When is it?

Hello Stranger,

I don’t know when the last post I made here was, and don’t have the time or gumption to go check, but I know it wasn’t this year, which is nearly 1/3 over.

Here are the simple facts of the matter.

As you may or may not be aware, the value of the yen has dropped by about 20% in the past 6 months, and the drop is against all other currencies. As a result, the Tools from Japan store is, effectively, having a 20% off everything sale, compared to mid-late last year.

You might have guessed (correctly) that this was not a secret. After all, absorb any kind of news media, and they’ll be telling you with regularity “Hey, the yen has dropped in value!”

And many of you out there have taken the opportunity to ‘get’ while the going’s good.

Many, many, MANY of you…

But ‘many’ doesn’t quite explain things adequately…

So, here are some vague numbers.

We’ve processed in the past 3 and a bit months more orders than were processed from January to August last year.

And it’s not slowing down. Not at all.

As a result, time is very, very tight around here. I do have help in the form of the mother of my children, but she can’t answer emails (English is her second language), she can’t prepare parcels for shipping (we tried, didn’t work) and she can’t add new products to the store (she can use a computer, but the store’s software is beyond her). What she can do is process paperwork and order in products we need. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s very much a case of 1 + 1 = 2 1/2.

But still, I still have a lot of emails to answer and a LOT of orders to process. And I simply can’t coax enough time out of a day to get it all done in a reasonably timely manner. I consider myself fortunate that I am able to function very well on a scant 4-5 hours of a sleep a night, and I’m using that ability to the maximum. But even putting in very long hours isn’t enough to get everything done.

So adding new products has gone on the back burner for a while. Which is a pity, as there is some really nice stuff that needs to be added, and a lot of it.

And writing here? Not a chance.

So that’s the basics of it all. I’m simply stretched too thin and I need to put my best efforts to where they’re needed first.

The upshot of all this is that we’re better able to keep stock of the more popularly ordered items so we can ship them quickly. We still don’t have a lot of space, but what little we do have is crammed with items that usually don’t stay long enough to gather dust.

This is a good thing, but still, we do often need a little time to process orders. We really do need that time. Unfortunately, not everyone realises that we are very, very small and simply can’t manage to keep everything on hand at all times. It’s very frustrating, but that’s how it is now and will be for the immediate future.

Anyway, that’s about it for the time being. We’re trying real hard, but it’s not easy being constantly too busy for our own good.

That’s about it I suppose.

Thanks for reading, and I hope this explanation makes some sense. I also hope this nice, new computer I’m typing this on gets used for the purpose it was bought for, editing video…

Stu.