (and lots of them!) went from my bank to the seller's. This morning he'll confirm the receipt of the money and I will really and truly be a small business owner. Amazing!

You can check out the business (UCO Corporation) at www.candlelantern.com. My corporation is actually Industrial Revolution, Inc. However, we will keep the UCO name alive since it's such a great brand name for candle lanterns. I'm told Canadians go into their camping store and ask for a "UCO" when they want a candle lantern. So, we'll be Industrial Revolution, Inc., makers of UCO Candle Lanterns.

In another delightful development, Forbes.com has posted a new article about REI, the biggest customer for IR. The article features our newest product, the Campers Dream Ice Cream Maker. Check it out at http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2005/0425/062.html.

Buying a business

I read a comment recently that blogging isn't just for people who want to be pundits. "There may be just six people in the world who care what you had for dinner last night . . . this is a way to tell them." I have many friends and family members who have expressed interest in my attempt to buy a small manufacturing business. This is my offering to them. I hope they both like it.