Sunday, June 21, 2015

Update for June 21st, 2015

We have been reminded by a few of you that we are a little late on our update. The month of May has passed and we are now far into June. There have been a few more hiccups along the way. But both Jim and I want to assure you that we are working hard to move this process forward.

Again, we would like to ask that if you plan on purchasing anything at this time, that you read all of the posts concerning our current progress. We appreciate your purchases, they help us immensely in solving this problem, but we again want you to make your choice with the understanding that there will be a delay in the turn around. If you aren't willing to wait, please don't order. But also, by ordering now you will be ahead in the queue as we solve our production problems. Also, by ordering now you are helping us repair what damage has occurred.

Many people have suggested a Kickstarter to get us back on track. Both Jim and I feel that this might be something that we would be willing to visit in the future once we have again earned your confidence. In time we may open this up for discussion with the community. For now, just purchasing a mat or two would work in the same fashion. The profit we earn on each purchase goes directly to fixing some of the problems and in return you have invested in a future addition to your gaming table. Once we can repair what has gone wrong, the goal of course, is to turn our product out quickly and efficiently for the community. Also, again, we want all of you to understand that we have no intention of folding or running. This is our livelihood and we have much more in the way of product line that we want to share with the community, but first we have to fix this bump in the road. As we have said before, we are placing ourselves in the hands of the community.

Now, on to the update:
On the production side of things, we have gone seven weeks since our original post. In that time we have produced our way from May 2014 up to the middle of September 2014. Essentially 4.5 months in seven weeks. We have a few stragglers from all of the mentioned months. Mostly the resin orders. The temperatures in the month of May were erratic and without temperature controls in our workshop working with the resin has been hit and miss. I explained this in an earlier post. September is proving to be a little more demanding than I originally estimated due to a few massive orders. Also, in the month of May we ran out of some essential packaging materials which also slowed down our production process. Since money is very tight we had to make some painful decisions concerning the purchases of these materials. This has effected everything across the board.

On the shipping side of things, we are behind the production schedule. As we stated earlier the problems we encountered through last fall and winter assailed all aspects of our finances. Because of this we have had to balance production, with shipping, while paying the customers who've requested refunds back. This has slowed down the shipping end of things. But fear not, if you're a June or July order and you still haven't received your mat, you will very shortly.

Some of you asked for pictures, so we're dropping in a pic of some packages ready to be shipped out.



Best wishes always!
Kevin and Jim.

Saturday, May 16, 2015

Update as of May 16th

Well, here we go folks. The resin shipment came in last Friday. I've been putting in about 4-6 hours a day on resin, but the weather has not been kind here in New York. On Friday through Sunday it was in the high eighties—basically cooking the interior of the tin roofed resin workshop. We haven't been able to run the air conditioning unit because of the cost, so we are having to work when the temperatures are naturally cooler (Early morning – late at night.). Essentially, the resin we use will boil when mixed at temperatures above 80 degrees. Things are moving along a bit slower than we would like in that department. From Wednesday to Friday the temperatures outside have been too cold. Thursday night the temperature was right at freezing. Again we can not run the electric heaters, too expensive when we have no cash flow, so we must wait until the temperature climbs in the workshop. (The resin will be gummy and break like poorly baked cookies if the temperatures are below 69 degrees.) But onto more positive news.

On the production side of things, concerning the mats, August is nearly finished and we will be starting September soon. I believe September will be a smaller month as far as orders went. On another positive note, as listed on the ZUZZY store page, we can now send out orders in these sizes—2X4FT. and smaller mats within our normally stated time frame—probably sooner.

We have used half of the latex we received two weeks ago. Normally we would order more at this time, but cash is tight so we will not be doing this at this time. We'll see how the can bounces as we kick that one down the road a bit.

On the shipping end of things. We have experienced a few bumps in the road. We are trying to resolve those problems. So, June and July customers, if you haven't received your packages yet, don't panic, they will be on your doorsteps soon.

Also, at the beginning of this upcoming week we will start paying back the customers which wanted refunds that fell outside of Paypal's charge back policy—starting with June. We will be contacting each of you in email and then be sending a check in the mail. This, also, will be a slower process than any of us would like.

And, a few of you have asked for pictures. Jim and I are still discussing this and perhaps in future posts we will put up a few to go along with the updates.
The battle continues . . .

Best Always,
Kevin and Jim

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Mid-Week Update

On the production end of things: June is finished for the most part. All that is left is prep and packaging for a few stragglers.

July was started on Monday, as far as production goes. The mats are also mostly finished. Again, they will be waiting on prep and packaging.

An aside note: Preparation involves cleaning, cutting, and trimming the mats. This process can take some time. We don't use any machinery to do this. In fact the only one that can do this process is Jim. The man has the hands of a surgeon—or perhaps even better. Each mat that you receive has been hand trimmed by him. I have never met anyone else that can do what he does. (It is impossible for me to do, due to an illness from childhood that left me with shaking hands.) After the prep they are packaged and sent to the shipping department, where I box them up.

Back to our update:
Most of July should be ready to go out by the end of the week and the beginning of next. August production will be in full swing by the weekend. As I recall August is a fairly large month. It most likely will not be as quick a turn around as June and July. They had mostly been finished when all hell broke loose back in November. September through December purchases dropped four fold, so production on these months should also be relatively quick. But I will revisit this in the days to come.
To get this far we have used one quarter of the order of latex that arrived last Friday.
I should be giving you another update at the end of the week.

Thanks again for your patience.

Best Always,
Kevin and Jim

Thursday, April 30, 2015

Update For This Weekend

We received a full order of latex Wednesday afternoon. Two days sooner than the supplier promised! You should also know that late winter was very harsh on us this year, and all of our resin stocks were destroyed. The replacement for the resin will be on order this Friday.

This weekend ZUZZY will be focusing on finishing up the month of June, 2014. There isn't much left to that month and those of you that have been stuck out in the ten month zone will finally have your issues addressed. If there are any that still have refund requests in that month or before we will contact you very soon.

In the fall of last year, we had been sending out June, July, and a few August orders. July of course will be next. For expediency sake the smaller orders will be going out first, while we weave the larger ones into the docket.

Again, although we are filling the mat orders as quickly as possible, we are waiting on our resin replacement. This can not be ordered until Friday. It will take a few days before it arrives.

Best Always,
Jim and Kevin

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