10:34 – As it turns out, we won’t be using that U-Line packing foam I mentioned yesterday. I called U-Line to ask about shipping cost for the bundle of twelve 6″x2000′ rolls. The product itself costs only $26 for 12,000 square feet. The problem is that it has to be shipped by motor freight, which adds nearly $100 to the final price. The U-Line guy suggested an alternative, a single 12″x1,200′ roll, which is UPS-able. The problem with that is that it costs $47 per roll, not counting the UPS shipping charges, which’d probabably be around $30/roll. So, I could get 12,000 square feet for something over $100 delivered, or 1,200 square feet–one tenth as much–for around $75 delivered. What a deal.

So I’m going to go the low-tech route. USPS specifies that “Sufficient absorbent material that will not react chemically with the hazardous material must fully surround each inner receptacle and be capable of absorbing the entire liquid contents of the inner receptacle(s) in case of leakage.” For all of the regulated chemicals we ship other than sulfuric acid, paper towels meet that criterion. So we’ll just use paper towels to pad everything other than sulfuric acid, for which we’ll use thin bubble-wrap. I don’t even have to buy the bubble-wrap. We get plenty of it in incoming shipments.

08:36 – Winter is back in Winston-Salem, or at least the cold weather. We haven’t gotten any frozen precipitation and none is in the forecast. Last night, though, the wind chill was supposed to be -4F (-20C), and the next three days are to have highs around freezing and lows in the 10F to 20F range.

One thing about this business is that we go through bottles by the thousands. The number per kit varies by kit type, but typically when we build a batch of 30 kits that accounts for a thousand or so bottles. So we generally order several cases at a time, with one case being anything from 1,100 to 1,650 bottles, depending on size.

Our current kits use mostly 15 mL and 30 mL PE cylinders and 30 mL PE wide-mouths, with an occasional 125 mL PP cylinder and 30 mL amber glass. When we start shipping the advanced chemistry kit that mix will change to include a lot more of the 30 mL glass bottles, which are needed for chemicals like concentrated acetic, hydrochloric, nitric, and sulfuric acids, 30% ammonia and hydrogen peroxide, and so on. There’ll probably be a dozen or more glass bottles in that kit, which brings up the problem of breakage during shipping. There’s really no alternative to wrapping each bottle in foam padding. I think this is what we’re going to use, one 6×12″ sheet per bottle. The foam is only 1/32″ thick, but rolling each bottle up in one sheet and taping it should provide enough foam thickness to protect against breakage.

11:01 – I just finished shipping the backlog of science kit orders that built up over the holiday. Danny, our regular mailman, left me a handwritten note Saturday, saying that he was off today and that they were expecting a blizzard of packages. He suggested that I file a pick-up request to make sure that his replacement didn’t miss picking up our stuff. I did that last night, so whoever is running Danny’s route today got a printout of pickup requests first thing this morning, including ours.

Business this year appears to be picking up substantially over last year, which has gotten me started thinking about long-term inventory. Over the relatively slow months between now and this summer, we need to build up component inventory significantly. If we have the components and subassemblies in stock–chemical bags, small parts bags, individual items, and so on–it doesn’t take long to assemble the actual kits. I want to start July with 100 to 150 kits built and the components for at least 200 more on hand, August with at least 300 kits’ worth on hand, and September with at least 200. If growth continues on the current curve, we’ll ship several hundred kits in the last five months of the year. With our limited resources, that will require planning to make sure we don’t run dry.

13:05 – I just finished assembling chemical bags for another two dozen biology kits. Now I’ll start on getting together what I need for another five dozen chemistry kits. I’m down to three 30 mL bottles of 6 M hydrochloric acid in stock, and none made up. So I just made up six liters of 6 M hydrochloric acid, sufficient for 200 bottles.

And then there are all the smaller tasks that need to be done. I got a query this morning from a woman in Australia who wanted to know if she could order the international versions of both a chemistry kit and a biology kit and have them shipped in one box to reduce shipping charges. I told her we could do that. The shipping surcharge for one kit to Australia is $69. Shipping two kits in one box costs about $103, give or take, depending on actual weight. The international kits substitute chemicals that are legal to ship internationally for the regulated chemicals in the standard US versions of the kits. We’re down to only nine of the international biology chemicals bags and only two of the international chemistry chemicals bags, so I need to make up another dozen or two of each. I also need to make up another liter of Kastle-Meyer reagent for forensic kits and bottle it. And so on.