Dear Friends,
This is something new for me. After the incredible support and encouragement from all of you when I wrote last time a letter, I think this might be something I should do more regularly.
Those of you who are fans of the podcast, fret not, that will be back but in lieu of that I'll try to give you all a brief update at (hopefully) regular intervals about what is happening behind the scenes here at the company during this busy season.
Just to give you some background on our cast of characters here at the MCC, first we have Meryle. She was the second employee of the company and has been the CO of day to day operations since long before we even had formal titles. Diligent and organized, she is the one who has helped take my often absurd ideas and helped find a way to make them happen.
Anna first began working for me during Covid, and has been the kind of person who in a very short time has "done everything" in the company. She has covered every station she has ever been asked to with a reliability that allows me to trust her implicitly. When Mel (our former Customer Service rep) had the wonderful opportunity that came up in NC, Anna jumped into that role without any hesitation. She has carried on the tradition this company has established of excellent customer service relationships in a way that has impressed me.
Our latest additions have been Ryan and Trevor who have only joined the quite recently, but have been very quick studies and have been the backbone of our added Christmas production capacity.
In that same vein we are, of course, way behind. Christmas always has something that makes it tricky. A few years back it was the fact that we didn't have enough engraving machines, last year we ran out of our most popular leather color in early December as well as other critical supplies, and this year its a bit more multifaceted than that. Due to our small team over the fall, we haven't been able to really get our production "feet" under us. In an ideal world we have more of our leather parts cut and ready for engraving right away in the morning so we can start off in a brisk and organized way. The lack of time, money, and our software we use to manage it all being totally unusable, has made that little part all but impossible.
So for the last few months we have been closer to our 5 business day lead time rather than the usual 2-3 business day lead time that I like to aim for. This of course is a compounding problem as the long lead times mean more people emailing asking about when their order will ship or changing/cancelling their order, which requires more customer service time. Plus it always puts stress on our inventory management system, because if the system is off or miscalculating, we could run out of a raw material we need to make something and not know it until its way too late.
So going into a busy season behind already isn't exactly the auspicious start I would want, however it's actually made worse by several of our engraver machines being offline. We have high standards for our engraving accuracy and depth. It's something that ensures the engravings are clear and visible and always will be. However as the machines run, vibrate, heat and cool, the mirrors move, the lens gets covered in dust, and the screws that hold the machine gantry in place vibrate loose. Thus we need to do maintenance and recalibrate them. This is an enormous task as it involves basically disassembling most of the machine and then carefully measuring and putting it all back together in a very precise way. Three out of our six engravers our down due to being too far out of our engraving spec, and need to be recalibrated.
So to that end, it'll be nights and weekends for me for a little while since my daytime work needs to be helping catch up on the backlog and keeping our marketing operations a least somewhat moving. Honestly though, this is just how Christmas always is. It's part of the deal of being a small business owner and in the end, if this is the price I have to pay to keep this incredible operation moving, it's worth it. I really do look forward to this season as it is a great test of "what we are made of" and makes it so our company grows stronger.
Many of you have been incredibly gracious and understanding with us during this busy season and we appreciate that very much. The kind words about our work is like a warm summer breeze during these cold Wisconsin days. In the end I know we will get caught up, the machines will get fixed, new marketing will get made and sent out, and all will be well during this, the most wonderful time of the year.
Stay tuned for more of these letters in the future!
Ever your servant,
Colin Murdy
CEO/Owner
Murdy Creative Co.
Cell: 414-434-9001
