From Joel and Keersten Nichols, owners of Apollo Design Technology:
A new year is a chance to rebuild for all of us. For Apollo, Blue Pony and Avid Labs this will be a rebuild in a big way. December 9th we had a fire at our facility that destroyed it. No one was hurt and we are truly grateful for that. The fire was ruled arson and those who started it have been arrested. We had staff on standby through the holidays to help as needed and secured a small planning office to work on a relaunch.
While some staff worked with the insurance company, arson investigators, and police, others concentrated on getting the long lead time manufacturing equipment ordered. Metal lasers, glass lasers, glass cutters, mills and lathes. The IT team worked on getting the hardware and software ready to get back online. We also began looking for facilities we could be in for 12-14 months to allow for the demolition and rebuild of our property. We signed a lease on a building late last week and will begin to get it ready for staff and equipment this week. WiFi, Servers, desk chairs and all kinds of big and little things. A coffee pot will be the first thing I personally bring.
The week of January 11th both Avid Labs and Blue Pony should be running in the new building and Apollo will have phones and computers back up. Apollo production equipment will start to trickle in. The large format printer will be fully functional allowing us to produce DesignScapes and PrintScenic gobos the week of January 18th. The second half of January the team will be doing electric, air and exhaust runs in the shop area to support production equipment. We expect the first metal laser to arrive in late January and hope to be able to take metal gobo orders in early February. Glass lasers will arrive in late February with glass gobo production starting in March.
This is a tentative schedule and I expect things could change. Much of our equipment has modifications from standard machines. We then have secondary changes we do after they arrive and all this takes time. The new building is 1/3 the size of the facility we were in. This means we will have minimum inventory until we get fully rebuilt. Apollo will be dropping some product lines due to space issues. I cannot say enough thank you’s to everyone who reached out with continued patience and support. We want to be there for the industry, our dealers and our employees. Here’s to a great comeback year!
Joel & Keersten Nichols
A new year is a chance to rebuild for all of us. For Apollo, Blue Pony and Avid Labs this will be a rebuild in a big way. December 9th we had a fire at our facility that destroyed it. No one was hurt and we are truly grateful for that. The fire was ruled arson and those who started it have been arrested. We had staff on standby through the holidays to help as needed and secured a small planning office to work on a relaunch.
While some staff worked with the insurance company, arson investigators, and police, others concentrated on getting the long lead time manufacturing equipment ordered. Metal lasers, glass lasers, glass cutters, mills and lathes. The IT team worked on getting the hardware and software ready to get back online. We also began looking for facilities we could be in for 12-14 months to allow for the demolition and rebuild of our property. We signed a lease on a building late last week and will begin to get it ready for staff and equipment this week. WiFi, Servers, desk chairs and all kinds of big and little things. A coffee pot will be the first thing I personally bring.
The week of January 11th both Avid Labs and Blue Pony should be running in the new building and Apollo will have phones and computers back up. Apollo production equipment will start to trickle in. The large format printer will be fully functional allowing us to produce DesignScapes and PrintScenic gobos the week of January 18th. The second half of January the team will be doing electric, air and exhaust runs in the shop area to support production equipment. We expect the first metal laser to arrive in late January and hope to be able to take metal gobo orders in early February. Glass lasers will arrive in late February with glass gobo production starting in March.
This is a tentative schedule and I expect things could change. Much of our equipment has modifications from standard machines. We then have secondary changes we do after they arrive and all this takes time. The new building is 1/3 the size of the facility we were in. This means we will have minimum inventory until we get fully rebuilt. Apollo will be dropping some product lines due to space issues. I cannot say enough thank you’s to everyone who reached out with continued patience and support. We want to be there for the industry, our dealers and our employees. Here’s to a great comeback year!
Joel & Keersten Nichols
