Troubles continue! The story of relocating the production factory.

Hello!
This is Kawada from HushTug!

Thankfully, we have received many orders from our e-commerce site in July and August.
As a result, our production volume has been doubling exponentially, and we were reaching the limits of our production volume and office capacity, so we moved our production factory in August.
I would like to talk about that today.

At first I walked around looking for

We started talking about relocating the office in earnest in early July. Leather products are handmade, so to make a lot of them, the number of craftsmen is increased to a certain extent. Our previous office was about 50-60 m2, but we felt that 10 craftsmen was the limit.

As the number of staff increases, the number of sewing machines also increases, and as production volume increases, storage space is needed until shipment. It's really tough (laughs).

The office is not very spacious, so I had been looking for the right time to move for a while. Finally, I decided to look for an office in time for the August contract.

That being said, even if you search for "office relocation" in Mongolia, no websites will come up (laughs).

You'll have to search on Facebook or message boards, but it's common for the price to not be listed, there to be no photos, or the size to be listed.

Even so, I ended up calling each place one by one, asking about their conditions, and then going to see them, which was a very inefficient process.

We wanted to move near a leather tanning factory, but there wasn't much information on the internet. So we walked around looking for a place near a leather tanning factory (laughs).

Moreover, I even took the drastic measure of repeatedly calling the owner, not caring that someone was currently occupied, but I couldn't find a suitable property.

This is an approach that is rarely seen in Japan today.

In Mongolia, it's not just about finding an office, but it's common for things to go wrong unless you try every possible method.

Sudden change in conditions

It was late July (the whole country was closed for the festival week in the middle of July), and I managed to narrow it down to two candidates. While I was thinking about which one to choose, the owner of one of the houses contacted me and said, "I want to change the conditions, so please come and see me."

When we went there, we were told, "We can't rent you the space we wanted, but we are willing to rent you the same size space for less."

Although the location was different from what I wanted, all other conditions were much better so I'm about 80% sure I'll choose this place.

Let's make a deal

After we were all prepared, we went to the office to sign the contract, but we found that someone else was using it as an office (laughs).

When I asked the owner about the situation, he said, "The office we originally wanted has become vacant, so we rented out a different space. Oh, let's sign a contract on the original terms."

In Japan, I would have gotten angry and said, "No, if that's the case, please let me know!", but I thought, "Well, this is Mongolia after all" (maybe I'm just too used to Mongolia...)

However, I didn't want to give up for free, so I negotiated the rent thoroughly (lol) and was ultimately able to rent the property on fairly good terms.

It's finally time to move!

We successfully signed the contract, and the office was decorated to the bare minimum, and the day to move arrived. If we couldn't use the sewing machines, production would come to a halt, so we wanted to move within a day at all costs.

Three trucks and six workers were scheduled to arrive at 11:00, but by phone at 11:00 the number had been reduced to two trucks, and by phone at 11:30 the number had been reduced to one truck and one worker (laughs).

It turned out that we couldn't use that company, so we had to find a company that could come right then and there. To be honest, at this point I thought to myself, "Oh no, we can't move today," and started thinking about work the day after tomorrow.

However, thanks to the hard work of our employees, we were able to secure two trucks and four workers, and although it took until 9pm, we managed to complete the move!

Delivery is complete!

The move was completed without incident, and the electricity was back on, so we were able to start work the next day. Even now as I write this article, there are still things missing, such as no shelves or Wi-Fi, but it looks like we'll be able to make production in time.

In Mongolia, many things happen that are unthinkable according to Japanese common sense. At first, our employees were accustomed to this situation, but little by little, they began to think about the customers and commit to the results.

We are receiving a lot of pre-orders, and some customers have been waiting for over a month, for which we are very sorry. We are working hard to streamline production, so please be patient until delivery.

HushTug Daiki Kawada