LESS IS MORE. OUR LEAD TIMES ARE PROOF!

Written by Sarah Fields, CEO

Our industry, like most, is driven by numbers. But at Jetta, we’ve learned that sometimes the numbers we can reduce, rather than increase, make the biggest difference to our customers. One of the most significant: reducing our already low average lead times from 10.5 days in 2021 to 9 days since the beginning of 2022. If you’ve been our customer for any length of time, you know we are a bit obsessed with keeping our promise of delivering high-quality bathtubs on time, every time. How do we do it? I’m glad you asked.

Before we get to supply, let’s start with demand. The reality is, product demand has surged dramatically and our company has grown more than 50% over the last year. Not a bad problem to have, I’ll admit. But I’ve learned that sometimes you have to say no to good so you can say yes to great. Over the past two years, we have said no new business as many times as we have said yes. Why? Because we only want to say yes if we are confident we can provide the excellent customer service standard to which we hold ourselves – and that includes refusing to compromise the level of service we currently provide to our existing customers

Early in the pandemic, we increased production and packed our warehouse full of finished bathtubs. We wanted to make sure we had products to ship no matter what happened. At the same time, other manufacturers chose to cancel orders for raw materials and slow down production. Consequently, when the industry heated up and you needed product in a hurry – we had it in stock and ready to ship. That head start has helped us stay ahead over the past two difficult years.

Our team has done an amazing job of keeping raw materials on the shelf despite abundant supply chain issues. We have sourced alternate suppliers to keep us in stock, located new materials when supplies ran out, and invested in extra inventory whenever possible.

Our manufacturing team has perhaps demonstrated the most physical dedication to making good on our delivery promise: collectively, they have worked more than 25,000 hours of overtime! To help them cut back on the long hours and simultaneously allow us to increase production capacity, we recently doubled our manufacturing workforce. It’s all working together to enable us to ship even more product to you with shorter lead times.

I’m proud to say we are positioned to continue our growth trajectory and maintain our position as leader in the industry for exceptional customer service.

Excellent customer service is the core of who we are, and we are so thankful to you for trusting us with your business. We look forward to continuing to serve you in 10 days or less!