When we moved to our new building back in June 2009 I remember wondering how long it would take us to put up a sign on our building. The answer turned out to be one year and ten months. After doing some research we chose  Allied Electric Sign from Salt Lake. The were exceptional- reasonable cost, quick production, excellent quality and they came and installed it for us. I would not hesitate to recommend them or use them in the future.

This sign is about four times larger than the sign on our last building. One really nice thing is that we have good freeway visibility (south & north). People seem to have a much easier time finding us. Perhaps this is what contributes to the increased store traffic we’ve been seeing.

And now when customers come in they are greeted with a store, as opposed to the mess from just a year ago. We pushed the counters forward to corral customers in (I’m pretty sure I mentioned this in another post), built out shelves and quickly filled them.

These pictures are a diorama shot of the store as you walk in. There’s a lot of stuff and I think the overall feel is nice. Our cabinets will probably need to be replaced at some point  (pieces of the veneer are coming off and the lightning didn’t survive the move) but they do for now. It’s pretty exciting to see something in your head actually start to take shape.

Overall things are steadily evolving. We separated out some of the departments (i.e. order fulfillment & customer service) and I think that while initially difficult the long term result will be very beneficial. Below you can see our order fulfillment center.  We’ve expanded it a little from last year. Additionally we reorganized our warehouse a bit, but we’re actually starting to feel a space crunch. I don’t know how we would have survived if we hadn’t moved when we did. We’ve still got three years left on our current contract and so we’re trying to acquire the unit next to us so we don’t run out of room.

The customer service center is adjacent to the order fulfillment area. Right now this space is also shared partially by our product department. And we finally started using the space upstairs! We have (part of) our product team, our content & marketing and our programming department upstairs. Indeed, growth has been good (personally I find growth to be quite challenging. That will be a great topic for another post though…). 

I never thought I’d see the day where I could work in my office, but I’ve been spending more and more of my time there. Ive got a great crew, and – with regard to business – we’ve been very fortunate. There’s a lot on our plate this year, but I’m confident that we’ll do it all and then some.

www.bladehq.com, www.bladeplay.com, www.emergencymatters.com

Posted April 17, 2011 by Cam Hughes