Hello my friends!
Thank you for stopping by to read this blog post by us here at Lively Aviation. A lot of questions and concerns have come over the past 4 months. Delayed fulfillment, taking longer than ideal for a response, but mostly DELAYED FULFILLMENT.
I promise you it's been overwhelming at times, however, we are moving forward with a new business model with how we deal with orders.
SO WHAT HAPPENED?
In February we had the awesome opportunity to be featured on Airplane Academy, a YouTube channel dedicated to improving the general aviation community. If you haven't, make sure to go subscribe and check out the awesome content he has available!
Once that video was launched we received an incredible amount of support from many of you through your orders! While I won't give the specific number, let's just say we had enough orders to work 34 STRAIGHT days if we ran a 24-hour shift.
We were pumped! However, that's when the real work began. We immediately began fulfilling those orders that same day of the video drop.
That very next week, something very frustrating occurred....
We were informed by our supplier that there was a 2022 FAR/AIM shortage!!
WHAT?!
No way, not possible.
Well actually, yes way, and it happened within an instant.
At that time, ASA had did not have the limited edition 2022 FAR/AIMs printed.
We immediately went and purchased enough FAR/AIMs to fulfill ALL orders that were received. We purchased over 80% of the inventory that our supplier had.
Crisis 1 averted. However....
GROWING PAINS
We definitely did not have the personnel to fulfill so many orders within a reasonable timeframe.
Before we launched the video we did not know what kind of feedback we would receive but shortly found out that this was a GAME CHANGER and we had to adjust, and adjust fast!
So we went out and were able to add some amazing team members! We hired 8 additional people to help us fulfill all of the orders we received!
As with learning anything new, learning to tab the FAR/AIM professionally takes time. We have a system and process we follow to ensure our team members learn how to tab properly, which also takes time!
But they quickly learned the ropes and we were off to the races in fulfilling orders.
Crisis 2 averted...
As I mentioned before, we had enough work for 34 STRAIGHT days.
So blessed with this opportunity each one of you gave us and we are so appreciative of it.
BUT....
That business model is not sustainable and we are changing it. We have to. We simply cannot have such a crazy fulfillment time. We certainly had absolutely no intention of such a long wait time.
From now on we will only accept a certain amount of orders per week. We did have on our website that it could take up to 6 weeks to fulfill your order! So crazy! On average, it took the entire 6 weeks to fulfill. Some were earlier, some were later.
Just not acceptable for a company, depending on the product of course, to have such a long wait time. This means we are adapting and changing the way we operate.
You deserve to have your product in a more timely fashion to enhance your studying efforts and become that much more of a safer, more professional, pilot.
We are transitioning to this new format.
Our goal to have your order shipped out that same day you order, but in order to get there, we still have to continue building our system processes to ensure you receive the top quality product that is produced.
Our on staff pilots tab each and every order. We are eager to continue helping so many of you on your own unique aviation journeys.
Growing a business is for sure the hardest thing I have ever had to do. There are positives, there are negatives, but in the end, I've learned so much from these past couple of months that together, with you and our team, we will continue helping you with your flight training, one flight lesson at a time.
Blue skies and safe flying my friends!
-Jeff Lively Jr