Amplifier scaled up in 2003 to accommodate Despair’s large catalog drop, but 2004 and the LAF/Livestrong wristband work demanded a state change of an altogether different sort. It was high profile work for a high profile client. Athletes were wearing wristbands in the Olympics, candidates were wearing the wristbands in the presidential election, and celebrities were wearing wristbands on all of their carpets. Jud Harris knows the story firsthand, but we broke M.O.M. with the volume of orders we were processing through – the FoxPro architecture beneath it was never intended for the millions of orders flowing through. We devoted the front offices of Interchange to a call center for LAF order support, and the warehouse was full of wristbands. The rest of Amplifier’s administrative offices remained at Guerrero, the prior office.

The mercy of the work was that there was really just the one sku – a yellow wristband (in a ten-pack – the ten-pack was Joel’s recommendation to LAF at the outset, and it made all the difference). And that sku weighed very little, cost very little, and was hard to destroy, as far as shipping goes. It was a widget if there ever was a widget.

It was also merciful that wristband deliveries would take several weeks to arrive from overseas – and we could scale our operation at a cadence anticipating when the next, bigger delivery would arrive.

It was a wild year of wristbands, and we survived. And we shipped tens of millions of wristbands. And, when the dust settled, we decided we needed a real warehouse management system.