Staff....

Like an infection, the amount of staff keeps increasing here at TheWarStore. Somebody around here had better start earning me some money instead of just increasing the overhead.

The increase in staff is necessary I suppose and it is good for me to be taken altogether out of the routine workings of the store. For a long time now I have wandered back into the shipping area and sat down and scanned orders, or gone and picked up picking tickets when things were busy. I mostly do it for Nostalgia's sake - it has taken me a while to understand that I am not really useful doing that, nor am I doing my 'job'. When I do it I am mostly greeted by the American staff with "What the hell you doing back here?" while the Latino staff tries to maintian operational efficiency while moving around me. Sigh.

I sometimes get upset when a particularlystupid mistake has been made by the staff and go back there like I can correct it if I wasworking back there. But then I go and make other mistakes, and it isnt as if when I ran the back my mistake percentage was any better (it wasn't). It hurts less to fix mistakes you make yourself, but the money lost is the same either way.

I just have to say, I wouldnt have sent 15 packs of the wrong dice to England. But then, I did send 35 dice instead of 350 to Nevada. Sigh...

So I am letting go of the routine and doing my 'job'. So what is my job?

First off, ordering. I have really tightened up ordering here, with all these small manufacturers you need to have a disciplined approach or things get very easily lost in the shuffle. Now certain things get ordered certain days etc... boring but it works. Keeping this place supplied is job one for me - and it is like feeding an elephant. I keep shoveling stuff into the gaping maw, pay the invoices, pay the staff and try to hold on to what's left :-) On ordering I have thrown some caution to the wind, which is not really normal for me but it is probably necessary. I am sick of Privateer shortages so I have (nearly literally) a ton of it on the way to me now, like a mighty avalanche of product that should crash into thewarstore over the next few days. That will be good.

Battlefront moving an office to the USA is helping on ordering and already saving me a ton of money on dual shipments. The wide variety of Battlefront product combined with the long waits on restock from New Zealand made it so that 70% or more of Battlefront orders had to ship in two shipments. Since I pay for shipping, that was making me sad. Now with weekly orders, 3-5 day turnaround and better stock management we are able to decrease wait times, increase fill rates, and drastically reduce the need for dual shipments. It still happens, because someone will always come along and wipe out a months supply of flammpanzers and nebelwerfers, but we are getting that to rock bottom levels. I do love improving customer service AND my bottom line at the same time.

What else do I do around here?
More later :-)

Neal