I like to set goals and do whatever it takes to meet them. I like to do endurance races and push myself beyond what I ever thought I could do. One of my most recent races was an event known as the Tough Mudder. It’s one of those obstacle courses where you get a “little” muddy over the course of 11 miles and 27 obstacles. The day’s festivities included some of the more common obstacles for these types of events such as crawling under barbed wire, jumping in the mud, getting wet, climbing over walls, jumping through fire, and so on. But Tough Mudder, which bills itself as one of the toughest events on the planet, also consists of more extreme obstacles like jumping into a container of ice water, crawling through tight tunnels full of water and mud, getting shocked with electric wires, and obstacles where those who couldn’t make it through them were forced to go through the mud and water again (see picture above of the Funky Monkey obstacle), etc. As a bonus, the event took place on an unusually cold day in February, with temperatures in the 30’s, and wind gusts up to 30 mph making for a wind chill in the teens. But it was all worthwhile, because at the end of three and a half hours of non-stop, hypothermia-inducing torture, finishers receive an orange headband proclaiming to the world that the wearer is “Tough Enough”!
I share this not to brag about a personal accomplishment (well, maybe a little), but because FSI’s clients know firsthand of our culture and attitude of “there’s nothing we can’t handle.” There’s nothing we cannot accomplish for our clients. There’s nothing we won’t do to make sure your orders are taken care of on time and correctly. In our 16 years of kit packing, we’ve never missed a deadline. We do whatever is needed to get the job done. You need to send us enough volume to where we need more space? Bring it! We started out in 16,000 ft² of space and today we’re using close to 180,000 ft². More space doesn’t scare us. We once rented a separate 50,000 ft² warehouse just to handle a single kit packing job that lasted for 6 months. Another time we had a job where a printer had to reprint the kit contents, and we lost a day of kit packing production. Under normal circumstances, that should push the kit packing deadline back a day, right? But the deadline didn’t change, so when the printer delivered the reprinted materials to our location at midnight (our normal operating hours are 8:30 AM – 5:30 PM), we had a crew ready to begin catching up. Yes, I was there the whole way with them starting at midnight and going until we loaded up the final FedEx trailer late the next night. We were pushed to the limits that day, but we proved once again that FSI is “Tough Enough”.
We didn’t start out 16 years ago with all of the capabilities that we have now. We’ve grown over time with growth fueled by our clients’ needs. We didn’t always have shrink wrapping, but now we have 2 machines and recently added an automatic labeler. We didn’t always handle EDI orders, but when our clients started needing it, we grew into it together. We haven’t always had processes in place to help ensure an order accuracy rate of 99.9%. We’d love for it to be 100%, but after handling millions of orders, a mistake or two is bound to happen. When it does, we do what we need to do to make it right. That’s just part of toughing it out – admit the mistakes, make it right, and learn from it.
So throw whatever you need to at us, because taking care of your most demanding fulfillment needs is what we do. It’s a family business where we take pride in what we do. Our employees are like family and have been with us for an average of 7 years. FSI’s goal is to be the partner our clients turn to whenever a job has to be done right and on time. FSI is “Tough Enough”!
Check out the Tough Mudder promo video below. You might just be inspired to do one yourself (toughmudder.com).
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