Our Commitment to You! - American Adventure Lab

[Adventure Lab (Team)]

It's a love hate thing for me.

You are at the top, maybe the very top, of my "I'm sorry list".

The LBE (Load Bearing Enclosure) you have is one of the complex products I mentioned above. Thank you for sticking with us! We do really appreciate it!

Still absolutely love the way the front bumper turned out. The color is

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[Adventure Lab (Team)]

I absolutely LOVE the transparency and ownership of the past issues. It goes a long way with me when I see communication like this from a company. I look forward to my next order and your companies continued success. I've also updated my original Google review.

Thank you very much! That's why we're here. We are a very transparent company and I love showing everyone how well our team operates. The thing that I can't show easily is how much product we pump out each day. We have shipped over 100 orders a day in the recent past, not every day, but every day we ship hundreds of "parts" out. Being the manufacturer, service provider, retailer, shipper, and product support is a ton of work and our team is very good at it! We definitely make mistakes as everyone does, but we learn from them and put process in place to prevent them in the future. We rarely, at this point, make the same mistake twice.

 

[Alpine Warthog]

• Implementation of a new ERP/MRP system. We actually started a ERP project (Netsuite) about three years ago. We spent two full years on this project and we came to the conclusion Netsuite could not provide the system they sold to us. So, we switched to Odoo. This new system is absolutely amazing and the insight and efficiency it provides is second to none. However, it did not come without some learning curves and mistakes. We also had a few key employees that did not want to work within this system. For that reason, the next point was an impact
• Loss of two key employees - it's super unfortunate, and we tried to avoid it, but when they left, we had a lot of knowledge we had to recreate, which is the main reason for the new EPP/MRP system - not keeping knowledge inside of people's heads.

OOOF, I feel you there. When your ERP doesn't work is like working with a pair of handcuffs on. I used to work with IQMS (I think it's DelmiaWorks now) What a nightmare. Using SAP these days and it's still outdated and clunky. But it's better. Transitions are hell too!

 

[Adventure Lab (Team)]

OOOF, I feel you there. When your ERP doesn't work is like working with a pair of handcuffs on. I used to work with IQMS (I think it's DelmiaWorks now) What a nightmare. Using SAP these days and it's still outdated and clunky. But it's better. Transitions are hell too!

Oh man, I wouldn't wish SAP on anyone. In my previous life, I was in the corporate world with Accenture. I have mentally blocked all of that time at this point.

 

[Adventure Lab (Team)]

I absolutely LOVE the transparency and ownership of the past issues. It goes a long way with me when I see communication like this from a company. I look forward to my next order and your companies continued success. I've also updated my original Google review.

I was finally able to get in and read your Google Review update. Thank you very much for going to the trouble to update that review. It means alot. I'll pass that along to the team, as well, to know that their efforts are being realized. Thanks!!!

 

[jensbrown]

First off, thank you for the business, and thanks for the compliments!

You are right to ask those questions, I don't blame you at all. Most of the delay we experienced last year and early this year was due to a couple of reasons:

• Implementation of a new ERP/MRP system. We actually started a ERP project (Netsuite) about three years ago. We spent two full years on this project and we came to the conclusion Netsuite could not provide the system they sold to us. So, we switched to Odoo. This new system is absolutely amazing and the insight and efficiency it provides is second to none. However, it did not come without some learning curves and mistakes. We also had a few key employees that did not want to work within this system. For that reason, the next point was an impact
• Loss of two key employees - it's super unfortunate, and we tried to avoid it, but when they left, we had a lot of knowledge we had to recreate, which is the main reason for the new EPP/MRP system - not keeping knowledge inside of people's heads.

Our average lead time, across the board, has never been lower than it is right now. We have a much larger team working in production now as well as a few new key roles of oversight. This has helped to flush out any issues as soon as possible.

We have nearly 2300 SKU's that we manage, so you can imagine the breadth of data we had to create to get this new system online and efficient. That is about 90% behind us, but we will continue to make improvements with this system.

With the more complex products, as with your Rear Seat Delete, we had to recreate some of the knowledge for manufacturing processes, hardware requirements, assembly, etc. Those products definitely saw more of an impact than the simpler products.

The MRP implementation was perfectly scheduled, within the growth plan for the business, when we started the Netsuite project. Unfortunately, it was way late when we canceled the Netsuite project and started the Odoo project. Odoo wasn't an option when Netsuite pitched, so it wasn't even a consideration.

To your other question, we also have a great customer service team now. Xander, as you mentioned, Huntington (the new guy) and Katie, who a lot of you probably remember from early on in the business. All three of them have done an amazing job. We usually run only a handful of unanswered tickets. As of the time of writing this response, we have zero unanswered (new) tickets in the system. That's a huuuge win for our team. Mondays are also usually hard since the tickets build up over the weekend, but they have a great system in place now and are doing well.

And.... we have this forum! Our intent is to be super transparent. We have the team, software, and processes to back that up now. So, we're going to put the machine to the test!!!

Sorry for the long winded reply, but this is important enough to give real detail. We owe it to you and our other great supporting customers to be truthful.

I am glad to hear this - like others have mentioned I am impressed by the AAL builds and products, but the lead times have been unreal. I had anm 8 week lead time quoted on a radio antenna mount. Needless to say, i didnt pursue that, but I will keep a lookout and see if leadtimes are better (late summer 2025)

 

[Adventure Lab (Team)]

I am glad to hear this - like others have mentioned I am impressed by the AAL builds and products, but the lead times have been unreal. I had anm 8 week lead time quoted on a radio antenna mount. Needless to say, i didnt pursue that, but I will keep a lookout and see if leadtimes are better (late summer 2025)

Thank you!

We have also had a messaging problem. We have a much better handle on that now. We're also pre-building a ton of our products so that we have them on the shelf before the orders are placed. That has been, not surprisingly, very helpful.

With our new ERP system, we have a great view of our demand, average build times, average powder coat times, etc. It has been a long road to get here and I'm glad most of that is behind us!

Thanks for sticking with us!

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