Dogs, as promised, I want to share the business plan I have constructed to ensure ScrapYard’s continued success, while improving delivery and maintaining our standard in performance to price ratio.
As you may have figured out, adding Renee to the staff to field your questions has allowed us to be much more responsive. It has also given Patti the opportunity to focus her efforts on shipments and order processing. It has, likewise, allowed other staff members the much needed time, to build the knives, increase their dumpster diving efforts, and to work on model development and design. Likewise, it has facilitated our much needed, and somewhat legendary, Bourbon breaks! All in all, Renee has been a great contributor in a very short time. We will continue to monitor this approach and adjust for changes in the future.
The largest and most significant change that I am implementing is how we will offer our knives up for sale. My original approach was to make a large batch of knives that could satisfy the Yard's immediate needs, as well as have inventory available in the shopping cart for the rest of the steel lovers out there who missed the initial onslaught. In two solid years of being in business we have been unable to maintain inventory for more than a few hours. While this is a wonderful business situation, it is a poor approach to keeping and gaining new customers. The situation around the second DMDC run made me realize that we needed to correct our approach.
So what is not changing:
1. The forum will remain as is and continue to be a family oriented place to talk steel, knives, and associated subjects. The Brotherhood of the Yard continues to grow with many new Dogs joining on a regular basis. The friendly atmosphere of the Yard ensures that they will not be attacked for asking any question or sharing their thoughts.
2. The delivery of the highest quality knife at the lowest possible price will continue.
3. Dumpster Diving is in my blood and I will continue to bring different steels and associated parts to the table.
4. The customer focused approach will continue to be the highest priority.
What will change:
1. The way we offer knives. Instead of posting that knives are available and taking orders until the inventory is depleted, we will now take orders on 1 or 2 models for approx. 4-6 weeks (depending on the model) and will then discontinue that offer. NO additional orders will be accepted until those models come back around in the model rotation. It could be 2 to 3 years before those models are made available again. This approach allows the customer a better chance of getting in on a model offering while allowing us to batch process or group build knives. This, in turn, assists us in keeping a lower cost of production, while ensuring high quality bladeware and the high performance that has become the hallmark of Scrap Yard Knives.
2. Customer satisfaction should increase over the very high ratings we get today and more people will get to share in owning the standard in high performance to price ratio knives.
As always, I continue my thanks to the Yard for the feedback and input that has not only made us very successful in 2 short years, but also for helping us formulate our "go forward" approach
Dan
