Improving Manufacturing and Customer Service
“Production is up 150% versus prior levels. This means we now build and ship 2.5 apparatus in the same amount of time we previously built and shipped 1 apparatus. This is good progress, but we need to do more."
Hello Everyone!
Today we’d like to provide a brief update on manufacturing at Gratz Pilates and talk about customer service.
Before we go into the details, we want to reiterate what we said in our September note. We are investing in Gratz Pilates for the long term. We have a huge focus on manufacturing, and we are committed to being transparent in our progress and setbacks. Thank you for all the notes and words of encouragement in response to our previous note.
Now let’s dive in and talk about the progress made since then!
Manufacturing, Shipping, Logistics
Production is up 150% versus prior levels. This means we now build and ship 2.5 apparatus in the same amount of time we previously built and shipped 1 apparatus. This is good progress, but we need to do more.
We’ve been hard at work on improving manufacturing of all our Pilates apparatus. We’ve hired dozens of talented craftspeople, in welding, woodworking, and upholstery. We’ve installed better capital equipment in our metal shop including better welding tables, torches, and more. We’ve also made important investments in shipping and logistics, hiring new people, and acquiring new space for shipping to shorten delivery times of parts and apparatus.
We’ve hired 20 people since we joined Gratz Pilates in June and are now providing all full-time employees with medical, vision, dental, disability and life insurance benefits. This helps ensure the great people at Gratz Pilates want to stay with the company and has enabled us to recruit the people we need to make the team even stronger. We’ve also hired and appointed several critical new managers. We’d like to highlight two of these new roles here.
Lea, is our new engineer. Her role is to define new processes and measurements to ensure we manufacture to the highest quality standard, and that we are continually improving. We did not previously have an engineer on the team. She is already having a big positive impact on our workflows and manufacturing throughput.
We also appointed Charles, a long-time Gratz employee, to take on an entirely new role focused on quality. This is a new role focused exclusively on quality and is incredibly important. We’ll write more about Charles and his quality role in a future update.
We are working to get to a position where newly received orders go into production shortly after the order is placed, rather than queuing behind other orders for several months. We’re not there yet. We still have hundreds of orders in the queue for which we have ordered materials, parts, fabrics, and other supplies, but have not started production. We expect to produce all these orders in the coming 4 to 5 months. So, if you have an order in our system now, you can expect your order to be completed by the end of March.
If placing a new order, you can expect the following improved lead times:
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6 months for larger apparatus like Reformers and Cadillacs
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2 – 3 months for Chairs and Barrels
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30 days or less for Parts and Accessories
We are continuing to invest in bringing lead times down while improving quality. Thanks for your patience and support as we work on this! Manufacturing the best Pilates apparatus is at the heart of Gratz Pilates and we take it very seriously.
Team members from our new second shift packing an Aluminum Classic Reformer
Customer Service
Customer Service is an area we are particularly excited to focus on and where we’re not happy about where things have been and stand today. Our plan, hope, and expectation are to be outstanding at customer service. Answering your questions when you need to make decisions between apparatus, place or update an order, or talk delivery timing.
Before we visited Gratz the first time in early 2024 (as customers, not owners), we were very frustrated with the lack of communication. We were anxious to know when our Universal Reformer, Cadillac, and Wunda Chair would arrive. Our orders were late, and there was no communication providing us with updates. We understand that many of you’ve had similar experiences, including recently. We want to change that!
About 5 weeks ago when we started to see the progress and momentum we’ve made in manufacturing, we (John, Elizabeth, Molly) decided to personally take on customer care, ordering support, and addressing customer complaints directly. To put it mildly, this has been incredibly informative, eye-opening, and humbling. We have spoken to hundreds of you directly via email, phone and Zoom. We’ve heard about your frustrations and now better understand your pains and needs.
Before we say more, we want to clearly say – we are so very sorry if we dropped the ball with you on communication or follow-up. We understand how frustrating it is to have placed a parts order and not know when it will be delivered, or to have placed a large order for a new studio or studio expansion and feel like we’re ghosting you. If you’ve had this experience, we want to apologize and let you know we will do better.
So, what are we doing about it right now?
We are dividing and conquering.
Molly (Director, Sales) who joined us this summer is processing orders as rapidly as possible and digging through older orders that were seemingly lost to time to ensure they are properly handled.
John is helping Molly with order processing and is addressing “escalations”, particularly problematic, challenging or complex cases.
Elizabeth is diving deep into parts, making sure we have inventory for most parts, and personally packing parts orders for shipping, often after hours.
We are also adding customer success associates and a product specialist to the team. They will collaborate with you to ensure you get great service from Gratz. Our first customer success hire started two weeks ago! Two more customer success hires will start later this month. We couldn’t be more excited to build our customer success team and begin to provide you the customer service improvements you deserve.
To support our growing team, we are also investing in software to enable them to be excellent at their jobs. We are implementing our first ever ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning software) and exploring CRM (Customer Relationship Management software) which will help us get past using error prone spreadsheets and scraps of paper to track issues and complaints. We expect to be providing “good” customer service by the end of this year and growing towards great in 2025. Good or great customer service is in the eye of the beholder, so please keep letting us know where we are doing well and where we need to improve.
We mentioned our experience over the last 5 weeks has been humbling. What we mean is this - It hurts to see and hear the disappointment in our service. It also warms us to realize that you stick with us despite these present shortcomings. It is inspiring and motivating to see the high standard you expect from Gratz Pilates and your patience while we adjust to meet those expectations. We have gained so much from these personal interactions that we won’t stop doing them personally, even after we’ve hired the full team and implemented our ERP and CRM systems. The insights and learning are invaluable, and we love hearing all your stories personally.
Looking ahead to 2025
Hearing and learning from all of you is a highlight of our Gratz Pilates experience and we look forward to many more conversations and factory visits. We’ve been heads down the last several months, but we’ve had the opportunity to attend a few conferences, symposiums, and workshops.
As we look ahead to 2025, we anticipate being able to attend and support more of these events with Gratz Pilates equipment and staff. So, if you are planning an event, please let our team know so we can explore participation. We look forward to meeting more of you in the year ahead!
All the best,