Making Memories Warehouse Sale!
For those who live in, or are close to Utah, Making Memories is having their big warehouse sale. Since they have been so SWEET to CropChocolate.com, we want to return the sweetness.
Here are the hours:
Thursday, April 29 - noon-8pm
Friday, April 30 - 10am-6pm
Saturday, May 1 - 10am-2pm
All times are Mountain Time.
CropChocolate.com
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Friday, April 16, 2010
Inventory Discrepancies
Unfortunately we have had some inventory discrepancies due to double and triple shipping product last time the la Carte went out. We have check our inventory and have found the following shortages.
Jar Sets with Blossoms by Making Memories
Advent Calendar by Making Memories
Cheeky Mini Books by Making Memories
Pre-designed Mother's Day Album by Making Memories
Pre-designed Travel and Friends by Making Memories
Pre-designed Baby Boy and Baby Girl Albums by Making Memories
Tin Sets with Glitter Blossoms by Making Memories
Travel 3.0 by Making Memories
12x12 Design and Paper Storage Thingy
After a few weeks of challenges we hate to ask you this -- if you have any of these items in your la Carte will you please remove them before checking out? If you were relying on one or more of these for free shipping please contact us and we'll still give you the shipping deal!
Sorry for all the mix ups! We're there now that we've restructured the fulfillment portion of CropChocolate.com.
Best,
Jon N.
Unfortunately we have had some inventory discrepancies due to double and triple shipping product last time the la Carte went out. We have check our inventory and have found the following shortages.
Jar Sets with Blossoms by Making Memories
Advent Calendar by Making Memories
Cheeky Mini Books by Making Memories
Pre-designed Mother's Day Album by Making Memories
Pre-designed Travel and Friends by Making Memories
Pre-designed Baby Boy and Baby Girl Albums by Making Memories
Tin Sets with Glitter Blossoms by Making Memories
Travel 3.0 by Making Memories
12x12 Design and Paper Storage Thingy
After a few weeks of challenges we hate to ask you this -- if you have any of these items in your la Carte will you please remove them before checking out? If you were relying on one or more of these for free shipping please contact us and we'll still give you the shipping deal!
Sorry for all the mix ups! We're there now that we've restructured the fulfillment portion of CropChocolate.com.
Best,
Jon N.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
A Backgrounder
Two years ago I quite my job as an online marketer, gave everything I owned away and moved to California to write. The company that I went to write for lost its funding so I started doing research for a screenplay that I had already written an outline for. I was in heaven. In October of 2008 I came back to Utah to visit my parents--in October 2007 my oldest brother passed away and I wanted to be home, near my family. That's when I met the woman that I would marry 7 months later.
I found somebody to take over my lease, gathered the two boxes of my possession and moved back to Utah in December. When I crossed the California/Nevada boarder I called the woman that would become my wife and asked her out.
It was quickly evident that she was the one that I had waited 35 years for and I knew I had to do something quick so I could provide for her. In late December the CEO of Making Memories contacted me and asked about some strategies for online liquidation. That's when I started started stirring up the sweetness of CropChocolate.com and two months later I proposed marriage to my love in a candle lit canyon.
My previous online marketing employer operated several sites like CropChocolate.com so I had vast experience in the one-deal-a-day/one-deal-at-a-time business model. With that, and previous experiences of owning and starting up companies, I knew I had a good chance of creating something valuable.
Now here we are, almost one year later, experiencing some real pains of a growing small business. Initially my thoughts were that we'd grow slowly by selling one-deal-a-day. Then a month later we introduced DARKchocolate and HOTchocolate. Soon we were selling 4 items a day with hopes to grow to 12 items per day.
About the time we were growing our inventory and adding Fancy Pants Designs and BasicGrey I got married. We did a quick weekend honeymoon to Ouray, Colorado so I didn't have to be away from CropChocolate.com for more than a few days with plans to go on a longer honeymoon once things started to settle. They never did. We still took a longer honeymoon but I woke up at 3am and worked until 10am when my wife and I would leave the hotel for breakfast.
After 4 months of marriage we got some exciting news. We were pregnant and due the 7th of June! I watched my wife jump down 3 flights of stairs from excitement running from the blood-testing lab to the car. We said a prayer together in thanks then hurried to tell our parents.
Some of you how have shopped at CropChocolate.com may remember October and November--we had a tough time acquiring new product and we showed repeats for what seemed like an eternity. In early October we found out that the egg didn't drop into the uterus and the pregnancy was in my wife's left fallopian tube. An ectopic pregnancy.
The day we found out about the ectopic pregnancy the OB-GYN gave us two choices; chemotherapy or surgery. With counsel, we chose to go with the conservative route and opted for a dose of chemo. That evening we my wife took her anti-nausea pills and we prayed and gave thanks for health. The next day, while working from home, I was alarmed to hear, "Jon! JON!" Her fallopian tube was rupturing. We rushed her to a prepped operating room and an hour and a half later I sneaked into the recovery room just to see my wife's face. Her eyes blinked fast when she saw me. "Are you OK baby?" she asked. That's so her--bleeding to death for 24 minutes then asking if I was OK.
