Building Capacity: Yep, We’re Hiring
The Well.ca offices are a bit hectic. Just as we finished building our last piece of IKEA furniture, for reasons we can’t fully explain, the numbers of orders coming through our website doubled.
This is good. I mean more orders means business is good.
But, ahem. It also means that I am answering customer calls and packing boxes in our shipping room instead of dealing with lawyers and accountants in our nice office.
Predicting order volume has always been a challenge for us — things like Google rankings, sudden bursts in customer referrals, and seasonality can cause tremendous strain on our packing process. Thankfully no packages have been delayed, but my coworkers and I are looking tired.
At the same time, we’re always experimenting with new forms of marketing. We don’t know, ahead of time, how much our experiments will affect our order volumes. What if orders double? What will we do. This should be a good problem but part of us wants the number of orders to be the same.
The solution, of course it to build flexible capacity. This is hard for a startup.
Further compounding the problem is the time it take to build capacity — we need to hire people, train them, and retain the others. It could take a month to find another order processor. What will we do for a month?
Welcome to a growth company. Orders may continue to double. Or they may slow down by next month. Call me then and I can update you!
A pleasant side-effect of having to having our CEO and lead-developer pack boxes is that it has accelerated our software development that handles order processing. Over time, we created many features and processes to help with inventory management, picking & packing, and the shipping process. These days, we’ve been forced to use the software we developed — this has given us numerous opportunities to find improvements and see what really works.
So yeah. We’re hiring.
Do you know anyone that is looking for a job in the Guelph area? We need to find someone that can help us get health products into happy customer’s hands. We draw smiley faces on all packages, so you have to be able to draw smiley faces. We are looking for someone that is cool and hardworking. Here at Well.ca, we eat breakfasts together, have the nicest work environment, and friendliest coworkers you’ll ever meet. Experience picking, packaging, and/or shipping is necessary but if you’ve done something similar, let me know. Interested people can write to jobs [at] well.ca
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