The Ouk-rra-i-nah Story by Warren Metzler Table of Contents
20. A Solution that fits
Soon after I hung up with Vlad I remembered the Sanford situation, and decided to comply with Vlad’s request. So I then called my international shipping contact, Alessandro, and requested a name and contact information for a shipping agent in the Ukraine. To my surprise, a day or two latter Alessandro sent me an email with that information; a company called Barwill, which was located in Odessa (the Ukraine’s main shipping port on the Black Sea). The next time I conversed with Vlad I provided him with Barwill’s contact information.
A day or so later I had a new inspiration: Vlad could converse with the people at Barwill, and using their expertise determine the exact number of cases that would safely fit in a forty-foot container. Also, when it came time to ship the container, Vlad could call Barwill, state the exact date the shipment would be ready, and a container could be trucked from Odessa to Zhitomir, filled, and taken back to Odessa all on the same day.
I’ll explain the significance of this last point. When I initially investigated shipping, I located a company which performed customs brokering (filled out all the paperwork required by US Customs, plus processed that paperwork), as well as freight forwarding (arranges all the shipping activities; in my case from having an empty container transported to the vodka factory in Zhitomir, through to having a warehouse pick up the container from the ship at the Long Beach port here in California). And I sensed it was a very competent company. It is called Nik Associates. Alessandro was my shipping contact at Nik. When I went to Zhitomir in November, 2005, I told Vlad I would arrange all the shipping, which included arranging for an empty container to be trucked to the vodka factory once my vodka order was ready to be shipped.
During that November visit, Vlad had told me to schedule the empty container to arrive at the factory twelve calendar days after their bank in Zhitomir received my purchase payment, because the shipment would definitely be ready within that twelve-day period. But I had wondered: what if there was some unforeseen delay during the twelve days after my purchase money was received? What if the truck that brought the container had to remain at the factory for several days, or even for several weeks? How much money would that cost? Interestingly, that assumed delay did occur. The filled container did not leave the factory until about one month after my money arrived at the factory’s bank in Zhitomir.
Now back to my inspiration. If Vlad called Barwill after he knew exactly when the shipment would be ready, there would be no scheduling problems. And I wouldn’t have to establish schedules that weren’t met.
The next conversation I had with Vlad (the first one after I’d provided him with Barwill’s contact information), he told me exactly how many cases would fit in the container; which happened to be 1,215. He further stated it would be the same 1,215 cases, regardless of how many of those cases were Presidential Standard and how many were Harr-a-sho! In that conversation I told Vlad about my inspiration, that he and Barwill schedule the empty container’s arrival date. He willingly agreed and appeared very happy to pursue that approach.
Since I now knew the number of cases that would fit in a forty-foot container, I had only to determine how many cases of each type I wanted, which I did. I was then able to wire the factory the exact purchase price; to the penny! :-)
Subsequent to that issue being resolved, there were no further major problems. The container left the factory filled with vodka on Thursday, September 14 2006. Then it left Odessa on Sunday, September 17, changed ships in Constanta, Romania; again in Istanbul, Turkey; also in La Havre, France; and in Freeport, the Bahamas; finally arriving in Long Beach, California, on November 4, 2006. Yet it would not be until February of 2007, three months later, that others and I were selling vodka to retail establishments in the Los Angeles area.
That completes my tale of how Ouk-rra-i-nah Trading Company began to do business.