What is Arcadia’s Purpose?
As we embark on a new adventure, we are excited about what the future holds for us. For the past year the Arcadia Team has been in a planning phase of our development. As we formally launch our Company, our brand, our strategy and site plans, we felt compelled to give more insight about why we have started this journey. We have been meticulous about identifying members of our team who have the entrepreneurial spirit and determination to succeed. We have spent countless hours defining our Company strategy, debating our approach to everything from our building design, operating model and HR policies and everything in-between. We created our Vision, our Mission and Values, which are the key elements upon which our culture will be based. These statements combined are now the foundation of our organization and collectively will be used to establish our company culture. But having those foundational statements tells only part of the story, so we would like to take this opportunity to tell future customers and partners about our purpose and why that purpose is so important for our organization as we build our exciting new Company.
Background
Over the past 20+ years in the industry we have witnessed an evolution within the cold storage industry. In those early days the industry had always been very local, mostly entrepreneurial businesses run by regional companies or individual owner-operators. Service was always very important, and a connection to the owner or principal was essential. That theme has changed with all of the consolidation that has been underway for the last 15 years. Fast forward to today and customers have fewer options and the larger providers that remain have gotten away from the personalized level of customer care that has always meant so much to our business and the people it serves. Trust has been replaced by transactional agreements and true partnerships are now a thing of the past. A wall now exists between the provider and the customer and a mere arm-length relationship remains. Our goal is to look at this relationship differently.
It all starts with our people
We are excited about the Team we have assembled. Our search was deliberate and methodical to identify individuals that possessed the ability to lead, who had deep experience in managing a functional area, the willingness to wear multiple hats during a startup, proven organizational skills to start from scratch and build a plan and vision that would carry us successfully down the road. Take all of those items and layer on top a cultural aspect that someone has to be willing to be hyper-focused the customer in a very challenging service-based industry and you are truly looking for a team of unique individuals – needless to say very hard to find. And layer on top of that we are an unknown startup in a challenging industry that would be starting from scratch, and you narrow the pool of prospective candidates even more. Fortunately, we have been able to build this dream team of subject matter experts that get along, believe in ourselves and the team and are ready to take on the challenge that faces us.. As we continue to build out our team, we will be eager to find similar people to join our organization… people that wake up and despite challenges in their day – will go above and beyond to help a customer out, be courteous to a truck driver, and be highly responsive to our customers.
Simply put, our purpose is to build a great company that is fanatical about our customer
We are not going to be naïve and think that all customers will want to look at things the way we do… we don’t expect that. But we do know a lot of them will.. These are customers that value a partnership, value a relationship with their provider, and are willing to work through challenges together. We believe there is a place where we can offer superior service that is reasonably priced so those partner-customers we are fortunate to work with remain competitive and serve their customers cost-effectively. The supply chain is complex and challenging and we believe that through close collaboration we can both thrive to make the supply chain better. And those are the partners we seek. We want to be an extension of our customers business where our customers ask and we say “Yes” or work on mutually beneficial options that we can develop together. Arcadia Cold is a service organization and we are obliged to perform at the highest level. Our product is our service. We’re not trying to dominate the world and create the largest company. We see that with others and frankly it is a model that doesn’t result in superior service.
The road ahead will be challenging and we can’t wait to take it!
We recognize that what we are trying to accomplish will be hard. But if doing what we want to do was easy than anyone could do it… We are trying to do what is hard. There are others right now trying to do similar things to us but building facilities is a very small part of our business. They see lots of growth and investment in our industry and they are in it for strictly a financial motive. Our team is in this for our people and for the customers we will serve. Period. Building a business that we can be proud of, that breaks the mold of the industry, which is long-lasting in the impact we have on the industry is why we are doing what we are doing.
We look forward to taking this journey with you.
