11. Production Process II

In the previous post, I detailed the process of sourcing. This one is dedicated to the many grinding sessions between the months to painstakingly assemble the terrariums, and to discuss strategies and plans for the future.

As all of us have our own commitments, we can only afford to meet on weekends. Usually, we will meet on a Saturday, but may also meet on a Sunday if necessary, or a weekday if there are other events, such as the upcoming talk that we will be attending, 'Deviate'.

I have mentioned in the previous post that during the picking of raw materials, we are pretty much coming up with the designs on the spot. This means that during the actual production, me and Sindy can work much faster, since we were there to pick the figurines and already know what we want to make. This advantage does not work for Aaron and Kimmy, and it takes quite a while longer for them to make a product. As such, unless we really run out of products to sell, usually Aaron and Kimmy will be doing up the other aspects of the company, such as writing up social media posts, formulating marketing strategies, deciding on the pricings, looking for potential booths, and most recently, there is a problem with our network domain that Aaron is trying to figure out.

Just a mention, the time saved is quite significant: we are able to cut production time by half this way. So manpower costs are about $5 per product. Of course, we should also count in the time spent at the suppliers, but that amount is not a lot compared to the time saved.

Otherwise, most of my time is used to make products. The process is largely similar. First, make a sand base, depending on the theme we want. Next, check if the figurines actually look nice in the terrarium. While we have clear designs in mind, sometimes the actual terrarium just doesn't look nice. This can be due to many things, and when it happens we have to pivot in the designs, and usually it is not a big problem. Once the design is confirmed, we glue small sticks at the bottom of the figurines and stick them into the sand. Lastly we clean the glass carefully using a cloth, as some finer sand may have gotten into the air and got stuck on the glass surface.

As most of the time we do our products near Sindy's house, our products are all kept there. This is to prevent too much movement of the finished terrariums. Due to limited space, the rest of the raw materials will be brought home by the rest of us, and we will bring them along as we meet again.

That's all for production, I guess. Currently we are a small business, and everything is made by the owners, so quantities are pretty limited. At a certain point of time I would imagine we can get more manpower. This can be done if we have a few fixed designs and can just pass on the method of making them to employees. However, by doing that we will not be able to make every product unique. Still I think this is the next step in our business, we will see how it goes.