The Bat Cave

Boxes stacked in breezeways, hardware crammed onto shelves, desks cluttered with project prototypes and engineering documents. There is no mistake, every single inch of space is being utilized to support BuiltRight Industries. We have operated in the same warehouse for three years and three years ago it seemed like ample room. But, at a certain point, the constant moving of pallets, hardware and equipment in order to make room for other items becomes a detriment to work flow and a waste of time. As mentioned in the Company Update, we are about to break ground on a new warehouse that will give us even more room to grow. But we don’t move in for months…

Enter, the Bat Cave. The name explains itself. A dark and empty warehouse with no heat and spotty electricity. It’s four minutes down the road from our current facility and offers us the breathing room we need until construction of the new warehouse is complete. The Bat Cave is where we have been able to offload unassembled product in order to free up space for packaged and ship-ready product at our main location. It’s definitely an improvement on workflow, but still not perfect.

Our first few days at the Bat Cave were quite comical. We knew we needed to improve the lighting situation, so Beenen and Matty rigged up some rope and hung a few cheap fluorescent lights above one of the designated assembly tables. Beenen plugged in the lights, no power. Plugged into a different outlet, no power. None of the outlets had power! Conveniently the breaker box was all the way on the other side of the warehouse. Twenty minutes later, our new assembly area was up and running and the boys were ready to start assembling tech panels.

The shuffle and scramble is nothing new to the American Small Business. Hopefully, you, as the customer, never notice this. Hopefully, our growing pains never reach your doorstep. There is a thin line that small businesses have to be weary of crossing. Staying within our means but still bold enough to grow. There are far too many examples within the industry where growing too big, too fast leads to a painful collapse. We never want to get close to that. We never want to jeopardize our integrity, our brand, our customers.

Yours truly,
Leah