HobbyLink Japan is moving! Because of this:
HobbyLink Japan is moving! Because of this:
- Our web site will be down briefly Nov. 9-10
- There will be no shipping at all Nov. 10-18 (orders may be placed normally)
- Email replies will be slow until Nov. 19
Transсript:
Hi, everybody. I'm Scott Hards, founder and president of HobbyLinkJapan. We've got some really exciting stuff happening at HLJ thesedays, and I'd like to share that with you.
As a lot of you may know from the announcements we've had on our website or from advertisements we've placed in magazines, 2007 marks thetenth year of our business as a company. Back in 1995 I started HLJ assort of a side business, but thanks to the incredible response that Igot from customers like you, it quickly became far more than I couldhandle. So I took the web site down, gathered some people, some money,and put together a simple product catalog, and then we relaunched inJanuary of 1997 as a real company. The ten years since then have justbeen an incredible ride, with growth that at times has frankly beenvery hard to manage, thanks to repeat business by dedicated customerslike you.
For nearly nine of those ten years, we've been operating out of awarehouse complex in Tatebayashi; that's a small city about 35 milesnorth of Tokyo. And it's a rental facility. As such, it's notparticularly impressive, and that's probably why we've never shown itoff to our customers before. But I'd like to actually do that right now.
Our facility is simply one large warehouse, and a small officebuilding -- that's that little yellow house-like structure on the leftthere. The warehouse itself is about 660 square meters, or 7100 squarefeet. Overall, we've got it split into two areas. The pallet storagearea that you can see here, where products are kept in their originalcartons, and then another area where products are broken out ontostandard flat shelves. As you can see, things are packed just about astightly as they can get, and still leave us any room to get work donein.
It's out in the warehouse where we do all the picking and packing ofcustomer orders. Our picking staff pulls the merchandise needed foreach order from the shelves and sorts them into these plasticcontainers. Our packing team in turn then checks the items that havebeen picked and, if all is well, packs the order carefully so that itcan reach you in the best condition possible. On busy days, each of ourpacking staff may handle as many as 120 individual customer orders.
Twice a day the local branch of the Japanese post office sends atruck over to HLJ to pick up the hundreds of orders now ready to go.That marks the start of a journey to the other side of the world formost of those little brown boxes, as the vast majority of our customersare located in North America and Europe, at least an ocean away from us.
Meanwhile, over in the office area, catalog staff are inputting dataabout new products, while others scan packaging or take photographs ofnew items for the HLJ web site catalog. To finish off that catalog, ateam of four people reviews every new product that comes in, andprepares the snappy commentary for our web site that we hope ourcustomers appreciate, because it sure is a lot of work!
So, that's our quick two-minute introduction to HLJ's facilities. Sowhat's all the 'exciting stuff' that I mentioned a couple of minutesago?
Well, about a year ago, I decided that there was no simply no way wecould continue to operate out of our present warehouse. We need morespace for open shelving, more space for sorting and packing, more spacefor new employee desks, even more space for cars in the employeeparking lot! So we're taking the plunge! With the help of the good cashflow that the business we've been able to generate has given us, plusof course a lot of help from a local financial institution, we've beenable to build our own new office and warehouse complex.
Construction started back in June and everything is slated to befinished by November 10. Total warehouse space in our new facility isgoing to be a whopping 32,000 square feet, or about 3,000 squaremeters. That's four and a half times the size of our current warehouse!The office area will nearly triple in size as well. And of course,we've planned for plenty of parking.
Being on the other side of the world from us, you're probably not asexcited by this news as we are. It's not going to directly affect you,after all. But it will allow us to completely revamp our picking andpacking procedures to speed up our turnaround time, and hopefully getyour orders out to you faster than ever before. I'm sure it will take afew weeks for us to get settled in and adjusted, but we've got a lot ofchanges planned that should allow us to provide you with a bettershopping experience at HLJ than in years past.
Unfortunately, however, between now and the week of November 19,there are going to be some unavoidable service delays here at HobbyLinkJapan while we're packing everything up and moving it into our newfacilities. Specifically, between November 10 and November 18, ourentire warehouse operations are going to be completely closed down, sowe're not going to be able to do any shipping of any kind during thatperiod.
Along those lines, we're not going to be very quick in our responsesto your emails either, because the computers, or most of them, that ourstaff uses to do that work are going to be packed up in boxes andprobably on a truck somewhere.
Also, there's going to be a short period on the evening of November9 or the morning of November 10, depending on your time zone, where ourentire web site is offline as we move our main server units from ourcurrent location to the new facility.
If the move goes smoothly, we hope to be back up and running asnormal on Monday, November 19. But of course, after a move of thissize, we expect that there's going to be a few bumps and wrinkles inthe new facility that need to get ironed out, so there may be somedelays. We really ask for your patience during this time as we getadjusted to our new facilities, and hopefully get primed to give youservices that are even better than they've ever been in the past.
You know, being able to build our own warehouse and office facilityhas been the most exciting and also the most challenging thing thatI've done in the ten years since I started HobbyLink Japan. I'd like totake this opportunity to thank our loyal customers from the bottom ofmy heart for making this even possible in the first place. It's been avery exciting ten years, and I look forward to serving you again fordecades to come!
じゃね!
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