Steve Sloan emailed this out today:
Dear PSA Collector,
I am writing you today to address the frustrations that PSA customers are experiencing as we scale up our business to meet the demand for our services. I completely understand your disappointment with PSA’s longer-than-expected turnaround times. As a collector and customer, it is painful to have to wait for your prized collectibles without a clear picture of when the order is expected to be completed.
I want to share updates on our progress, and two key areas where we are still working to improve.
It’s been just over a year since PSA moved into our new, expanded location. At the end of 2018, we saw a 25% growth in our capacity, compared to the year prior, due to our move and the addition of new staff. Still, during that same timeframe, we experienced a 165% surge in the number of collectibles received by PSA. We believed that expanded physical space and additional staff in grading, customer service, research, receiving, sealing, quality assurance and shipping would help us keep up with demand. But as you can see, the surge in submissions deems our efforts insufficient.
So, our work continues at an even more urgent pace. But even with urgency, we must be measured. Let me explain.
The card market has experienced incredible growth that I think we can all agree is a good thing. In PSA’s case, our great strength of expertise also represents a challenge as it relates to ramping up our business. The role that expertise plays in our process is paramount. We must first find qualified grading candidates and then ensure they are properly trained to our standards. As you can imagine, this takes time, as PSA’s brand has been built upon specialized skills that require experience, repetition and focus. It would be easy to hire unqualified graders and rush product out the door. We will not do that.
In addition to growing our capacity, we can do a better job at communication. We recently needed to extend turnaround times for our services. While our goal is to beat our posted times and deliver sooner, this extension is part of an effort to communicate more appropriate timelines for our services given the sheer volume of cards at our facility. Further efforts will be made by myself and PSA’s staff to communicate our progress more frequently.
Whether you are a longtime supporter of PSA, or a new collector, I want you to know that we take our commitment to the hobby seriously. Our purpose here at PSA is to grow the hobby by providing impartial, expert authentication and grading, and a consistent, quality product. My commitment to you, as a customer of PSA and a member of our hobby, is twofold: 1) grow PSA’s capacity without sacrificing quality; and 2) improve our communication to our customers.
I am open to your feedback and encourage you to reach out to me – good, bad or ugly – at either
steve@collectors.com or on Twitter at @collectorsloan. I will do my best to respond to each inquiry in a timely manner.
Thank you for your business, your patience and your understanding.
Steve Sloan
President, PSA