Hey all.
I spoke with Jerry earlier this morning and he's asked me to give you all a bit of an overview of some of the things that have been going on out of sight behind the scene at Aroma.
What does everybody want? To be appreciated? Well, that's nice and all, but what everyone really wants is more WTA. (Half credit to those of you who said, "To get laid". I like where your minds are, but you're not thinking along the line relevant to this post.)
Back in late July I made a weekend trip out to beautiful Phoenix to visit with Jerry and inspect his lab operation. First, let me say that I've been being rained on excessively all summer, and I'm damned sick of it. So, Phoenix sounded like an ideal place to get away from all the rain and humidity. So I get to Phoenix, and it's raining. Rained all weekend, got like 3 inches of rain dumped on me. This place is only supposed to get 8 inches of rain per year. Many things might come to mind, but to my mind the thought was simply ...? (Seems the forum auto-censor didn't like that, but it's like WTA, only replace the A with an F). And the humidity... it was hot and sticky as hell. I can go to Atlanta to get that. Hell, I can stay home to get that.
By now, you're thinking, "Cut the self-indulgent rambling and tell us about Aroma!". Not if you're going to be like that, I won't. What? OK, apology accepted.
The Aroma lab is nice. I've seen plenty of labs so I never get all googly-eyed when I see a new one, but it's nice. Functional, clean, a bit cramped for my taste, but hey... if Jerry could make all the WTA you maniacs want, you'd be happy if he was making it in a tool-shed. Fortunately, it's no tool-shed, it's a lab. The first thing I set out to do was to destroy Jerry's electric stirrer. This was a great success. I mean that thing is eff'ed. I had Jerry show me through the various steps of his tobacco processing. As he was talking and showing, the wheels were turning in my head. I liked his overall process, and was somewhat surprised at the differences I saw between how I make WTA and how Jerry makes WTA. Jerry and his PhD chemist consultant had changed some things around from the way I initially suggested he perform the process, but these changes simply reflected the tools at their disposal at the lab facility. Hell, I even learned a new vacuum filtration trick from Jerry that I'd never seen. Didn't see that one coming.
So nothing I saw made me think, "He's been selling THAT?". It's a solid process.
So I made a few suggestions, and over the weeks since, we've been talking and I've been focusing on process efficiency. You see, the process at Aroma has a lot of room for improvement on the efficiency side of things. It's one thing to make good WTA, quite another to make good WTA more quickly. One point I stressed was this: Customers want 24 mg unflavored straight WTA. Actually, some of you probably want 100 mg unflavored WTA for DIY mixing, but you're never going to get that from Jerry. I believe that the strongest WTA that can be sold responsibly is 24 mg. Some of you can handle 24 mg, others will need to mix it down. Try to talk me out of my belief that 24 mg is the limit, won't happen.
So what can you expect realistically by the end of the year? Does a 350% increase in WTA production sound OK? That's what we're looking at for the same amount of work. Once the efficiency becomes built into the process, then it becomes much easier to take that efficiency and scale it up. Scaling an inefficient process doesn't give you the production improvements you want. You get things streamlined and ticking, then you start ramping up from there.
We've speculated about how much WTA Aroma could be making in a year, but we've decided that it's best to set as an immediate goal a 350% production increase. That's something that's obtainable in the near-term (2013). Once things are humming, then we can think about where things go from there.
Something I should probably touch on in closing... I don't work for Jerry. If there was anything he was doing in his WTA process that I didn't like, I'm not constrained by financial interests to hold my tongue. If there was something that I didn't like, something that would affect the quality or safety of the product, I'd tell him straight, "You can't do that". If he resisted, I'd simply say, "You're on your own, I'm out." Fortunately for all, Jerry takes all suggestions quite seriously, and I've not had to push the safety issue. Heck, even if I did work for Jerry, I'd be the same way. Money doesn't excuse a bad product... at least not for me and fortunately not for Jerry either.
Generally, when I do post to the forum, I post what I feel like posting, and there's no "call to headquarters" to clear it with Jerry. I told him I'd post something here about what's been happening behind the scenes, but like the rest of you, the first time Jerry sees it will be right here like everybody else.
So, anyway, I hope you like what you've heard here.
