Our storage and office space was terminated and we had to move.

On June 30, we were sitting together at lunch, as we do every lunchtime, when our warehouse manager Anwar was called out briefly. That's nothing special: even during the lunch break, there are sometimes deliveries that somehow cause problems. But after 5 minutes he was back again, visibly pale in the face. In a slightly panicked voice, all he said was "Philipp, please come immediately". My first thought was: "Damn, has there somehow been an accident at work?" But that wasn't the case: Standing in our storage rooms was our landlord, who wanted to give us notice to quit for all our rented premises. Just in time for the last day of the notice period, as our rental agreement stipulates that it is always extended by 18 months on July 1. So now we knew that we still had 6 months to find a new warehouse and move everything. If we couldn't find anything, we would simply have to file for bankruptcy.

To be honest, we started to panic. Warehouses are very hard to find in Kiel and moving an entire warehouse is no small matter: an initial estimate showed that we would have to reckon with costs of €100,000, at least a month of assembly and dismantling and many hundreds of additional working hours. All this in an economic situation which, in view of inflation and the energy crisis, is not yet seriously threatening, but is certainly tense. After the obligatory jokes about whether we shouldn't just set everything on fire, we pulled ourselves together and looked for solutions: The first step was to call every commercial estate agent there is in Kiel. Of course, we also fed all the real estate search engines and viewed everything that came halfway into question.

After about 3 weeks of intensive searching, things looked really bad: There was actually only one property that could at least somehow work. However, it was a former slaughterhouse that was largely built without windows and had a strangely depressive atmosphere. Nobody really wanted to go there, but time was running out: to ensure that everything would run smoothly again by Christmas (i.e. by the end of October at the latest), we had to start the move in September at the very latest!

Accordingly, we were all pretty dejected when we received an unexpected phone call: another entrepreneur in Kiel had heard that we were also desperately looking for a warehouse. He was also looking, but it was just extremely difficult and we could talk to each other. That was nice, of course, but in the end it was only of limited help. Nevertheless, we complained to each other for a while and at some point he mentioned that he had seen a warehouse in February (5 months ago!) that would suit us and was just 2 km away from our current warehouse. In the meantime, however, it was probably taken. I asked for information anyway and simply called the owner of the hall on the off chance and then almost fell off my chair with excitement: "Yes, the hall is still available". During the viewing, we could hardly believe our luck: The hall fitted almost perfectly, the new landlord seemed very nice and the rent was still affordable. I panicked a little and tried to get a signature on the rental contract as quickly as possible, because I knew that if it didn't work out, it would be a depressing slaughterhouse. But it all worked out, finally there was light at the end of the tunnel!

This is what our new warehouse looked like when it was empty (3D image, just move the mouse or move your cell phone)

It would have been nothing without a new warehouse, but of course the move itself was still missing. We're talking about over 500 Euro pallets, hundreds of picking racks, several heavy-duty racks, a T-shirt printing company and of course several 100 square meters of offices, so anything but a trifle. The quotes from removal companies started at €100,000 just for the transportation and we realized that we simply couldn't afford that at the moment, because our total budget was just €100,000 and we still had to pay for a lot of other things like new heavy-duty shelving. So we thought about what we could do: The solution was for one of us (Knud) to get an express truck driver's license especially for the move in August and for us to drive everything from one hall to the other in around 60 trips (!) with a 7.5 t truck.

During this time, Knud was of course unable to do his normal work, which we therefore had to distribute among the rest of the team. But the rest of the team was also busy with the move. For example, we had to set up heavy-duty shelving in the new hall to provide space for our 500 pallets. Fortunately, we were able to get the shelving relatively cheaply second-hand, but the assembly of the shelves required quite a bit of expertise. So we tried to find a specialist company to do the assembly for us. We had a maximum of 4 weeks to do this, as it was mid-August and the first pallets were due to be in the new shelves by mid-September. However, the companies we called only laughed uproariously at the timetable; we would be lucky if it worked out this year. Once again we were desperate. In the end, our new landlord saved the day: He was aware of the situation and offered to simply help set it up himself. He basically knew what to do. So we somehow managed to have all the shelves ready by mid-September (and don't worry, everything was properly inspected by a specialist company at the end, so we didn't neglect safety despite the lack of time). Thanks again for that, dear landlord!

 

When the shelves were finally in place, we got down to the rest of the work: from mid-September to early October, we loaded over 60 trucks, which Knud then drove into the new warehouse. Most of the goods had to be stacked on pallets first, because we store most of them on small shelves, as it is difficult to collect orders from pallets. We estimated a total of around 1000 working hours for this work alone. At some point, we were no longer able to process your orders normally, as the goods were all packed on pallets somewhere: at the end of September, we extended the delivery time in the store by 3 days, so that we did not deliver any orders from Wednesday to Friday in the last week of September.

Once everything was in the new hall, however, not everything was ready: the goods still had to be put back on the shelves. So that we didn't have to shut down the online store for any longer (because at the end of the day, we live from the sales made there), we all put the shelves away from Saturday to Monday. On Monday evening at around 6 p.m., we were finally finished and the first orders could be sent out again on Tuesday.

Since October 4, our move is largely complete: The only thing left to do in the old warehouse is to tidy up and clear out, but for now we're giving ourselves a 2-3 week break, which we'll tackle at the end of October. There are still unpacked boxes everywhere, there's a carpet missing in our office and even worse: we don't have a kitchen yet, it won't be installed for another 2-3 months because we have to install a water connection first. We are also planning to build a new loading ramp, as it is currently very difficult to make deliveries with large 40-ton trucks. But the rough work is done. We are all pretty exhausted, but also happy that we have averted such a threat so well.

By the way, we unfortunately have to admit that some delays in our Lootbox in the last few months would probably not have occurred if we hadn't had to deal with the move at the same time. As a result, we have sometimes simply noticed problems too late or we have too often not created several alternatives but hoped that things would work out. So things will get better in future, I promise!

By the way, the address of our new warehouse is Barkauer Str. 121 in 24145 Kiel. So if you want to send us a congratulations card on the move ;-)