A New Beginning

About six months ago, the KarateMart company sat down as a whole and began discussing the direction we wanted to take the company. While we have worked extremely hard over the past 30 years to build a wonderful company, we knew it was time to make some changes that would help us to grow into a more mature business.

We began by making a list of some of the things that made us popular with our loyal customers, like our quality products, low prices, and strong product knowledge. After listing our strengths, we started brainstorming our weaknesses. Among them, our most serious shortcomings were our outdated website, limited knowledge of the internet, and an antiquated logistics system that made our shipping process slower than it could be. It very quickly became apparent that if we were going to be able to move in the direction we wanted, we were going to have to bring in some new talent.

The first position we needed to fill was the role of a new general manager who would oversee the operations of the customer service team, shipping department, and returns department. After spending some time interviewing many highly qualified candidates, fate led us to a very qualified individual who had spent over 10 years managing the supply chain and human resources of two very successful e-commerce companies. For the first couple of weeks after he joined our company, things were a little tense. Much of our staff was used to doing things a particular way, and our new manager had big ideas that would help to streamline all of our departments. Perhaps the biggest improvement he implemented in our company was the new policy that would enforce all orders to ship quickly (usually within 24 hours), and if there was any reason for a delay, the customer needed to be contacted. In order to process orders that quickly, we had to make some major changes to our shipping department and update our logistics system.

The most difficult position we needed to fill within our company was a new e-commerce developer. We knew that we were looking for a tech savvy individual who knew how to program websites, but we had to spend some time researching web technologies in order to determine exactly who we needed to bring onto our team. After interviewing many great people for the position, we came across a computer programmer who had worked on and developed some of the most popular websites in the world. We were amazed at just how much this guy knew. He was an expert at all things related to e-commerce, marketing, graphic design, security, server administration, and programming. Needless to say, we found the perfect online store programmer and couldn't be happier.

Since recruiting our new team members, KarateMart has made some major improvements. In late 2009, we unveiled our new state-of-the-art website (KarateMart.com) and have since been diligently programming in new exciting features, streamlining our internal departments, and adding new product lines. Our goal is to continue adding new products to KarateMart.com weekly so that we always have something new to see everytime you visit our website.

If you ever have any comments or suggestions for our company, we would love to hear from you, so please contact us anytime at Service@KarateMart.com.