Dear Friends,
The podcast returned this week on Tuesday. Click here if you want to go watch that. In that I went into more detail about our bar issue and the mill we are looking to get. In short we have a few steps ahead of us.
First, I needed to confirm that we were able to get the electrical needs to the location where we want to put the machine. I was able to have a commercial electrician friend of mine come out and take a look at what needed to be done. The building we are in once was an old toy factory back in the 1960s, as best we can confirm. The back half of the building is used as a local warehouse by the John Deere plant and we rent out the front half.
When the building was built it clearly was the height of the nuclear age because this building is built to last forever. Concrete floors, cinderblock or brick walls (both internal and external), and a concrete roof (at least in the part where we are. That means that doing electrical work can be tricky sometimes as it can involve drilling through a bit of rock. However due to the fact that this building was originally full of machines, there are a lot of existing conduit that has been abandoned in place. Thankfully we are able to use some of that this time, which will limit the amount of work that needs to be done for the electrical install.
With that step well in hand, we are visiting the local showroom of the mill manufacturer next week with a professional tool and diemaker/machinist friend I have. He is a good man and a clever maker and knows how I think, and how I'm always looking to expand our capabilities. So I'll be glad to have him with us to properly grill the tech people there. He will help translate my current and expanded visions for what we will use this machine for into proper questions to ensure that it can do what we want it to do in the long run.
If that goes well the machines are warehoused in Milwaukee and we can have one of our local shipping partners go and pick it up within a few days, hopefully. My hope is to have it producing bars perhaps by the end of next week, or by the end of the month at the latest.
In the meantime, we have brought back an old friend who helped us years ago at this location, before retiring to go work for a famous YouTuber. Its good to have the part time help to get us caught up and to cover what I would likely have been doing in production had I not been stuck in Bar Purgatory. With the help we are making progress getting back within our 3-5 business day lead time. It's still too early to tell if we will be able to hit that mark by the end of this week though.
That concern is in no small part due to the bars of course...
From bad to worse, my time its taking to produce the bars has nearly doubled over the last week. This is mainly due to the bandsaw blade dulling far quicker than I had hoped. It wasn't until yesterday that it got bad enough for me to be inquire about what can be done to that same machinist friend. He made it clear that the blade would be a wear item and would need to be replaced. Not more than 3 hours later the band actually broke in half... So that was the end of making bars yesterday.
Years ago, before my business ownership days, I wondered as I purchased things online why they offered Next Day Air shipping for $100 or more at times. Who could possible have the kind of extra money to spend to get it just a few days faster? Flash forward a few years and I find myself in just such a position. Considering the cost of us not being able to produce bars quickly (or at all) this week with how behind we are and how that delay affects sales, that extra shipping cost pales in comparison. Thankfully the bandsaw blades are out for delivery today thanks to UPS Next Day Air delivery.
There are many new things on the horizon that are just having their initial meetings these days. New clever marketing ideas and methods for testing and tracking them, new product ideas, both leather and beyond, and much more is being discussed. Each day seems to be two steps forward, one step back, but after 6 years of doing this, the view from this height on the mountain is beginning to get very good. I'm beginning to think that I may be getting a bit better at running this business.
It seems that the dollar amounts being discussed are much bigger, but the potential for imminent collapse has subsided. Sure there are plenty of ways I could screw this up, and there are more of them than there are ways I could succeed, but the day to day crises blur into the background. Like a watercolor painting, time and continued existence dilutes the colors so that even the disasters are just another shade in the overall painting.
I really wax poetic when I'm avoiding bars.
However, I just heard the UPS man deliver the bandsaw blades so I'm back to my Penance. Soon I shall be out from under this problem and under a new one, but you don't get to live life without a weight. Sometimes you are blessed enough to get to pick the weight.
Stay tuned for more letters on Thursdays in the coming weeks and be sure to go subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you like and watch the videos it helps us get promoted more by the algorithm to people who may never have heard of us.
Ever your servant,
Colin Murdy
CEO/Owner
Murdy Creative Co.
Cell: 414-434-9001
