Pack the box - ship the box

Workboard Week of January 29th, 2023

Last week (Wednesday, January 25, 2023, to be exact), Minted New York had a re-release of the Run Club hoodies, which have quickly become a favorite amongst the community. A large part of me struggles with the idea of running multiple restocks on items like the Run Club hoodie. This release is our third time doing so.

From a purely creative perspective, there is a pull to innovate and continually drive new products to market. 

As a "challenger" brand (I guess that's what I will call it for now) — I feel held to a higher standard of both operational excellence as well as the need for consistently producing something new - fresh - and ultimately (as with all consumer companies), desirable.

I volley the idea of "balance" back and forth daily. On the one hand, you argue, "if it works, don't fix it." On the other, you run the risk of it becoming stale, oversaturated, and then ultimately an asset (inventory) that you are sitting on with money already out the door and tied up, inhibiting further growth.

I feel incredibly fortunate that we have navigated these waters so far without running into the issue I have listed above. Still, the proverbial "little bird" is constantly chirping in my ear as I approve and send over the 30-50% down payments to begin production on restocked items.

Back to the actual week of release...

I have discussed how crowded our warehouse has gotten from a storage and space perspective. Each time we release, there is more product (eternally grateful for the increase in demand and continued growth). Previously I had operated under the assumption that we could increase our output (orders shipped) by increasing the number of people doing the packing and shipping. Logically, it checked out.

During this release, we topped at six people moving around the warehouse and packing orders. Between the pre-taped boxes that occupied the floor space and the warehouse's odd shape, it felt like pure chaos for a while. At one point, Shawn and I looked at each other and just shrugged/laughed at how insane it was in there. It was one of those moments where everything was working, but you weren't 100% sure how, and I was waiting for the wheels to fall off (which they didn't, thankfully).

From a pure statistics standpoint, it was our most efficient/effective fulfillment exercise to date.

• The average time to fulfill an order was 3 hours and 54 minutes

• The average time to deliver was 2.4 days

I am incredibly proud of the team to be operating at those numbers with the hope that we can improve those as time goes on.

I also found the below information interesting (although there is little I plan on doing with the data right now). The data below is a percentage of the orders shipped in the USA or internationally.

Top States

• 1. New York - 14.96%

• 2. California - 13.68%

• 3. Texas - 7.93%

• 4. Massachusetts - 4.51%

• 5. Pennsylvania - 4.46%

Top International Countries

• 1. Canada - 32.92%

• 2. United Kingdom - 30.47%

• 3. Australia - 9.58%

• 4. Norway - 4.67%

• 5. Ireland - 3.44%

Training

This week's training block was 61 miles with three lifts:

1. Monday: 6 easy (Lift - Push)

2. Tuesday: 6 (2 easy and 5 @ 6:00) (Lift-Pull)

3. Wednesday: 12 at 7:26 (NO LIFT)

4. Thursday: 8 easy (Lift - Legs)

5. Friday: 6 (trackwork) (Lift - Push)

6. Saturday: 6 easy (No Lift)

7. Sunday: 16 Long (No Lift)

I went into the week with the mindset that I would be happy to get every run completed knowing how long the days would be. We can check that box, although some runs felt brutally hard for what was required

Articles I found interesting this week:

A robot was scheduled to argue in court, then came the jail threats

The 10 Best and Worst Decisions I’ve Ever Made

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