I have been absolutely less responsive that I should have been over a period of time covering the past few weeks to months. I would like to personally apologize to all those who were affected, and I wanted to let you know as a group the steps that I'm going to be taking to resolve the issue, particularly so that customer orders are not mis-marked as shipped and customer emails are not missed. While a large percentage of orders were shipped on time and delivered with no issues, I continue to strive for improving this metric.

The main plans for new work over the coming weeks include:

Priority for improvements - I'm going to be closing down shop for in order to concentrate on implementing changes. I need to be able to concentrate on getting everything done without needing to concentrate on shipping orders. This will ensure that everything will be done right, the first (and final) time.

New in-house tracking system - The brunt of the new updates to be integrated will be a new customer/order/email tracking system, working with many of the new skills and techniques I have picked up at my primary place of work. This will be unlike any update OES has had before, and will enable me to better handle shipping, customer needs and getting a better picture of what is in stock, what needs to be shipped and how I can continually improve to gain back. I have tried to update this in the past, however I have never had more of a reason to go through with the updates now that I have even more limited time than I have at any time in the past 9 years.

More help & updated data - I'm going to be bringing in some more help for production to enable me to hopefully bring down wait times on new tarps and to make better estimates on current wait times.

Updates - With respect to the last few weeks in particular, I have been battling with a choice of discretion, as I have been having a renewed bout of medical issues, and I have been struggling with how to deal/disclose issues, especially as I plan and hope for the best while managing as best I can. In hindsight, I should have been writing this several weeks ago and closing down shop at the onset, but I'm going to be actively maintaining a presence and go all-out to keep things running smoothly. I am excited for the chance to really utilize many of the new skills and talents I've been developing and honing over the past year, and care deeply about making things right both with current customers and the hammocking community at large now and in the future.

With all of this in mind, I also will be placing more of a description of where I am in life, and how OES continues to integrate into my life. Gone are the days where I can spend 60 hours a week working on tarps, but I still very much enjoy interacting with the community at large and very much wish to continue. I plan on investigating third party options for helping keep OES active and updated while not requiring daily upkeep.

I will keep my store open through the remainder of Monday, if there were some who had planned on ordering a tarp in the meantime and have expressed interest for an upcoming trip. Tuesday, however, we will be closed throughout the remainder of the updating process.

I will see you on the flip side, with a new and improved interface, customer experience and outlook for OES.

- Brian