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CEO Blog

23/04/2013

Impaired Business because of Customs?

1) Customs and the IT industry should in itself be friends, because there are on most goods simply no duties. A device with a power cable dos not cost any duty....

1) Customs and the IT industry should in itself be friends, because there are on most goods simply no duties. A device with a power cable dos not cost any duty. But if we get 100 units, plus 60 cables for Germany and 60 for England, which we then selectively distribute, then customs says that does not fit together, so duty must be paid for the cable. Annoying, but we are talking peanuts here.

So it came to pass, that a customs inspection over a period of several years not only gave us at headquarters weeks worth of work, but also ended with a tiny subsequent payment - as was expected. It's not that you can just specify at customs what you want: occasionally a customs examination is carried out, and you can rest assured that samples will be taken. The only positive aspect here was that the customs examiner was very friendly and that we even learned a few things along the way.

2) Now it gets even better: even customs can make a mistake and misjudge something. In our case, touch screen monitors believed to be televisions. The negative impact on us: 70,000 euros. Clearly an error, but this can happen, and a refund request should go through easily. This it did, but it has taken more than a year - and all we heard was: you got lucky. And regarding telephone inquiries at customs: please do not call anymore. Written requests? No answer. And that's where the German government is supposedly so well organized.

3) What has really annoyed us was a delivery of cash drawers via the Port of Hamburg last week. An examination of the container was requested. So what normally takes less than an hour, and I have seen it personally once: the container was opened, the officials only just peeked inside, and then they closed the container - 30 seconds tops. It was only harmful to business because for this brief act, whose meaning I do not want to doubt, we suddenly needed ten days lead time. "We have too much to do." Very well, but the economy has to run, right? So couldn't night shift or temporary workers carry this out? Alternatively, how about a 24-hour lead, and if the examiner cannot look at the container in this time frame, it just gets released? How are we to explain to the customer that the goods are just standing around?

My goodness, my dear customs office - get your act together - and please try to keep from hindering the economy as much as possible. Duties should be understood as a service to the economy, protect it from dumping prices, moonlighting, criminal goods and plagiarism - and this at a reasonable speed. It's not nice if everyone goes on a rant about you!

17/04/2013

Our first house search

It really is a bright start to the day when not only the sun shines, but there also is a five-person squad from the criminal investigation department, holding a...

It really is a bright start to the day when not only the sun shines, but there also is a five-person squad from the criminal investigation department, holding a search warrant, is waiting for you at your company in the morning. And our somewhat shocked office manager standing next to them.

It was clear that this case did not concern us - who has ever heard of someone being arrested for offering good service (haha), and the cover girl on our catalogue is neither naked nor underage.

What actually is appalling, however, is the scale of the crime because of which they are investigating at our and five further companies. A longtime employee of one of our vendors actually sold goods worth about a million euros - during a period of three or four years - without his employer knowing. And he sold to distributors who thought they were buying the goods directly. By the way, this is not information from the investigation, but from the deceived company itself, that informed us months ago.

As for us, we placed our orders directly with the vendor via e-mail, while the goods often came from a company that was owned by the fraudster. The pretended reason for this was a lawsuit against a former "exclusive distributor" of the vendor, which required the detour. Accordingly, payments were made to this company.

That did not work out well, because, at some point, we needed to return goods, which we sent to the vendor directly. They, however, wondered about devices with dubious serial numbers and started investigating.

Incidentally, the vendor is owned by an investor, and if I were him, I would have dismissed the CEO, first thing. Fraud is nasty, but falling for it is not that clever either - especially considering the huge sum.

Well, we were able to contribute a fair amount of documentation, that has been seized by the criminal investigators (who were very friendly and constructive) - although all the effort might be for naught, as the accused man has... disappeared.

18/02/2013

Impatience is good!

I continually preach that a quick response is an elementary part of the Jarltech DNA. On the one hand, I am often impressed by how quickly decisions are made here....

I continually preach that a quick response is an elementary part of the Jarltech DNA. On the one hand, I am often impressed by how quickly decisions are made here. On the other hand, it sometimes happens that we receive complaints about our response time.

