Our shipments endure a lengthy trip to finally arrive in our store in Santa Barbara, California. The heavy, Arabic-script riddled boxes are heaved in plastic, burlap-esque bags onto Qatar airway planes, flying 18 hours to finally land in LAX. A shipping company drives our bags the two hours between LA and Santa Barbara and delivers them to our door front, where we wait to count and quality-check whatever product our factories in Ethiopia saw best to ship.

            There is a slight giddy feeling that accompanies a new shipment. We can’t wait to reveal what products our here to line our shelves. But first comes the standard duties of running a business. We need to count bags for inventory, check each bag individually for perfect quality, and find out what to do with the massive amounts of boxes and bags that accompany international shipments.

            This is the scene we arrived to this morning: Boxes full of leather bags and backpacks lining the walls of our stockroom. Emptied boxes stacked to the ceiling by our backdoor. As we unloaded each package, we found more black and brown Carryall Bags, Leather Backpacks, a ton of Rust Brown Totes, and some secret new products to be revealed soon! We’ve replenished our inventory with more than 200 items. Updated stock emails sent out and we started receiving order almost immediately! The products we shipped today will have seamlessly transitioned from our factories in Ethiopia, an airplane halfway around the world, our store in Santa Barbara, to the homes of waiting customers.

            To top off a busy day like today, we’re expecting a new shipment by Monday or Tuesday. We don’t stop running here at Parker Clay. But we do it because we enjoy it. Keep an eye open for more in the future!

             Cole