Earlier this month you may have seen our “Forging Our Path Back to Normal” announcement and Update from Lenin. In these communications we were excited to make two announcements:

1. Timelines for custom imported stones were reduced from 180 to 150 days.
2. International freight surcharge (IFS) was reduced 11.5%, from $0.26/lb. to $0.23/lb.

Our team has been working diligently to improve processes within shipping & receiving as well as within our warehouses. These improvements lead us to today’s exciting announcement!

Effective immediately we are able to reduce shipping timelines from 15 to 10 business days.

We are committed to Forging Our Path Back to Normal to best serve you and your families.

At Salem Stones, we continually work to make improvements in our business. We do this primarily by investing in our people, our processes, and the latest available technology.

In fact, our goal as a company is to work in partnership with our customers in “Forging Our Path Back to Normal” within our industry. As a next step down this path, Salem Stones has reduced the timelines for imported custom stones from 180 days to 150 days. This will allow our customers to provide more certainty with promise dates with their families.

Also last year, based on enormous increases in shipping rates we implemented an international freight surcharge (IFS). While we have not seen significant declines in these rates, they have in fact stabilized. Therefore, effective August 15th, we will be reducing by 11.5 %, from 26 cents per pound to 23 cents per pound.

Salem Stones continues to monitor these rates very closely and as prices decline, we will reduce the IFS accordingly.

Please watch for more “Forging Our Path Back to Normal” updates and announcements as we will continue to keep you updated while we make improvements in our business.

We are honored to support you and the families you serve.

Lenin Kailasammani
CEO, Salem Stones Inc.

With everything going on in our industry, Salem Stones is consistently the partner I can trust to deliver for our families. The quality and timelines of their custom monuments continues to impress.

– Midwest Monument Retailer

We continue to hear customer feedback about promise dates of 9-12 months from other suppliers, “It’s our industries new normal” is what we hear far too often.

At Salem Stones, we do not accept this “new normal” narrative. We are in fact, committed to forging our industry’s path “back to normal.”

Therefore, effective immediately, we are reducing the expected timeline for custom import memorial orders from 180 days to 150 days! These revised timelines will provide more certainly for both you and the families you serve!!

Lastly, Salem Stones has a rich history of designing and delivering custom stones.

Here are some examples of our custom capabilities:

(Note: Columbaria and Mausoleum orders do not apply to the 150-day timeline.)

In our 15-plus years, we’ve always found it best to be transparent with our customers so that you could trust us and how we do business.

To that end, I’m writing to you today to address the operational challenges that may have negatively affected your recent customer experience.

As you know, the stone and monument industry as a whole has struggled these past two years: inventory is tight, while demand, unfortunately, remains strong. Thanks to supply chain shortages, delays have become all too common. We wanted to help solve these problems, so we connected with our global supply partners and quickly secured a new stone pipeline.

Opening up that channel doubled our business in 24 months, but it didn’t allow us enough time to properly scale operations. The result was delays, damaged stones and incorrect deliveries. Needless to say, this is not the top-quality experience we’ve always been known for.

To address these issues, we have looked to our past to move forward. In 2006, our first year in business, we faced similar logistical problems, including delayed shipments and occasional stone damage. We knew then that if we didn’t improve we would go out of business. Happily, we got better, and we’re using the lessons learned then to overcome our challenges today.

Here’s how:

• In response to delivery delays … To accommodate the heavy demand, we sometimes received 20 truckloads of stone a day. However, we didn’t yet have processes in place to organize and track this massive quantity, which in turn made it hard to locate each individual stone and resulted in delays for outgoing orders. To solve this problem, we’ve implemented a new warehouse management system, based on a row-shelf-bin organizational model. That new system and new QR code protocols—which require staff members to scan each stone upon arrival at our facility, upon shelving, and again upon shipment—make locating a stone a much easier task. Fulfillment times are, thus, faster, backlogs fewer, and delivery times shorter.
• In response to stone damage … The difficulties in locating specific stones meant our team had to move each stone around more frequently and this extra manhandling naturally led to more damage. The organizational improvements mentioned above go a long way to solving this. However we have also introduced stronger Paletts, so that the stones are more protected all along their journey,  purchased a new, state-of-the-art, shrink-wrap machine that better insulates our stones and implemented an inspection process that ensures each Pallet exits the warehouse in perfect condition.
• In response to incorrect deliveries … we tasked a supervisor with checking each outgoing order to ensure that each Pallet contains the correct stones. The QR scanning referenced above offers a second confirmation. And a new inbound supervisor guarantees that stones are shelved properly in the warehouse upon arrival, further decreasing mix-ups.
• In response to problems in the customer experience … we beefed up Salem Inspire—our designing, ordering, and tracking platform—to accommodate the increased demand. We also adopted a call center model of customer service, which has greatly increased our call-processing capacity.

We hope all of these changes mean you are already experiencing better service from us, but we will remain grateful for your patience as we continue to iron out the rest of the kinks. We will continue to update you over the next few weeks but please feel free to reach out with any questions or comments as they arise. Most of all, thank you for giving us another chance to offer you the highest level of service.

Respectfully,

Lenin