The 100 per day punch bag target I expected to achieve next year has already been achieved this month. Don't get me wrong I am happy and grateful, but this has happened sooner than expected and has not been easy.
To say this last week was stressful would be an understatement which resulted in myself thinking Friday was the 18th and not the 15th. I have to admit I was some what relieved when I found out I now had an extra 3 days to complete the orders. I have never lost track of time like this before and I need to not get so caught up in things as I have so much else going on juggling a few businesses now.
The problem is stress and pressure when you have what seems like impossible targets to achieve in a short period of time. The orders I have to have completed and delivered nationwide before the 27th of this month are well over 2000 punching bags. This realistically means they need to be completed before the 25th.
The increased numbers are a good thing which I am not complaining about ,but the pressure les with the required filling. Finding the 60 tons of filling is the hard part and where the stress lies. I do not have a never ending list of resources that I can tap into for help as this waste fabric material industry is still new to myself. Maybe in 2 or 3 years time that problem will be resolves, but for now it is a major head ache.
Over the last 2 weeks I have managed to wangle 4 tons of shredded material waste and will invest more cash again this week in another 4 or 5 tons or however much my competitor will sell me. I know he is not requiring this as we have pinched his business so the trick is keeping him sweet for the short term until he realises. The hope is once he knows this is that he will supply whatever he can to us as he has no other choice.
The only positive ray of sunshine is hat the outstanding order of 10 tons of fabric waste is being delivered on Wednesday after a 10 week wait. The patience has paid off with many voices and phone calls telling me to take an earlier delivery. Sticking to my guns has saved us the $600 in transport costs which the supplier now pays for. Why give profit away when you can still make an alterative plan?
Being 3 days ahead has actually not been such a bad thing really because the team is actually ahead of their targets and the problematic international and outlying deliveries will be sent out on Wednesday this week. This will reduce the stress levels as the rest will be sent in bulk loads to the various distribution centers locally possibly by Friday which is literally 3 working days ahead of schedule.
I had no idea that the volumes would increase this quickly after just 3 months since we started. Talk about being thrown into the deep end yet it shows we are doing this the right way as the demand is saying so. The hope is these accounts have enough stock for Christmas and all I have to worry about until the New Year is online sales. The truth is I will have very little filling left over for anymore big orders.
Once this is completed we shall just continue to slowly stock pile the bags for early next year and at least have a head start on those orders. Who would have thought such an easy job could get so stressful and the trick to all of this is the filling.