Congratulations!
You have slogged your
way through the first two pages of our journey
through time and aparently still decided to
continue...Either you have an insatiable appetite for
punishment, or you are really bored!
In either
case, feel free to go with as the saga picks up where
Albemarle
Glass Company Inc.
is forced into the rather
uncomfortable position of having to make
Our Second Move.....
.........once again our heroine and her husband find themselves in an "As Is, No Warranty" situation, and it was a disaster.
Albatross, Pink Elephant, Pig in a Poke, call it what you will we were saddled with it and it was to spend the next two years trying to ride us into the land of financial oblivion!
In 1994-1995,
because of the large number of work trucks, delivery
trucks coming from our suppliers, trucks coming from our
customers to pick up crates of glass and
mirror, and the employee vehicles we had to have parking for, we were
being pressured from all sides to move.
Suddenly, just in the nick of time, (from out of the blue) Came word that IT was Available!!!, just two short blocks away, the former Confederate Motors Chevrolet building with plenty of parking: to the front, both sides, and in the back of the building; enough for all of our required business and customer traffic, a company truck and employee personal parking area which could be fenced in for protection, and still leave plenty of room for office personnel to park and forklifts to navigate.
The back
of the shop as it now appears,
with our trucks
(happily) parked safely behind he fence protecting the property.
To further put icing on the
cake, buyers were found for both of our other buildings, with a
like property swap being arranged to eliminate
any tax burden.
Plus
a deal that allowed us to stay
in our current location for 6 months to a year while we did any necessary work to
the new location. That turned out to be one of the biggest down
sides of the deal, which caught us by surprise after
the deal was made. Although the swap of 11,300 sq. ft.
for 22,000 sq. ft. cost us less than $1.00
per foot of the new site (building and land included), we soon
found out that the floor above the half basement
was designed for a 100 lb. live
load, and our
business would be generating a 320 lb. live load. It was to take us two
whole years, and all of our financial resources, to complete the welding required to beef up the floor, pour new concrete
in the upstairs shop
area because the old floor was in such bad
shape, convert the
wiring, replace the plumbing which had corroded through,
and the sewer lines which had collapsed, remodel
the office space to
get rid of the automobile salesmen's cubby holes (I bought my first new car in one of
those cubby's: a 1970 Nova for $2550.00 ...... and my desk now sits just
about on the spot where I signed the papers!) replace the built up roof over the
office area, which
leaked so much that water virtually cascaded down the wall of the old
Chevy showroom whenever it rained hard enough to wet the ground
at all, replace the
oil fired boiler which provided steam to the
radiator heaters, install
new gas heaters and
a 12.000 square foot drop ceiling, completely re-do the electrical
wiring with a new 400 amp, 3 phase service, and move our heavy glass edging machinery,
cutting tables, free fall racks,
and glass those
short two blocks.
By the time we actually moved we had grown used to occupying 30,800
feet of space, and 22,000 was just no longer enough.
Left: Drop
ceiling with Mercury Vapor lighting, and machinery crammed
in
under an overhead crane (one of the real
benefits of the move) and
Right: Storage racks holding some of our large inventory of
glass
in clear thickness' of3/32, 1/8, 3/16, 1/4, 3/8, 1/2, and 3/4,
1/4 inch tinted glass in gray, bronze, Ford blue, and LOF
evergreen, and blue-green,
as well as laminated safety glass in clear, green, gray, and
bronze,
frosted glass, fluted glass, german new antique, and glue
chip.
In addition to glass our inventory includes mirror in clear,
bronze, and gray,
with clear sizes starting at 42", and going every even
foot from 48" to 96"
with all of our mirrors being available in lengths of
144",
our largest being 96X144.
And by the way, we can deliver.
.......
Not only were
they disgusted at us
down the street
where we had just come from for taking two years to move rather than the
origional estimate of six months: we didn't have enough room for glass
and machinery that
we had acquired in the last two years since we had the extra
space provided by being in our 8,800 ft.
location, combined with the usable space we had
in the new 22,000 ft. location. Which
brings us to:
However, before
we move on, I would just like to add that during
this difficult time of remodeling and moving, our
fabricators and installers grew to become some of
the most professional and customer oriented employees a
company with our commitment to customer satisfaction could ever
want to have, and our sales grew from $800,000.00
in 1994,
to over $1,400,000.00 in
1999. Since we do very little advertising,
we have to attribute our success to:
a) the loyalty of our contractors who stuck with us through the years in spite of our occasional blunders,
b) word of mouth of the clients who ultimately purchased our products, and
c) to the fine men, young and old, who have done your work for us, and have labored with us in the fulfillment of our goal: that every customer be satisfied, no matter what it takes.
Thank you all.
To be quite
honest, though, there are at least two or three people
out there who
would be outraged if
they were to read this, but there are just a few people out there
that you couldn't satisfy if
you gave up your firstborn son as a sacrifice
in their behalf.
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