Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Cat Shelves II: Shipping Now!

Well, I never thought that this would take off in the way it did, period!
We've got A LOT of orders coming mostly from California, not sure why that is.
We also got inquiries from the UK and as far away as Australia, which we can't really accommodate that yet because the shipping cost would be totally out the window.

So far, we sold 30 of these shelves in 4 weeks since the startup. The CNC is getting a little hot, running the same tool paths over and over again - but she's holding up good so far.
That's a good thing, because that totally propels us out of the guessing game where what cutting medium works best for what. Also for the tools, still my personal favorite is: ToolsToday.com
Their cutting bits and support is awesome, in every way!

NEWS: Today, we shipped our first order!! This very first one went to Redway, California.
For us, that was a pretty exiting moment - to go from a manufacturing dream to shipment reality: It felt good: First you get to put all the bubble wrap around the product you're making, to make sure it doesn't get damaged in the process of delivery (and yes, we will accept liability for failure on that part)... Next you have to find a box to put it into and print a neat shipping label, wrap it up real good in that bubble wrap. All that takes a lot of planning :-)

Anyways, Heather and I had a blast tonight, cutting and matching up the selected carpet for our first commercial sales item. We ended up making hardboard templates for the carpet envelopes, for repeatable cuts - that's another story. It worked out great, here's the first shelf in Golden Pine (stain), with the cool Moroccan Festival carpet on it. Shown on the left..






Using the same pattern, we completed the whole set and boxed it up for shipping to CA, consisting of one small wavy, a large wavy and a large cradle. They came out beautiful in the golden pine stain (I've never used this stain before, the result was astonishing, Heather keeps saying this is her new favorite stain too)!
 

Of course our resident quality inspector (Violet) had to have a good look at everything too, before this box ships.










Violet is wondering: Are all the included items in the box? Did they make super-duper sure that all the instructions and the paperwork are in there, the T30-screwdriver, the drill bits, the blue plastic anchors and the special surprise for our customers!??


We think it's all in there. Each shipment comes with printed instructions and at this point we are confident that they are easy to follow and will lead to a successful installation of our shelves, wherever they might go.

We also made sure the items that one might not have on hand, are included: The drill bits, the anchors and the special screwdriver, enclosed in a little baggy to hold it all together.




Now, the QA Inspector, Violet just needs to make sure that the shipping label is affixed correctly.


Looks good... Go ahead and send this out!
 







1 comment:

  1. Congratulations! Quality products and unique ideas always garner interest.

    ReplyDelete