Mixing business and pleasure

Garry and I have flown to Brisbane to visit our third-party warehouse. Our new business, Artiwood, uses an external warehouse to hold its inventory and dispatch orders. The previous owner put in place a highly outsourced model. This made it easy to relocate it to Sydney after we bought it in June. It also facilitates future growth with fewer physical constraints.

We caught an early flight on Saturday, hired a car, and drove straight to Mullumbimby to spend half a day meeting with John Daniels, Artiwood’s former owner. John is currently working for us on a contract basis. He’s coordinating several projects such as sourcing new products and migrating the company’s print catalogue into new publishing software.

We checked into the Ramada Hotel in Ballina once our meeting was done. We booked a room overlooking the Richmond River. Saturday evening was spent in Meerschaum Vale celebrating our friend Liz Marchant’s 40th birthday. She and her husband, Adam, recently bought a lifestyle block about 23 km inland from Ballina.

The celebrations included a live band, a lively crowd and plenty of alcohol. I'll be the first to admit that my memories of the evening are a little hazy. Tonight, we’re back in Brisbane ready to spend a full day in the warehouse before flying back to Sydney tomorrow night.