Category: History
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Origin Story – 16
In the early days, we had a mix of client-supplied, branded shipping containers and stock shipping containers. Austin Foam Plastics – AFP – produced our branded, custom-sized boxes for Despair. We had the calendar mailer (a wrap), the mug box, the master shipper (fit calendars + non-poster/non-calendars), and the litho-combo (a long rectangular prism that…
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Origin Story – 15
Let’s consider how we ate at Guerrero. At Gibson we had been down the street from Trudy’s and down the block from Casa Garcia’s. At Post West Avenue, we had Frank & Angie’s, Hut’s, and the newly opened Opal Divine’s. At Guerrero we had Cisco’s, Cafe Mundi, and Nuevo Leon. We would have an Amplifier Friday breakfast meeting…
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Origin Story – 14
I think there might have already been racks at Guerrero – I’m pretty sure there were. We set up racks and they came from somewhere – I think from stacks of uprights and beams under the overhang that had been left behind by Guerrero Produce. I think this is around when Sam Degelia started helping us out…
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Origin Story – 13
One peak season at Gibson was sufficient. In the Spring of 2002, Scott Flack and Steve Mattingly helped us find our next home – we had a better sense of what we were looking for than we had the prior year. This time we knew that we needed a standard dock. We needed clear height suitable for racks. We…
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Origin Story – 12
Michael Pelletier changed everything when he introduced us to Eli Goldratt, the Theory of Constraints, and The Goal. Before that there was a whole lot of whimsy driving “what to improve next?” How many Cubiscans were sold because waving a wand, so to speak, is cooler than using a ruler. (I’m not saying that Cubiscans aren’t great right…
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Origin Story – 11
We quickly learned that Sharpied order numbers paired with manual keystrokes was not a secure approach. What to do? Well, M.O.M.’s default packing slip format was a perforated sheet – the top half was a packing slip and the bottom half had two labels you could print on and peel – allowing for billing and shipping address…
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Origin Story – 10
St. Ignatius of Loyola had his daily examen for the Jesuits. If I were establishing a practice for Amplifier, it might be four questions: What do we do? What do we not do? What should we no longer do? What ought we start doing? The answers to these questions have changed a lot over the years at Amplifier. From the start we…
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Origin Story – 9
Let’s talk some more about outfitting Gibson. I’m pretty sure it was Joel who had read a book about how at Amazon, they used doors on saw horses for desks. So when we were getting set up in the apartment, we had bought a door for everyone, a chop saw, and some 2x4s, and built some saw…
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Origin Story – 8
Whatever the order composition, we found a way to make what was needed and pack the orders. I’m pretty sure we made a summary Crystal Report that had a master pick for a given set of orders, then we packed the individual orders from that master pick. Sort of a replen from storage to a single forward…
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Origin Story – 7
Ok – back to systems. M.O.M. was necessary but not sufficient. We also needed HarveySoft – a multi-carrier shipping software. After M.O.M. hooked up with Harvey[Soft], we were in a position to keep track of inventory, process orders, and print shipping labels – a generative software relationship. With Harvey we could ship via USPS, UPS and FedEx through the…
Analogistical 