Because we do relatively small volumes of many different products, if we're not careful, inventory can gobble up our cash. We used to have huge growth rates of our inventories as business grew. Now we are able to hold them level even though we add more products each year, so we can manage our cash flow more effectively. |
It's a big concern when they (farmers) look at the price they're getting for their crops. They don't see big increases unless it's a year when the yields are low. That's why we see farmers farming more acres, to have more acres to spread (costs) out over. |
Our current systems were certainly creaking under the load, and then we bought the new company, which was just going to break it. Something had to change. |
The acquisition of Lauri added confusion to what we do. We'd been making similar stuff for years and everybody knew how to make those products. We basically doubled the size of our product line in one fell swoop and the old way of relying on memory no longer worked. |