It is only human to first want to place the blame on someone else -- and the truth is, we often answer customer inquiries too late, because we are waiting on information from suppliers. This affects more than just the movement of goods, since responses from contractors or service providers frequently come too late. Or, sometimes, not at all. This is the best hobby of them all. When it comes to "letting the garbage be washed away" you simply do not answer a question. I am sure that in 30% of the cases no one even notices.

If you look deeper you will realise that you lose a lot of time because of the time needed on the telephone to chase down answers. What is even worse is having to remind your own employees or partners about something that they should have taken care of a long time ago. And impatience with suppliers is particularly justified when they need six weeks and five reminders to prepare a grant statement, but who immediately call the first day when a payment is overdue.

There is no end to the discrepancies: our organizationally-slowest supplier decided one Friday afternoon to publicise a highly complex promotional activity, which should be retroactively effective!!! Plus, the next work day they called, and were very nervous -- where is the order worth millions?! Unbelievable.

In order to improve our service, keep our nerves intact and, above all, save time, we have decided to demand answers quicker and more aggressively. It is one thing to deal with people who cannot make a decision -- but they should at least be able to find someone in their own company who is capapble of making a decision, within a reasonable amount of time. The type of employee who says: "We are a large corporation, whose board only convenes every six weeks. I do not think I should ask them now." is then no longer the right partner for us. If one of our customers is not happy with his representative we are happy if he tells us, instead of quietly turning to the competition.

Regarding what affects me personally, the reader can derive two things from this entry: -- Please do not try to "lull" me into anything. -- And the othe way round: I always answer right away, or not at all. In case I do not answer that means that I simply do not have any interest, so you have to ask more aggressively. :) I gladly allow equal rights for everyone...

22/01/2013

A flattering compliment

Today an email from Holland made me happy. How nice it is to receive messages that do not only mention things which did not run smoothly. :) Here is the email:

...

Today an email from Holland made me happy. How nice it is to receive messages that do not only mention things which did not run smoothly. :) Here is the email:

--------------------------------- Hello Ulrich,

We don't know each other yet - but I came across your company via a particular route:

- 16-Jan-13, Epson meets a Dutch POS-specialist in New York and recommends Sweebr to him; - 18-Jan-13, 13:59 Epson calls us, explains about a new Epson printer product, well suited for web applications; - 18-Jan-13, 12:42 I order a sample of the product and set a date to meet Epson on 23-Jan-13, 15:00 - 18-Jan-13, 14:43 your company is introduced (Chris Bruls), CoC# etc. mailed - 18-Jan-13, 15:50 email received "Welcome to Jarltech" - 18-Jan-13, 16:34 email received "Order confirmation" - 18-Jan-13, 18:28 email received "Your products are shipped" - 18-Jan-13, 18:28 email received "Your invoice"

(inserted by myself: - 21-Jan-13, 13:35 products delivered by DPD) In less than 4.5 hours lead time, from introduction to shipped products. Must say congratulations!

Kind regards,

Bart Jaspers Chief Happy Customer Officer

---------------------------------

Ok, I must mention that there is something more to the story, than just the above-mentioned excerpts. For example, the customer's internal credit application was also being processed.

Speed is a part of the Jarltech DNA, and our Dutch sales team did a great job here, along with our logistics group. We also cannot forget that our IT played a key role here:

Our ERP software is an entire product of its own, on which five programmers work every day. And every day there are now, on average, two recommendations for improvement from our global team. While our favorite competitor is busy trying to sue an ERP software house for millions, we are happy every day with our own software. This is not meant as an argument against standard software - it is just that we have been used to utilizing our own product for more than 20 years. Surely, this is more expensive than a standard solution, but at Jarltech, this is not even worth considering.

Thank you again Bart, you made my day. :)

05/01/2013

Figures 2012

Well, here now is our first, enjoyable ballpark report on our results in 2012....

Well, here now is our first, enjoyable ballpark report on our results in 2012. The Group's consolidated turnover amounts to about 105 to 110 million euros (or 137 to 143 million US dollars), which represents at least a 30% increase. The calculation now also includes the turnover of Jarltech France SAS and, for a part of the year, of our new company in China. More detailed data will follow with the release of our corporate balance, expected in the beginning of April.

I wish everyone a successful year 2013!