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September 26, 2005
Update from Jay McLellan, HAI President
To our Customers, Vendors, Employees and Friends:
We have been very busy at HAI since my
September 3, 2005 message. Contrary to our initial findings, our building received substantial damage in Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding that have paralyzed New Orleans. Orleans Parish has been closed to residents since the event, making it impossible for our employees to return to work. Some of our people have suffered property losses and are having to deal with the aftermath.
Rest assured, HAI is a tough, resilient and resourceful company that will weather this tragedy. We are operating under a Board-approved operational mode called the “HAI Resurgence Plan” which calls for phased recovery of all of our services over the next six months, starting with production of product. We have already relocated our manufacturing operation to Abita Springs, a community north of Lake Pontchartrain where many of our employees live. We will be shipping CS05’s as promised this week. Most of our product line will be available by the first week of October.
Our Sales Team will continue to offer technical support, as most are located out of New Orleans where communications are better. They can be found on the
Contacts section of this site. They are being backed up by members of our tech support staff, who are currently involved with manufacturing products.
We will continue to have a presence at trade shows. We showed our new outdoor keypad at CEDIA, and will be at the Re-Modeler’s Show (Baltimore Convention Center, October 13-15) and EH Expo Fall (Anaheim Convention Center, November 9 – 11).
Our engineering staff continues work on exciting new products: be sure to see our new Video OmniTouch at EH Expo fall. Your customers can see who’s at the door, in the pool, by the garage, and activate the door strike to let them in. A new touchcreen hub and power supply goes with it.
Distribution Customers:
Shipments are resuming this week. We will contact you with a list of available products. Prices will not change, however, we will not be producing Promo packs at this time other than the CS05. We are set up with e-mail service now, with telephone and fax to follow in mid October.
Please e-mail orders to orders@homeauto.com. We can accept scanned, PDF, Word or Excel purchase orders. Please mail payments to the Remit To address on our invoices or transfer funds by wire. Do not mail payments to our temporary shipping address. We will be unable to make drop shipments at this time.
Vendors:
We are in contact with many of you, and we truly appreciate your cooperation. Our temporary shipping address is:
HAI
21487 Bayou Ct.
Abita Springs, LA. 70420-3151
As our space is limited, do not ship any product without specific instructions from HAI.
Our temporary billing address is:
HAI
P.O. Box 55967
Metairie, LA 70055
Returns and Repairs:
We are currently accounting for returns and repairs in house at the time of the hurricane. We anticipate being able to process returns and repairs in mid October. Please be patient.
Thank you all for your encouraging words and offers of support. This has been an extraordinary challenge for HAI, one which I pray is never repeated. Hard work, a bit of good luck and great insurance coverage will get us through!
Jay McLellan, President
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