A Wordy FM Status Update: What have we even been doing for 4 weeks?
Hi y’all,
We are prioritizing being the kind of company you like supporting with your business, so we’re writing to update you on how things have been going since we last emailed you about changes we were making. We think it’s important for us to update y’all on where we’re at to stay accountable to both you and ourselves.
In our last email we sent out, we introduced our new leadership and the priorities each one of those people would be focused on. Here’s a list of our priorities and some updates:
Getting the backlog of communications caught up and regaining the trust of our customers with transparency.
- We’re working as quickly as possible to respond to your emails and messages, and since April 1st we’ve reduced our communications backlog significantly.
- We've reduced our new and unanswered messages backlog by 70% and are caught up on New inquiries sent through late-February; if you haven't had an initial response from us yet, you should get one in the next week or two.
- We are prioritizing emails that have been waiting and have been replying to DMs and comments as we have time, but if you have a concern or want to contact us, email is the best way for us to track your communication and ensure it gets taken care of.
- For the time being, we have minimally been monitoring comments/messages to our social media accounts. If you have questions, please email us at info@frogmouthclothing.com so that we can ensure folks are taken care of in order of who has been waiting the longest, regardless of team affiliation/type of order/etc.
Getting the production line up to speed on orders.
- We’re shipping orders every day, doing our best to hit pre-existing team deadlines that we had scheduled production time for, and plugging through the backlog of your missed deadline orders as fast as possible. We’re adding production staff as possible to increase how many orders we can ship to you each day.
- Kris and Laura are working together to plan out bulk shipments of game essential items as much as possible, while clearing out the oldest of our backlogged items.
- An immediate action we took is that we have removed all non-game day essential items from our stores. While our production team is small, we want to focus on the things our customers need urgently and also the things we are best at and known for - our jerseys, helmet covers, and armbands. As we responsibly re-grow our production team, we will add these items back into production.
- We’re communicating with current and former employees candidly about our operational challenges and updates as we have them.
- We are working through streamlining our internal operations and processes by having open dialogue with our team members about what needs to be changed urgently. We have been diving into process inefficiencies, taking action on some immediately, and looking into solutions for those that are larger projects.
- While going through our backlogged messages, Kris is noting trends and areas that we have the most opportunities to improve to keep the community we serve happy - such as minimizing our exchanges by ensuring our size charts/fits are accurate and easy to use, and updating some of our patterns/sizing for better fits. Kris, Laura, and our in-house production manager are discussing these weekly to plan out these projects.
Here are some things you may still be wondering:
- Why did y’all send out that email at the beginning of March?
- We had originally included a note about our Save Frogmouth email in our last email and it was mistakenly not included (Kris here - a genuine missed copy and paste error into the final draft document). This is what was meant to be included:
- An email was sent out on March 2nd without consent of our full staff and it was not appropriate. We are truly sorry both to recipients and our staff for this. For anyone that did contribute funds, we will of course honor the $15 discount promised and will be issuing these discount codes shortly, which will then be activated and available for use immediately.
- As an update, all stickers have been mailed and discount codes sent to be honored at any time.
- Why are we still taking orders or promoting sales when we have old orders we need to make?
- We are aiming to get caught up on our backlog, but due to a lot of cancellations that we are getting caught up on messages about, we do need to continue making money to pay our staff and expenses, while also having future orders for our staff to produce.
- The two folks responding to your messages or posting to our social media are not the best people to be sewing your orders, we promise.
Here are some fun items we have on hand that will be mailed out within two business days from when your order is placed. They will also come with a $10 discount code to use on any future purchases with us:
- We have redesigned a fan favorite - Our Derby Love design - and turned it into a glitter sticker. We have these in house and ready to ship and sparkle your helmet or water bottle with. These will ship within 2 days of your order and will also come with $10 discount code that can be used on your next order. Order Your Derby Love Sticker Here.
- Our Poster Bundle is $20 and available until they are gone to make room for future fun things. This bundle will also come with a $10 discount code.
Derby Love,
Kris Rago
CEO, Frogmouth Clothing
