Tuesday, November 22, 2005

What, is Christmas almost here?

About 1 month till Christmas? Where did the year go? This is our busy time of the year. Like other retail outlets, we rely on this season to continue in business. Unfortunately the "shopping season" is too short. Before I am lynched let me explain. I normally work on a four to six week lead time. This is because everything has to be planned, ordered, built, and finished and each takes a set amount of time. That would leave our cut-off date to be, uh, NOW!

Most people don't want to wait 'till after Christmas for their gift. So I usually give a little break and go a few days longer with the cut-off date. That dead line comes and someone else wants their furniture. Who am I to deny them their Christmas surprise? So I allow a few more orders in. Now we’re really stacked up. Luckily I planned a little ahead a built up stock in some of our popular beds, like the baseball bed. I got them to the point were they are ready for finish (this way the customer can chose the color).

To add the stack of orders. the Democrat/Gazette is doing an article on our Murphy bed. (see www.wwbeds.com/Murphy.htm) They chose us because we are the only one around that builds or carries the Murphy Bed. We also have one on display for them to shoot pictures. Or we "had" one. Just days after the interview, we sold our display to a displaced “Katrina Victim". I would have loved to keep that one, but they needed a bed and needed it quickly. That left me with two weeks to try to squeeze in a new one for display (only one week left now).

I decided to build two different versions of the Murphy bed. The first one will be very simple, no moulding. It will be the least expensive version I can offer. This one will be built from oak, not the cheapest wood, and stained a light oak finish. I should have this in a couple of days. See our current projects for pictures www.wwbeds.com/Current%20Projects.htm . The next one will be a little more elaborate with crown/base moulding, framed out front section, bookcases, lights, and finished in a flat black lacquer on oak. Many people would kill me for covering up the beauty of oak wood with a colored finish, but this will be awesome. The black will cover the wood, but not the grain. It will still have the texture of the grain showing thru - the grain is the best part on oak wood anyway. This one may take another week or so. I probably will not have it finished before the article is released, but at least I will have something for customers to look at.

Christmas is only four weeks away, but I am not worried. God always takes care of us. I have faith the same will happen this year. I pray that my job will not interfere with the true meaning of this season. That is, our Savior was born. Without Jesus being born, He couldn't have died and paid the debt for our sins. We would be eternally separated from God. He was born, He did die, and we are saved.

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Pick Two Any Two

I come across customers all the time who would like everything now. “Give me a quality piece of furniture at a very low price, and by the way I need that ASAP.” In almost all businesses that is impossible to do and stay in business. Most mission statements for companies usually states something about giving or providing their customers with a product or service with a certain level of expected quality, price, or promptness, but there is also their responsibility to the stakeholder of the business (i.e. the owners and employees) By providing all three of these features to a customer, the business would quickly fail.

Let’s look at the first one, quality. Webster defines quality as a “degree of excellence” or a grade. People normally use it to describe high quality furniture. But quality is more like a sliding scale. There are different degrees of quality. For example I could put a quality finish on furniture with just a few steps (stain/seal, sealer coat, top coat). If done correctly, that would be a very fine finish. I could add a few steps to that fine finish and get a very high quality finish.

Another factor to add to the mix would be the price of the piece. Most everyone wants a reasonable price, and most businesses would like to receive a fair price for their items. Price and quality, for the most part, have a direct correlation to each other. When quality goes up price usually does too. Quality can come from a couple a couple of sources. First, quality is gained thru experience. The more experience your employees gain the higher quality you’d expect, and the higher wages they’d expect.

Another would be the time spent on the project. That leads me to my last factor, time. The finish can gain higher quality by spending more time and adding more steps. The longer you spend on a project the more that project would cost in labor. Going the opposite direction, by allowing for more time, cost could go down. This way the project would not require overtime, during a busy time, or it could be scheduled in pockets of free time in your schedule.

As you can see all three affect each other, which means you can’t have your custom product quickly and keep the price and quality down. One must be eliminated, low price, high quality, or speedy delivery. You must pick two and only two.

This usually applies to custom build products only. Production items are sometimes excluded. One example is our baseball bed. It is priced low, high quality, and can be shipped fairly quickly. This is because we already took care of the time factor. We did this by scheduling it ahead of time. We built them in pockets of free or slow time and build a large number together to cut down on the average time.

I can give you that high quality furniture quickly but expect to pay for it. By waiting, it could save you some money. I don’t mind adjusting the time and price factor. I like to leave the quality alone. If the quality move, I like it to move up.

Remember pick two: Price, Quality, Fast.