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

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