In December 2017, Saga Outerwear had a huge part of their 2018 inventory stolen.
Last year we had just finished production, all the goods had shipped in.
It was the first release of our womens collection.
Our storage container and warehouse got broken into, we dont know how much is gone.
We dont know if its a small amount or not or really whats going on.
They were still counting and going through everything.
Andy was, understandably very concerned.
They had just taken delivery of the 17/18 collection.
It was early December, so just ramping up getting ready for holiday shipping.
But was this just some kid who couldnt wait til Christmas for his new Saga jacket?
We were lucky enough to have video camera footage of it.
We saw on the video, a truck pull-up to the back of our warehouse.
Its a pretty private area, guarded, protected and no-one else can see it.
He pulled out a blowtorch and spent about a half hour just torching through a really heavy-duty steel lock.
We had about the biggest, burliest lock that you could get for a storage container.
We have overflow behind our warehouse, where all of our backstock we keep in a steel container.
After about 30 minutes he had broken through and gotten into it.
You could see him load up the pickup truck, with 100s of cartons of goods.
Then they both took off.
We fought the insurance company for about seven months to get any sort of settlement.
We werent able to deliver a lot of products to our customers on time, 2.
We were afraid that it would create delays in the future, which were facing right now.
The worst part was the aftermath of it all.
Austin and Fitzpatrick went straight over to the warehouse where they were advertising this big Saga sale.
They had, probably, 1000s of products there.
We called the police and they went over with a large cargo van.
They took a portion of the goods back, everything they had at the warehouse.
That was in police custody for a week or two.
Andy says that Saga are, just now, recovering from this delay.
Theyre shipping their pre-orders and current season product.
Their story was, they had bought the goods from somebody reselling it to them.
They believe that someone who stole the goods had sold it to them for pennies on the dollar.
The police are still investigating, so about half of the products are still out on the market.
They caught one guy and apparently, theyve been investigating him for this past year for multiple crimes.
I guess hes pretty experienced at this.
He had a warehouse with all the tools and equipment for this job in multiple places.
I guess he had hit multiple facilities and had all this stuff stored at his place.
I think hes now in jail and hes going to trial.
The robbery wasnt Sagas only issue recently.
Mr Trump made some decisions that made things tricky for the outerwear company.
Trump had some pretty extreme duties and tariffs implemented on goods coming in from China.
Weve had a partnership with a factory for almost a decade over there.
It isnt something that we can just bounce back from instantly.
Saga have definitely tried to take positives from the robbery.
A lot of the time, the customs and duty fees are as expensive as the product.
We think that should save the customer 50%+ on their orders, compared to previous years.
Were super excited about that.
The code for the Evidence Locker discount is “EVIDENCELOCKER”.
This code is good for 30% off any product in the Evidence Locker collection.
Collection Link:https://www.sagaouterwear.com/collections/evidence-locker