I spoke with Jerry earlier this morning and he's asked me to give you all a bit of an overview of some of the things that have been going on out of sight behind the scene at Aroma.
What does everybody want? To be appreciated? Well, that's nice and all, but what everyone really wants is more WTA. (Half credit to those of you who said, "To get laid". I like where your minds are, but you're not thinking along the line relevant to this post.)
Back in late July I made a weekend trip out to beautiful Phoenix to visit with Jerry and inspect his lab operation. First, let me say that I've been being rained on excessively all summer, and I'm damned sick of it. So, Phoenix sounded like an ideal place to get away from all the rain and humidity. So I get to Phoenix, and it's raining. Rained all weekend, got like 3 inches of rain dumped on me. This place is only supposed to get 8 inches of rain per year. Many things might come to mind, but to my mind the thought was simply ...? (Seems the forum auto-censor didn't like that, but it's like WTA, only replace the A with an F). And the humidity... it was hot and sticky as hell. I can go to Atlanta to get that. Hell, I can stay home to get that.
By now, you're thinking, "Cut the self-indulgent rambling and tell us about Aroma!". Not if you're going to be like that, I won't. What? OK, apology accepted.
The Aroma lab is nice. I've seen plenty of labs so I never get all googly-eyed when I see a new one, but it's nice. Functional, clean, a bit cramped for my taste, but hey... if Jerry could make all the WTA you maniacs want, you'd be happy if he was making it in a tool-shed. Fortunately, it's no tool-shed, it's a lab. The first thing I set out to do was to destroy Jerry's electric stirrer. This was a great success. I mean that thing is eff'ed. I had Jerry show me through the various steps of his tobacco processing. As he was talking and showing, the wheels were turning in my head. I liked his overall process, and was somewhat surprised at the differences I saw between how I make WTA and how Jerry makes WTA. Jerry and his PhD chemist consultant had changed some things around from the way I initially suggested he perform the process, but these changes simply reflected the tools at their disposal at the lab facility. Hell, I even learned a new vacuum filtration trick from Jerry that I'd never seen. Didn't see that one coming.
So nothing I saw made me think, "He's been selling THAT?". It's a solid process.
So I made a few suggestions, and over the weeks since, we've been talking and I've been focusing on process efficiency. You see, the process at Aroma has a lot of room for improvement on the efficiency side of things. It's one thing to make good WTA, quite another to make good WTA more quickly. One point I stressed was this: Customers want 24 mg unflavored straight WTA. Actually, some of you probably want 100 mg unflavored WTA for DIY mixing, but you're never going to get that from Jerry. I believe that the strongest WTA that can be sold responsibly is 24 mg. Some of you can handle 24 mg, others will need to mix it down. Try to talk me out of my belief that 24 mg is the limit, won't happen.
So what can you expect realistically by the end of the year? Does a 350% increase in WTA production sound OK? That's what we're looking at for the same amount of work. Once the efficiency becomes built into the process, then it becomes much easier to take that efficiency and scale it up. Scaling an inefficient process doesn't give you the production improvements you want. You get things streamlined and ticking, then you start ramping up from there.
We've speculated about how much WTA Aroma could be making in a year, but we've decided that it's best to set as an immediate goal a 350% production increase. That's something that's obtainable in the near-term (2013). Once things are humming, then we can think about where things go from there.
Something I should probably touch on in closing... I don't work for Jerry. If there was anything he was doing in his WTA process that I didn't like, I'm not constrained by financial interests to hold my tongue. If there was something that I didn't like, something that would affect the quality or safety of the product, I'd tell him straight, "You can't do that". If he resisted, I'd simply say, "You're on your own, I'm out." Fortunately for all, Jerry takes all suggestions quite seriously, and I've not had to push the safety issue. Heck, even if I did work for Jerry, I'd be the same way. Money doesn't excuse a bad product... at least not for me and fortunately not for Jerry either.
Generally, when I do post to the forum, I post what I feel like posting, and there's no "call to headquarters" to clear it with Jerry. I told him I'd post something here about what's been happening behind the scenes, but like the rest of you, the first time Jerry sees it will be right here like everybody else.
So, anyway, I hope you like what you've heard here.
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