Hello PSA Customers,
Once again, I hope this message finds you and your family in good health. This month’s update is another installment in my continued efforts to share PSA’s progress and development with collectors and our loyal customers. As in past months, the updates center around expanding our grading capacity, communicating order progress to customers, and expanding our team.
PSA’s bigger footprint
Increasing capacity requires space. That’s why I’m excited to share that our parent company, Collectors Universe, has signed a lease to expand our Santa Ana, CA headquarters and operations facility by an additional 62,870 square feet. The newly acquired space, adjacent to our existing building, will double our footprint to 125,625 square feet, without the need to relocate.
The new space, which is being renovated now, will provide us with the additional real estate to expand operations. Not only will this expansion offer more space for our new team members and our employees returning to the office, but also for incorporating automation solutions and other process improvements to help in our efforts to grow our capacity to keep pace with customer demand. For more details on the expansion, please check out the announcement of the new lease.
Your submission has arrived
In addition to improving capacity to get cards returned faster, we also want to improve the communication of the order process to customers. One example of improved communication is now evident early in the submission process. Thanks to the new Submission ID Labels, the day your package arrives at PSA, a status bar appears on your Account page and every submission is listed on your Orders page, including the number of items in the order and the service level. We will continue to introduce ways to make it easier for you to track the journey of your cards through the PSA grading process.
Ultra-modern advances a year
During the past two years, PSA has seen an incredible influx of ultra-modern card submissions. Through 2019 and most of 2020, ultra-modern cards were comprising as much as 70% of our backlog. As a result, earlier this year, we split the Value service level up into ranges, with cards from 2017-2020 reclassified as the Value Ultra-Modern service level. Heading into 2021, we will continue to break out ultra-modern Value submissions. Beginning January 1, we will advance the year range such that ultra-modern Value submissions will consist of cards released in 2018 and later.
Hiring push attracts solid candidates
You may recall PSA held a Virtual Career Fair at the end of August which attracted more than 600 applicants. Job seekers had the opportunity to ask 19 different hiring managers questions about various positions within the company. It was a successful undertaking and I am happy to report that we found many worthy candidates. In fact, since the month of April, PSA has hired a total of 86 new, full-time staffers to its burgeoning workforce. Each hire is critical to our continued expansion and efforts to improve turnaround times.
We have added key personnel to all facets of our operational workforce including receiving, order entry, research, grading and sealing. Our grading staff alone has grown by over 20% in the past few months and we continue to hire, while maintaining our strict quality standards and training protocols. We’ve just brought on a recruiter to focus specifically on researchers and graders so look for continued expansion to those departments.
The backlog of orders creates a strain felt by both PSA and our customers. The investments we are making in growing our operational footprint and our employee roster will go a long way in tackling the backlog and relieving the strain. It won’t happen overnight, but we get closer with each monthly update. I hope you share my excitement for what’s ahead for PSA and for The Hobby.
Enjoy collecting,
Steve Sloan
President
