The business is slowly taking shape and cannot be compared to the money guzzler it was prior to March when we took the controls. The space is starting to return which makes it easier to plan for the next shipments which are due to arrive next week.
Over the last month we have moved over 64 tons of weights which has not been exactly plain sailing because logistically gym weights are a nightmare. The cost to truck them and have them delivered around the country is not straight forward because even a small box can weigh upwards of 50kg's.
A downside to dealing with weights is the pallet jacks take a hammering and of the 14 we have only 5 are operational. The repairs for the 9 broken ones will fall into next months budget because they are a necessity. The hydraulics tend to break mainly due to the weight of the pallets which cannot be helped.
When the weights arrive on the container the first few woods crates are fine because the forklift can grab those, but deeper into the container pallet jacks and strapping is used when the forklift has to drag them out. A normal container takes 45 minutes to offload whereas a weight container will take 4-5 hours.
The material has still not arrived.
The one concern is we are still waiting on are rolls of trampoline material plus pinch bag material which are already 10 days late. The back log list of clients is growing by the day with over a 100 trampoline mats on order. So far we have managed to trade some trampoline springs for a few maters of material from our competitors so we can make for the clients who will not wait. I prefer to trade and refuse to buy the material because they are literally 5 x more expensive than our cost. Our selling price is literally half the price of our competitors and why I don't see them as competition unless we have no material. Today I phoned around to check if our prices were still that good and the difference was by over $50 per mat.
This shows how stupid running out of material is because this is a business on it's own with about 4 other companies nationwide banking on us having no material. Once we have material their business nose dives as they cannot compete on any level. The D rings is what everyone wants and our competitors are always enquiring if they can buy some which we always say we have run out, but have nearly 500K of those in stock. Without the D rings you cannot manufacture a trampoline mat because this is what links the springs to the mat. The competitors buy D rings locally which are expensive and why they cannot compete.
With Amazon now up and running I think we are well on track and should see profit this month. The trampoline business along with the punch bag manufacturing business is what is going to grow this business. I have nearly maxed out all the savings that can be found generating profit from the warehouse and now the other streams need to come on line.