Hello, New FarmBot Warehouse!

Over the last month we moved into a new 2,500 square foot warehouse and office space in San Luis Obispo, CA. The change was made for three reasons:

1) The sunsetting of the FarmBot Express line mid-2024 meant we simply would not need as much warehousing capacity going forward. In hindsight, we should have moved to a smaller facility in 2024, but sometimes big changes take time.

2) Earlier this year, another tariff war began between the US and China. Over the course of weeks, tit-for-tat tariff rates spiraled out of control, ratcheting up to an untenable peak of 145%. Luckily, a few weeks later, the tariffs were walked back to a still high, but workable, rate. In response, we forged a new agreement with our Chinese manufacturing partner where they will warehouse and drop ship approximately half of our kits directly from China to our international customers to avoid paying tariffs on product crossing into the US, only to be shipped back out. This has further reduced our need for warehousing capacity.

3) Given 2024's poor financial performance, the unexpected new tariff expenses, and the fact we were no longer needing the same levels of warehousing capacity as before, our overhead on facilities presented itself as an obvious area to reduce costs.

The last month has taken a large effort to pack up, move, and set up shop again in our new space. And in fact, the moving process started many months ago with slow and steady organizing, purging, and selling of old parts, equipment, and other remnants of FarmBot's past. The process has been therapeutic in a way, allowing every item to be reexamined for its present day value, old memories to be revisited, and new beginnings to be dreamed up.

The new space, shown below, is much more appropriately sized for FarmBot's business needs going forward. It has a better balance of warehouse to office space, equal access compared to our old building for shipping and receiving containers of palletized kits, and it cuts our monthly facilities expenses in half.

With many helping hands from the community, the actual move was completed over the month of May, just as our prior lease was ending, and just in time for us to receive the first batch of Genesis and Genesis XL v1.8 kits in a few weeks!