Nickey Warehouses Inc. – Letter

I am Charlie Andrews, Chief Operating Officer, for Nickey Warehouses, Inc. Nickey Warehouses, Inc. is a 3rd Party Logistics Warehouse Service Provider here in Memphis, TN. I myself have been involved in the business since 2000. We have been in business since June 1940 and under the same ownership since April 1974 to present.

We operate here in Memphis approximately 2.8 million square feet of space specializing in warehousing Hazardous and Non-Hazardous Chemicals, Consumer Aerosols, Roll-Stock Paper and other products alike. Our business has experienced significant growth over the past 5-6 years. In fact, our business will have virtually doubled in this timeframe. The one thing that has faced our company during this growth is having the ability, resources, and know how to understand how to manage this change and not incur issues that can cause long-term problems as a result of rapid growth. We knew ourselves that our processes needed to be evaluated, more structure was needed, and a higher level of accountability would be required to allow Nickey to just survive, but to thrive and become a great company, not just a good company.

We realized that no matter how much we tried ourselves to figure out a way to work on these concerns, we found ourselves just “too busy” to get started and work to build structure and process to our business. This too began to cause doubt and a form of lost credibility that we as company ownership wasn’t doing anything to address the real concerns and issues that we faced. This fact alone can destroy years and years of good within a company and we knew we as a company had worked too long and too hard to allow this to happen This is when Cogent Analytics came into the picture. I will confess that I took their initial visit as a courtesy based on the referral from my Father-In-Law, who is the President/CEO of our business. After meeting with Cogent’ s Field Sales Staff, we then agreed to participate in the Business Analysis visit, conducted by Merlin Van Gerpin. Merlin’s visit highlighted and confirmed much of what we thought that our business needed but got deeper into areas that piqued our interest. It was surprising how insightful and accurate he was in his analysis of our business and how in 3 short days how much information he could gather and arrive at facts that were so spot on.

We then agreed to accept Cogent’s recommendation and begin the 10-week project with Mr. Warren Witter. While I was excited and believed that we were doing the right thing, I must confess that there was a small amount of doubt/concern if the project would yield the results desired and/or expected. Warren did an excellent job of engaging himself with me, our staff and our work associates as the project continued to progress. Some days were more difficult than others due to the simple fact that to make positive change, there will be some pain along the way. However, what I have seen take place over the 10-weeks is that our staff is embracing the change, they understand that we, as ownership, was serious about addressing their real concerns and issues, and develop ways to best position Nickey to become the great company that we desire to be.

I am very excited and encouraged as we prepare to begin the next phase of our journey. We have direction, purpose and processes with which to work by to allow Nickey Warehouse to be the company our employees love working for and our customers enjoy having as their service provider and partner. We are grateful to Warren for his insight, passion and commitment to excellence in helping to get us to this point in our journey.

Sincerely,

Charlie Andrews

Chief Operating Officer

Nickey Warehouses