Big Goof

Oh man.  I'm so annoyed with myself.  Having sent my wine bag photos to a store in NC, I had a nice email back from them asking for a sample, which I sent right away.  Following up, the contact was noticeably cooler; she was not at all happy with the bag:  handle too short, stitching not secure enough.  I didn't argue although I did tell her that we hadn't had any problems with security.  Later that day, I got the bag back.  Well, I had sent her a sample whose handle, for some reason, had not been triple-stitched.  No wonder she thought it wasn't secure.  As for the length of the handle, I had already learned that it was too short for some bottles and had changed it for my Vino 100 order.  Unfortunately, I had sent her sample before realizing that.

All I could do was call her today and apologize, which I did.  Profusely; and asked for a second chance to make a first impression.  She warmed up considerably and was happy to have me stay in touch.  However, they'd decided not to bring in anything now, it being the slow season, but to get back in touch in August.  Of course, I will.

While it's not something I'd do on purpose, sometimes making a mistake isn't so bad if you can recover by overwhelming the customer with better-than-great service, eating humble pie, or whatever it takes to get back on track.  I believe she accepted my explanation, and I'm sure she'll remember the encounter better than if everything had gone smoothly.  It was a bad 24 hours for me, though.

Giving Away the Store

Delivered my first 2 wine bag wholesale orders yesterday and already there are issues.  Had a call from one store that the buyer hadn't realized that the plain and embroidered bags were NOT the same price, so she was returning 5 of the 12 bags she ordered.

I decided not to tell her that ordering less than the minimum put her at the retail price for all the bags, although that was the case.  And I decided not to let my pride accept the return.  Instead, I let her have all 12 bags at the same price.

Why?  For one thing, a quick calculation indicated that 5x4.50 was almost certainly more than 0x7.50.  But that's not really the reason.  Mainly it's because I want to get my bags into stores; and I believed she made a mistake,i.e., wasn't just trying to get something for nothing.

Again, it comes down to what kind of business I want to have.  Not one where I give away the store; but there has to be some give and take, especially now when I'm still refining the construction process and experimenting with pricing.  And it's also fun to be able to make a customer-pleasing decision that will hopefully prove to be a win-win.

Now the question is, do I give my other customer the same deal?

A Big Step...Backward

My very first wholesale college bookstore customer, whom I shall call Appalachia U. or AU for short, has dealt a severe blow to my business plan (not to mention my ego).  Having ordered nearly $700 worth of products a little over a year ago,AU has returned its unsold merchandise and asked for a refund, $216.  Ouch.

It wouldn't be so painful if I hadn't worked so hard to fill their order.  AU had ordered 3 and 5 of items that I had exactly 1 of and I really scrambled to piece some of those items together.  It was a lot of long days.

Still, I'm grateful to AU for giving it the good old college try, I really am.  And I didn't have to give a refund; I have a generous exchange policy and nowhere do I say I'll buy back unsold items.  This incident forced me to think about what kind of business I want to have, and what kind of customer service I want to provide.  I decided I'd prefer to be a Nordstrom and try to give superior customer service, even at some cost.  It's a business model I can live with and I believe it will be profitable in the long run.

That said, I've made some changes to try to avoid similar issues in the future.  First, my ordering instructions will hopefully prevent customers from ordering more quantities than I can easily fill.  Second, I state that I will not buy back unsold items (although, actually, I will).  Third, and most important, I've significantly changed some of my construction processes and materials and my product today is far superior to what I was making a year ago.

The silver lining on all this is that I now have some additional inventory; inventory that will need to be reworked, to be sure, but that's easier than starting from scratch.  I really like some of the items I received back and I think I can sell them again.

It's not exactly how I wanted to end the year...but that's show business.