First I just want to take a moment to thank everyone for all their support and patronage. Things have just been going exceptionally well. The speed at which the volume of sales here at WetShaveObsession has increased is a bit mind boggling to be honest. What started as a personal hobby and sharing products with a few friends has turned into something much more.
That brings me to the reason for this blog. Initially when I started sharing my products with the public I did so strictly on the forums. I started WetShaveObsession.com as basically a product reference site. A place where people could go and read about the products and if they were interested either email me their order, or pm it to me on a forum, or click the contact us button on the site and get it to me that way. I would then email or pm back with my paypal information, funds would be sent, product shipped etc. This worked fine in the beginning but as things got busier I thought perhaps about adding a cart checkout to the site etc. To be honest I didn't feel like incurring the added expense and site maintenance of doing so. My solution was to open an Etsy store and give people the option of ordering direct from me via the initial method, or ordering through my Etsy Store.
Again this worked well for a while and it was actually beneficial from a shipping cost standpoint to order direct from me so many people continued to do so. Well since then I have have been able to secure better shipping rates through essentially a 3rd party shipping Co-Op and my shipping charges are the same whether ordering through the Etsy Store or through me directly.
That brings us to where we are now. By starting off initially having people order through me direct and then by enabling them to save money on shipping costs by doing so even when the Etsy Store was open I set a precedent that still exists to this day. Now that things have gotten much busier this has created a bit of a logistics nightmare. Gathering orders from Etsy, sorting through orders in my email, sorting through them in pm's. Far too much time is being spent gathering orders from different locations, matching corresponding paypal payments to the correct order, then fulfilling orders in the order that they were received and doing so from multiple sources.
It is for the above mentioned reasons that I am now selling products only through the Etsy Store. Now that there is no benefit to ordering direct from me as far as shipping cost it simply makes sense from a logistics standpoint to make this change.
I have to say I am a bit unhappy having to do so. Personally interacting multiple times via email exchanges etc has afforded me the opportunity to really get to know my customers well and there are many that I now correspond with regularly about wetshaving in general, having nothing to do with ordering products and the like. I have become friends with many of them. I sincerely do not want this logistical change to impact that fantastic benefit. I will do my best to interact even more on the forums, to blog, tweet and post on facebook more. I would also encourage all my customers, potential customers, or just avid wetshavers to email me at any time simply to talk wetshaving or with any questions you might have. A large portion of what I enjoy about this entire endeavor is the people. The people I get to know and interact with. I do not want that to change.
Again I thank all of WetShaveObsession's customer and supporters. From this point forward all orders should be placed through our Etsy Store ( https://www.etsy.com/shop/WetShaveObsession ). If you email me to place an order please do not be offended if I direct you to the Etsy store. I am in no way blowing you off or being lazy. It is simply what is necessary in order to continue to be able to provide a high level of service given the increased volume. By all means, order from the Etsy store, then shoot me an email to talk shaving!
Enjoy Your Shaves!
Regards,
Jim
No comments:
Post a Comment