Hello everyone,
Disaster struck us the evening of February 6th at around 5:00 PM, the fire alarms started going off. However, there was no fire, not for us anyway; in the apartment above us, there was a minor grease fire, but the tenant panicked and threw the pan into the sink and attempted to extinguish it with water from the faucet. This caused the grease fire to flare up, create lots of smoke ,and set the fire extinguishers off indefinitely. Water immediately came raining down through light fixtures, and soon started coming out of everything, including electrical outlets.
We managed to save all of the merchandise. Thankfully, merchandise-wise, the water damage was restricted to the external shipping boxes. A small number of doll boxes did get water damaged.
All of our affected team members are safe. Unfortunately, the water damage is extensive enough that we have to vacate our headquarters. As many of you might remember, we’d only moved in here last April and had intended to stay here for the foreseeable future, but we need to get everything out in a matter of two days so that the roofs and walls can be dropped and restoration can begin. The restoration company estimates at least three months for them to repair everything.
There’s still a lot that we don’t know yet. We’re currently in the process of getting everything moved into a nearby empty unit, where we will conduct business out of until we’re able to move back. In the interim, there will be delays, for which we deeply apologize for. The most affected part of our operation is the distribution of items that have just come in, as the temporary unit we’re staying in is significantly smaller and due to the emergency nature of the situation, things had to get packed up and moved very quickly without time to sort it. The upside to this really speedy move is that we’ll be set up again very quickly in the temporary unit.
Her’s a rough estimate of how much our operations will be affected by this situation:
Shipping of items that have just arrived: Very delayed. Due to the need for things to be out ASAP so that water damage mitigation can start right away, a professional pack-out company had to come in and packed everything up in a hurry, move it out, and then unloaded into our temporary office. When we’d moved to our current location less than a year ago, the entire process took a whole month. Now, it’s being done in two days, so you can imagine how everything will be like.
Shipping of in ordered in stock items: Somewhat delayed. These we managed to move over before the pack-out company showed up so we know where they are.
Responding to inquiries: Somewhat delayed. We’ll get back to it as soon as we have computers moved and internet up in the temporary place.
Shipping time of incoming orders: Not at all affected. We’ll also be very close by to our normal location so we’ll be checking for packages everyday and picking them up.
Production time for order: Not at all affected. These are happening overseas at the BJD companies.
We’re not fully certain of all the details surrounding our current situation. The current plan is to return to the location that we’d picked out because it was perfect for what we needed. We have a lot of concerns and fears that things might not work out how we’d like them to, and there are of course many unforeseeable things that we can’t anticipate at this time. We are working hard and endeavoring to do all we can to maintain as much a state of normalcy throughout all of this as we can.
Thank you as always for your patience and understanding.
P.S. As many have asked if there’s a way to contribute, we do have a gofundme set up:
BJDivas Post-Flood Relief Fund
For those that are interested in the nitty gritty details, we have been posting them on BJDivas | Facebook.