Today I am personally reaching out to provide you all with a detailed update on your orders. For those of you who are unaware, Ivory Paper Co and is just two years old and it feels like this business has grown overnight. I could not have imagined the success of this passion of mine even in my wildest dreams. I started this business because I was a mom who was feeling overwhelmed, and needed a planner to help me keep it all together. Fast forward to now, I’m so grateful for each and every one of you who have joined this community of kind, uplifting women, simply trying to do the best we can and keep our lives organized.
In early January we had a processing time of 9-14 business days, and were anticipating doing roughly 500 planners a day. We received a lot of unexpected press, features and many more organic sales than anticipated, and quickly were selling thousands of planners a day before we could get it all under control. On January 8th, we were able to throttle sales down, to allow us to focus on the huge order volume that came during that time.
Needless to say, this unforeseen spike in sales has caused incredible delays and for that we are sorry! I want to share with you the steps we have taken to get your orders out the door as quickly as possible along with provide you an exact ship date for your pending order.
Hiring - Starting in late November is when our production team managers typically start hiring seasonal team members for the busy season ahead. As of now, we have hired on over 70 new team members and even partnered with an employment agency to bring us new talent every single day. We currently are running two shifts to allow us the maximum output of daily orders!
Space - We secured another 2,000 square feet to help us house all the new team members, inventory and equipment needed to make all of your planners.
Outsourcing Production - We have been working tirelessly to find partners in the printing space who have the same values as we do here at Ivory Paper Co. It took us a little while, but earlier this month we outsourced over 15,000 late planner orders to a manufacturer in Utah. They will be able to produce your planners at the same level of quality but faster than we can on our own. Our production team is still working around the clock, but now we have extra help to speed things up for each of you.
Investing Back Into The Company - Right now we are in the process of bringing in new machinery into the Pink House over the next 3 months that will make sure that this never happens again. To ensure that your orders are being made as quickly and efficiently as possible so you never have to wait weeks for an order again. I am passionate about making our planners here in the United States and that means we need to do a better job of anticipating spikes and less time playing catch up.
Customer Service - We hired on 6 new additional customer service representatives who have been working tirelessly on your emails. To be honest, that was not enough. We need more and that is something we are actively working on. Right now customer responses are taking over a week or two and that is not acceptable. We know that, and are hoping to have this fixed shortly. If you have emailed customer service, please know that we have your email and it might take us a while but we will respond to every single customer.
Right now we have the following shipping schedule for orders -
Orders placed December through January 1st will be shipping out no later than Monday.
Orders placed January 2nd through January 15th will be shipping out starting Tuesday February 23rd.
Orders placed January 16th through February 15th will be shipping out starting Thursday February 25th.
All orders shipping currently have Mid February start dates and we will be switching to March start dates beginning with orders placed on January 2nd onward. This is to ensure there are no wasted pages in your planner upon it’s arrival.
Again, myself and the entire team here at Ivory Paper Co are so grateful for all of your support. We appreciate your patience and know that this process has been less than ideal for many of you. Please know that we are constantly trying to improve communication and processing times to ultimately make the process of order a new planner a breeze.
Much love,
Alitzah Evans Stinson
Founder & CEO | Ivory Paper Co
