For Heather, finding her current position wasn’t quite the intricate road that others have traveled. She started in mail order, the same department she now supervises alongside Justin and Cori. Ace order fulfillment support, casual hardware gatherer and irrefutable delight, Heather Ryan is happy to be working with SLC, not just for us.
Heather started at SLC about two and half years ago as a hardware gatherer. She loved the active nature of the job. After a system change at SLC, the department needed to adjust and Heather rose to the challenge.
“After we switched systems, they needed somebody to deal with all of the back orders. Before we didn’t have a system to track orders and now we can see what an order is, what it’s up to, who touched it and what’s left.”
These days, Heather works on order fulfillment support. That means she tracks every single order that we get and ensures that they are completely fulfilled. She does this for every department at SLC including all of our e-commerce platforms like Amazon, Etsy, eBay; and our more traditional ones like mail orders, call-ins and SpringfieldLeather.com.
“Right now it shows we have 500 orders…we’re taking in 200 orders a day and sometimes getting over 300 orders shipped a day. One of my jobs is to make sure that all of those orders are going through. Hardware gets gathered, then it might need to go through shop, it might need something from Tandy or needs the leather to be produced.” Heather makes sure that all of those steps are taken before it’s ready to go out the door.
She also has to contact customers when we run out of items. “Sometimes we may not have all of the hardware for an order and it may take a few weeks to get it in. So, it’s my job to also contact customers and offer substitutes for those back ordered items…whatever they need to get their project done on time.”
Still, she likes to switch it up from time to time. She provides support to the hardware gatherers, making sure they get items that they need, adjusting inventory and occasionally gathering hardware herself.
“It’s fun to change it up,” she said. “No day is really exactly the same here.”
She says the challenges come along when we are busy or when our system is down. “There is never a dull moment for sure!” She explained, “When our [correctional facility customers] start their new fiscal year, we might get 200 or 300 Federal orders in a couple of days on top of our other 200 orders.”
Like Heather Kingsley, she likes a challenge. “Keeping the customers satisfied, I would say is not that hard, but it’s always a challenge you want to strive for. We are always being creative in the ways we can get those orders finished.”
Her favorite part? The company culture, she says.
“I feel like I don’t work for this company, that I work with this company. I feel like it’s a company that works for me. That’s important at a job because you don’t want to feel like your job is mundane, repetitive or that you have to do it. You want to go to work where you can express your creativity, your opinions and you have a little bit of freedom. I feel like I’ve had that here at SLC.”
She says that freedom has allowed the department to grow.
“Cori, Justin and I have [made big changes] in the mail order department. It used to be pretty hectic back here. We’re working with a great team. I have only been here for two and a half years and things have changed drastically in that two and a half years. I think that it’s better in our department than it ever was and I am lucky enough to work with two of the best supervisors that have helped build it up. I couldn’t do any of it without them!”
When she’s not making waves at SLC, she is brainstorming about ways to make the team even better and spending time with her friends, family and pet bunny. Dubbed Hot Fudge Sundae by Heather’s daughter, she is best known as Sundae Bunny and she rules the house.
Though Heather’s not a leathercrafter she has a stash of leather she likes and even tried her hand at reupholstering a stool. “It looks bad because I stapled it,” she said. We think it looks pretty good though.
Do business with Heather by ordering anything from SLC!
