If you’ve been following us for a while, you’ll have noticed we’ve been quieter than usual these past few months. It wasn’t neglect — quite the opposite. We’ve been working harder than ever, but inwardly: rebuilding from the ground up the way we communicate with our customers and with the agility world. This post explains what happened, what we’ve built, and why everything is about to get better.
Before Covid
Before the pandemic, the way we worked was simple: we travelled. Every single weekend we were at a competition, in a different country, setting up, selling, talking to you face to face. And it worked. The factory was small enough that we could be away without anything falling apart.
After Covid, reality changed. Production had grown to a point where we could no longer afford to be away: the factory needed us there, far more than we would have liked. And internal organisation started to weigh more than anything else.
The €200,000 we couldn’t afford
We did what any company does in that situation: we asked for quotes for a software system adapted to the volume we were handling. The answer was always the same: close to €200,000. Not something we could take on.
So we went for the middle road: we built a smaller piece of software, which cost us around €40,000… and which never quite worked properly. The result was the worst of both worlds: we had paid for a tool, and we still had to work far harder than necessary on factory organisation, because there was no software truly helping us.
I’m a genuine technology expert, but I’m not a programmer. I knew exactly what we needed — I’d lived it every day on the factory floor — but I couldn’t build it with my own hands.
Until this year.
Three months locked away at home
When we started to understand what artificial intelligence could do for software development, it clicked: for the first time, someone with my profile — a technology expert who deeply understands the problem, but isn’t a programmer — could build a serious system.
So I locked myself away at home for three months, 24/7, and built it.
First I built my own infrastructure: servers, databases, AI agent systems that help me write, test and maintain code. And on top of that infrastructure, I built the complete production software, with everything integrated.
During that time, as many of you know, we had some well-known external problems, and we received certain criticisms on Facebook, many of which were unfair — and I can prove it. But I’m not here to talk about that. I’m here to tell you what we have now.
What we’ve built
Today, Galican runs on its own management platform, built to fit our factory — not the other way around. Here’s what it does, in plain language:
From order to the loading bay, paperless. Every order that comes in automatically turns into manufacturing orders. Every welder, every cutting station, every sewer, every assembler sees on a tablet at their workstation exactly what they have to do, in what order and by when. When an operator finishes a step, they mark it on the tablet and the whole system knows instantly: what’s done, what’s left, what material was consumed.
Real factory planning. The system calculates the workload of every section (welding, cutting, sewing, coating, assembly) week by week, and tells us what we can manufacture and when. Materials are deducted from stock automatically, and the system warns us what to buy before it runs out. What we used to carry in our heads — and it burned us out — is now carried by the machine.
Every order, located at all times. Anyone on the team can type “how is order X doing?” and the system answers line by line: what’s manufactured, what’s in production, what stage each piece is at and when it’s scheduled to finish. No more “let me go and ask the factory”.
A portal for distributors and agents. Our distributors and agents no longer send an email and wait. They log into their portal, build their quotes with their own price lists, turn them into orders, and see the live status of their orders, with the same detail we see internally. They even have an assistant they can ask directly “how is my order doing?” and it answers with real factory data, in their language. And for the more technical distributors, there’s an API to connect their own systems with ours.
Control of the money. Payments are reconciled against orders with assisted matching, deposits are tracked automatically, and we know at all times what’s paid, what’s pending and what has to ship.
And finally, a support system that works. This was our pending subject, and we know it. Before, a message could arrive by email, Facebook, WhatsApp, the website… and depend on who saw it and when. Things slipped through. Now everything lands in the same place: every email, every Facebook or Messenger message, every portal enquiry automatically becomes a classified ticket, assigned to a specific person, with follow-up until it’s closed. An AI system reads every message the moment it arrives, classifies it by urgency and topic, and alerts us immediately about what matters. If something goes too long without a reply, the system escalates it on its own. Today I can say with my hand on my heart: no message goes unanswered. And if you write from the portal, you don’t even need to ask: the assistant tells you how your order is doing instantly, with real factory data.
And the hardest change, and the best one: logistics separated from production. This has been the hardest organisational change we’ve ever made, and the one that cost us the most to implement. But today it’s the best thing we have: what’s finished and what’s in production no longer mix, every order that leaves is verified, and control over what goes out the door is total. Before, factory chaos leaked into shipments. Now it’s physically impossible for that to happen.
None of this was bought from a consultancy. We built it ourselves, at home, in months, for a tiny fraction of what we were quoted. And most importantly: it’s ours, we know it down to the last bolt, and it improves every single week.
Back to being close to you
But software is only half of the story.
The truth is that, even with all of this working, we still can’t travel the way we used to. And after almost six years without being able to travel enough, we’ve reached a clear conclusion: we need to be close to people again. And today, there’s only one way to do that: doing in Europe what we already do in the rest of the world — selling through distributors and agents, never directly.
That’s why there are fewer of us in the office now, but there are more and more of us near you: a network of agents and distributors across Europe who know the product, speak your language, attend your competitions and can look after you the way we no longer could in person. They provide the face and the care; we provide the factory, the software and the support behind them.
It’s the same spirit as when we travelled every weekend — but multiplied by twenty countries.
What this means for you
- If you’re a customer: your distributor or agent looks after you directly, with better shipping costs, in your language, and with the backing of our entire factory. The status of your order is no longer a mystery.
- If you’re a distributor or agent: you have a portal with your price lists, quotes in minutes, live order status and a factory that finally runs like clockwork.
- If you’ve followed us for years: thank you for hanging in there. We’ve had six very hard years getting here, and we can finally say that what’s coming now is the best we’ve ever had.
See you at the courses — this time, through the people who are close to you.
Jaime
Galican
