The BIG Move Diary – Part II

Today is Sunday, not just any old Sunday, but it is Easter Sunday. Its early cause I need to get a early start today. What sucks about it being on Easter? Nothing really, I can still get my cup of Mc Cafe since the Mc Donald’s is open today, YEAH!

Yesterday went off without too many hitches. We left the hotel and forgot the key for the rental truck. There was so much on the brain you can sometimes forget the small stuff. That was not too big of an issue, but I had to go back and get it since we needed to return the truck by 2:00.

Yesterday George and crew got all the product on the shelves and sorted into their new home. They were done by lunch time! Very efficient stuff man, and the folks here are all cool. After tinkering with the in-house PC my partner finally got all parts of our proprietary shipping program to load and work on the server here as well. That was the BIGGEST blind part of the move. Could we actually get our software to run on their servers the way it did for us? Since he wrote the program for his own use when he was doing all of our packing and shipping back home, could it now work on a larger level and be properly ported to North Carolina? The answer is now YES!

So with all these things in place, all that we need to do today is get a good inventory count and put the location codes into our systems. What I mean is that each item has a space on a shelf and each row has multiple shelves. We will use an alphanumeric code that will tell the shipping technician where the item actually resides for pulling it, simply by using the location code. This makes it easy to locate product where Row O Shelf 21 would be a “blue widget” now on the pull sheet all items will have its corresponding location code. So that is the task for today BEFORE I get to eat my Easter dinner

We got all the reports to print properly, our labels are printing as planned. Communication between offices has been simulated and is working. All systems are GO and now tomorrow is the ultimate test. We will run a full production day on Monday. Just so you know, we planned this weekend knowing that Spring Break + Easter makes for one of the slowest sales weekends due to the holidays. This allows us to do the move and not have the heavy volume on Monday from a normal weekend. This will allow extra time for us to hammer out any issues on Monday and still make the pick up times for the carriers.

Now that I have told you all the what’s let me tell you some of the why’s…why are we doing this? The question came from my mother, she is always checking up on me like she knows what I do, LMAO. But the why is still a good question. This started by me asking myself a question…”Is my time best spent on the nuts and bolts of our business or the merchandising and marketing?” What happens when you have a more flexible approach to your business operations? This whole conversation really was sparked by Phil Leahy (PeSA Australia founder) last year when I was in Australia. Phil said that with all the things going on with ColderICE he was amazed how hands on I was with daily operations for 3rd Power Outlet. He began to lay out the benefits to me of allowing the day to day, nuts and bolts go so I could free up time for other things at the same time move on a faster road to maximizing profitability. Phil is a smart dude and I took that conversation to heart. Everything starts with an idea and there are MANY good ideas in the universe. But few can actually execute a good idea and I have been able to do that with this move.

A few months after leaving Australia I still had the conversation in my mind. I knew what I wanted but had no idea where to get it. Then George called me out of the blue with news of a new venture he was starting called “Fulfillment by George” …. OMG I had my answer! OK, I got to get to work now, so I will be back tomorrow with a few more thoughts on it.

Stay tuned, I will let you know how that works out tomorrow