We are moving!
After 7 years in our old lab, it’s finally time to move out into a new space. With the leaky floors, the old concrete, and a breaker that flips off every few months, it’s time to say goodbye. Most critically though, we have fully outgrown the space we are currently in. We are constantly at near-max capacity in our tanks with us having to squeeze in more and more jellies to the point we often have to stop raising certain species if we’re not 100% sure we can get them to grow to a nice adult size (If you’ve been wondering why there haven’t been any Plocamias in the store recently, that’s why).
We currently share the office with another company, RedFin Aquarium Design, who we have a close relationship with. Indeed, the founder of Exotic Aqua was also the founder of RedFin. Despite our extremely beneficial relationship and continuous collaboration, we simply need more space. The company is growing quickly, we now have 4 whole employees working here! It’s insane that Toshi used to run this joint on his own.
Over our 8 years as a company we have gained tremendous amounts of knowledge and experience, and our office should reflect this.
This moving process has been grueling. After looking at 5 different units in the area, we decided on the iconic Vita Tower, which was at one point home to the factories of Vitasoy, a HK drinks manufacturer.
Now, 5 units isn’t that many but we had some fairly specific requirements for our unit. We wanted a unit that was around 1.8k square feet, but mainly we needed the unit to be in a factory building and with water mains access. You’d be surprised how rare the latter is. For those not from Hong Kong, these factory buildings are remnants of previous decades where Hong Kong was a considerable manufacturing might. This is no longer the case, but many factory buildings stay standing. These buildings are often cheap, robust and have equipment able to move large amounts of goods. This last point is especially crucial for our work with public aquariums.
Anyway, after finding this place, the hard part began. Waterproofing the floors, installing the air-con, getting the electric sorted and putting up the drywall. Not to mention all the plumbing we have yet to do to get the water from the single bathroom to where our aquaculture room is going to be. All the while we are still fulfilling orders for both the retail side and the commercial side. Its been hectic and busy with lots of overtime being worked and budgets being overrun.
slowly but surely though, we are making process. Yesterday we finished taking offline one of our 6 systems, and while its only our smallest system (for now, wink wonk), we are getting ever closer to our final move day at the end of July. To make the moving process easier, we have been trying to sell as many jellyfish and tank stock as possible. So until we complete the move, take advantage of our 20% discount on jellyfish or free jellyfish when you buy a tank!!