Greetings from hot and sunny Sheffield.

Now 34 days since the fire at AW, and still no meaningful response from the insurance company.
Thank you for all your suggestions, tips and advice on how to deal with insurance claims. It's amazing how helpful and supportive the AW community is.. it's really encouraging and keeping us going.

Even our competitors have been in touch offering help and advice. The gift trade is amazing.
Not knowing is more stressful than even knowing that they just want to escape liability on some technicality. At least we can plan accordingly. You can read last week newsletter here.
We have been searching for a big new warehouse, the biggest of which we couldn't really commit to without the insurance company support, so currently in a kind of frustrating limbo.

But anyway it's all go in here, a maze of activity. We are quickly adding new production items - something new every day. Also new products arriving - it's all go. See below.
Dispatch and warehouse guys are working round the clock. They are seriously hero's.

The demolition guys came, a team of old timers - all gentle giants led by a lovely guy called Charlie who told me he had destroyed some of the biggest buildings in the UK in his 40 year career. These old timers wield massive equipment that can rip tons of metal girders from the burned out building and dump them in massive skips. They remind me of marvel superheros with special powers.

From our office in the remaining block we can watch their progress, and every now and then feel it.. as something comes crashing down and the floor shakes. While they get busy destroying our old warehouse we are getting busy rebuilding our company, it's products and supply chains. We have a grand plan.. Ancient Wisdom production department will remain here - in the three units remaining, so three times more space than before. We will rename it AW Aromatics, and they will not only supply AW but anybody that wants their own label or white label products. The distribution will move to a new big warehouse. We should be much more efficient with enough space to stock and ship everything from one place.

So our future plans are gradually coming into focus. Meanwhile, I'm quite excited because some of the Indonesian products I was working on whilst in lock-down in Bali are starting to arrive here. 

Also Hati Hati angels are finally back.. this was one of the first products we developed in Indonesia. Hati hati means "take care" or "be careful" in Indonesian - they became a firm seller and a much copied item. The family that carved the angels, simply couldn't make enough and supplied whoever gave them cash - they are found in local gift shops in Bali now, so our orders never got completed. Recently we trained another supplier, the one that makes soap dishes for us, and restarted production. So now we have some of that stock starting to arrive. It's another small family business, Wayan is a young energetic lady - another lady boss - who leads a small team of artisans all organised by her good looking husband, but Wayan is clearly the boss and really caring and giving attention to detail. She learns how to make any product herself, then sits and trains the artisans in how to make it personally and sets the standards. The artisans who carve the angels are usually older ladies earning extra money for their families.

It doesn't seem that long ago that she was sat in our office at the warehouse in Bali, showing me the traceability documents for the wood used to make soap dishes. And the invoices from government approved companies logging companies. All our wood is double checked by me or someone at Ancient Wisdom to make sure it comes from sustainable sources, and Wayan is as keen to be fully compliant. And always with plenty of Hati Hati.

Check our what we have back in stock..

So take care.. Hati hati!

More news next week.

David