Contact Us

Phone:
800-626-9615
530-893-4915

February 11, 2005

OPEN LETTER TO AVL CUSTOMERS

Dear Customers,

As I get to know more of you with each passing day, it becomes apparent what a great community you are. AVL weavers possess a great spirit driving your 'can-do' attitude. This is a refreshing change from the more commodity driven markets of my recent experience. I celebrate your weavers' culture and hope that we at AVL can do more to support it.

Thus, it pains me to hear and see issues occurring in the recent past. As you may be aware, AVL has had a tumultuous past 18 months. While brilliantly advancing the capabilities of AVL looms, we've also allowed some internal struggles to slip out. Some of you have experienced quality and/or service issues. For these, I can only apologize and let you know that I recognize the issues and am working closely with our team to address them. Some of the issues are structural and will require more diligent efforts to fix and for this I ask your patience. For the more immediate, you should begin seeing some impact from the following improvements:

1) Revised installation procedures

2) More definitive accessory and loom shipping schedules

3) Improving technical support

To highlight this last item, the relatively recent addition of a "weaver in residence" seems to have been lost in the shuffle. Around the 2nd quarter of 2004, AVL hired Sue Luna to support our technical hotline. You may have heard of Sue from her company Magic Strands, which is a well-known Chico-based manufacturer of woven goods. Sue and her husband founded the company more than 20 years ago. During this time, Sue's experience has grown from weaving on the Production Dobby Loom to running in a full-fledged production floor of 12 looms, including our Industrial Dobby Looms.

With her diversity of experience, Sue's has been a great addition to our team. So, if you need technical support (or even advice on running a weaving business), call Sue at 530-893-4915 x237 or email her sluna@avlusa.com.

Additionally, if you want to talk to me directly please feel free to call me at 530-893-4915 x233 or email me at bkruger@avlusa.com.

Thank you for patronage.

Best regards,

Bob Kruger

President & Owner AVL Looms, Inc.