15:09 – I’m currently assembling a dozen BK01 biology kits, which’ll leave us with 11 in stock counting the one we sold this morning. I’m just building a dozen because this is the last batch I’ll build upstairs. The components for the kits are currently split between the upstairs and downstairs work areas, but I’m gradually moving everything downstairs except the bottle labeling and filling operations. Space constraints upstairs mean I’ve been doing final assembly on kits in batches of 12 or 15. I have enough room downstairs to do batches of 30 at a time. I also have room to store a lot more finished kits to await shipment.
For now, I’ll continue to ship kits from upstairs, bringing up enough to keep a dozen or so of each in the shipping queue. But I talked to Danny, our mailman, yesterday. During our busy period last autumn, we often shipped half a dozen or more kits a day. That was a pain in the butt, having to make multiple trips from the house out to the street to load them in his truck. And with our sales trajectory this year, we may end up having to ship 25 or more kits on heavy days come July/August/September. So I asked Danny what he thought about pulling down our drive to pick up boxes at the rear, if he was even allowed to do that. He said that was no problem. So I’m going to allocate an area near the back door to stack boxes awaiting shipment.
Hmmm. One of my wholesalers just called to ask if I wanted them to ship my latest order UPS Ground or motor freight. Gulp. She said that by UPS Ground it’d be 11 large boxes, but it’d fit on one pallet. I told her to ship it UPS. I don’t have a forklift, and I’m not the man I once was. Just the thought of hauling a 300-pound pallet from the street down the driveway and into the basement is more than I can handle these days, let alone actually doing it. Of course, back in the days when I used to walk five miles to school (uphill both ways, in the snow) I could have just tossed a 300-pound pallet under each arm and then run a Marathon. Or something like that.