Unpredictable. If I had to pick a word to summarise the last five years – personally, for MING and for the world. Our achievements as a brand, the mistakes I’ve made, lessons learnt, and people I’ve met over this journey is not something I would have predicted (much less the pandemic), but what an experience it’s been. And as someone with the burden of insider information, I can tell you, MT is just getting started…
While my title may have changed, the job description has not: to enable MT’s creativity while simultaneously improving the experience for our customers and patrons. Some of you may have read my previous posts explaining the rationale behind past changes or sharing thoughts after a particularly overwhelming launch.
I thought it only appropriate to stick to tradition and give you a brief breakdown of where we are and where we plan to go. Not with the watches themselves – I’ll leave that to MT and his Design Brief – but the system that supports the production and delivery of these watches.
The last two and a half years have been a period of both significant growth and significant turbulence for us. We’ve had our share of challenges (the MING team has worked remotely from 4-5 different countries for half of its life). We’ve had to contend with significant unpredictability with production, logistics, pandemic related disruptions while attempting to improve availability and accessibility. We haven’t always got it 100% right, but we have gotten better.
I want to thank everyone – partners, customers, friends in the media, and especially Sarah – for continuing to support us and stand by us as we worked through these growing pains.
I’m also aware that there have been delays in the final delivery of the last few projects. Anyone who’s worked in any form of production-based industry the last few years, will likely relate when I say the adage ‘The only constants in life are death and taxes’ is misleading, because it leaves out surprise supply chain disruptions.
That said, the final responsibility lies with us. We make a commitment when we take a deposit and we will continue to do our best to honour that commitment and we do not take your patience as customer lightly. We are also making long term investments in production, partners and technologies to try and reduce both wait times and the likelihood of delays. These changes need time to yield results however and I’m confident you’ll start to see said results over the next year plus.
Our most immediate change is welcoming a Head of Customer Experience – Hasnida Hashim. She will be taking over from Sarah and expanding on the fantastic work that Sarah has done. MT and I will work closely with Hasnida to evolve and improve our customer experience. The first of these changes will be announced in a few weeks. And for those wondering, Sarah will be leaving us at the end of this year to pursue other opportunities.
We also debuted a new website earlier this week. It is an evolution of our previous one - with changes intended to make the browsing experience easier and more enjoyable. We now have filters on our collection and journal pages for instance, to better help you find the right watch, strap or post.
Lastly, and this will come as welcome news to our American customers, we will be expanding our payment options later this year. By the end of the year, we will be able to offer American Express and Apple Pay for purchases on our website. More details on this will be made available once we’re all set up and ready to go.
This is just a small taster of the various changes and improvements we’re continuing to make in order to create a more enjoyable and memorable experience for you, our supporters.
We also have a slew of announcements planned for our fifth anniversary – the first of which will be this Monday, 25 July…
- PRS
Published: July 2022