Josh and Rhett in the additional office space we are building. Daddy is showing him around!

There is something so exciting about a new year. Fresh start, new opportunities. 2017 was an incredible year full of blessings for us and our family and 2018 will only get better.

In addition - we now have our own building. If you haven't heard, we have been building a new building for our business to move into for awhile. Bigger production, actual office space, all around happier employees, and a more functional business. Before Christmas, we decided that we had outgrown the barn that we were working in (literally, we had renovated a horse barn into an office space and production facility). Our shipping space was in the same room as our office. Boxes were stacked to the ceiling and the sound of taping a box with a tape gun could be heard in the background of any calls that the office took. Water from the production facility would slowly leak into the office  and find a home underneath all of our computer/printer/scanner/shredder cords - not ideal. Our break room doubled as the cleaning room - which we found out is technically illegal. :) And when we had to make larger orders, we would inevitably run out of room for finished product. Needless to say, it was time to move. 

To start, we moved all of our shipping (plus the 8 holiday hands that we hired to help pack boxes) to the new building. We don't know how we would have gotten our Christmas orders out otherwise.  

As the days passed, we were able to finish the offices, move all of the production equipment down, and get things going. We are still in the process of building additional office space, but the impact is huge already. 

It truly makes a difference to have a place to come to work every day that we can invest time into to make it a great place to work. The environment that we work in truly matters and Josh & I take great care to make sure that it's a place that people want to work. Last week we started a weekly bible study on Wednesday mornings that our employees can come to if they would like. Things like this are so important to us and this new space is the perfect opportunity to do so.

Being in this fresh space is such a blessing. There is a sense of rejuvenation newly found in Josh, each one of our employees, and in me. Seeing the fruit of our labor come to fruition in a new building, more room, and real office space tells us that what we are doing is working, and we have every single day ahead of us to improve. The success and growth that we saw this past year was tremendous, and we can't thank all of you enough for supporting us on this journey. We think of each one of you as an extension of our Parker Maple family! 

Originally published January 10, 2018