For 2 months I spent all my waking hours taking care of her. I could only do what I could with CropChocolate.com and that's why we weren't showing any new product. I would just call the manufactures that we had already shot product from and ask, "Can we buy 200 more of those?"
Why am I telling you this? CropChocolate.com hasn't come without challenges or growing pains--on a professional level and a personal level. Our 3rd day in business we featured the Desktop Carousel by Making Memories and sold over 2,400. That was an amazing experience but painful as we weren't ready to ship that many orders. Our first la Carte order since relaunching in January we fulfilled over 5,000 items--that was amazing but painful as we weren't ready to ship that many orders. Our orders grew until this month when we had almost 4x January's volume. We were still running a week behind from March when the April la Carte email went out. And now here we are...
Here's what we've done to assure the errors of the past won't come back to haunt us. While visiting the warehouse a few months ago I noted that when we would deliver product to the warehouse, the product would be cut open and placed on a rack ready to be picked. But there was a problem--we usually don't sell one product but kit it together and sell several products. This inefficiency has created a bottleneck almost insurmountable. We were surprised that we weren't making more errors with this process. My wife and I bought a bunch of small plastic bags and have been going through all the inventory, creating these kits. Now all we have to do is walk down the aisle, grab a bag and throw it into a box. The person fulfilling the order no longer has to walk down several aisles to pick 3 or 4 items for one kit. What's more, there's no longer a guessing game of, "Are there really 150 sets of blossom jars or are there 120 of one style and 6 of another because the other style was double or triple shipped?" We know exactly how many kits there are and the employee can just grab the kit out of one bin.
When we were shipping UPS a driver would come to the warehouse every day to pick up packages. USPS doesn't have the resources to do this is our area so they send out a truck to pick up boxes when we have enough to fill the truck. We have worked with them to create a winning process where your packages are sent when they are boxed and labeled.
We are still occupying the same warehouse space but instead of outsourcing the labor, we will be managing the employees. We believe business exists to enrich many people's lives so not only are we paying a generous salary but we have created a bonus structure in the hope that one of our employees can quit an evening job cleaning at a catering service.
When we changed over from UPS to USPS our systems were not set up to upload USPS tracking numbers. In addition to the many changes we have been making on CropChocolate.com, we are working with the company that prints our USPS labels. This has been a tricky process because we'll get to the point where we feel it's ready but the order numbers are not syncing with the tracking numbers. We don't want to send out bad information so we're waiting until it's seamless.
Our developer is also working on the login issue some of you are having. We value each of you not because you purchase from us--as we learned this week that some of you just like getting ideas from the site--but because you are people, and we like people.
We know many of you are becoming impatient and frustrated with the delays this week, even month. I talked to a customer this past week who ordered product on the 10th of March and still had not received it. She had every right to be frustrated with CropChocolate.com and to question the operations and integrity of our business. The tracking number email would have quickly informed us of this error and let us now that we had a customer who paid and did not receive their product. We've had problems delivering to APO addresses because we once shipped UPS. We are still trying to resolve some of these issues and feel terrible, especially since these packages are being delivered to families of armed services members.
These are items that we are addressing and creating measures to assure this never happens again. As always we are open to suggestions and input. We were touched by the comments you left on the site today supporting our efforts and supporting CropChocolate.com.
We have created a few more systems to allow us to scale in size that are part of our secret sauce. We we are in a position again to offer SWEET deals, a SWEET service to SWEET customers...rather SWEET people at SWEET prices.
Thank you all for understanding and for your loyalty and support.
Best,
Jon N.
Two years ago I quite my job as an online marketer, gave everything I owned away and moved to California to write. The company that I went to write for lost its funding so I started doing research for a screenplay that I had already written an outline for. I was in heaven. In October of 2008 I came back to Utah to visit my parents--in October 2007 my oldest brother passed away and I wanted to be home, near my family. That's when I met the woman that I would marry 7 months later.
I found somebody to take over my lease, gathered the two boxes of my possession and moved back to Utah in December. When I crossed the California/Nevada boarder I called the woman that would become my wife and asked her out.
It was quickly evident that she was the one that I had waited 35 years for and I knew I had to do something quick so I could provide for her. In late December the CEO of Making Memories contacted me and asked about some strategies for online liquidation. That's when I started started stirring up the sweetness of CropChocolate.com and two months later I proposed marriage to my love in a candle lit canyon.
My previous online marketing employer operated several sites like CropChocolate.com so I had vast experience in the one-deal-a-day/one-deal-at-a-time business model. With that, and previous experiences of owning and starting up companies, I knew I had a good chance of creating something valuable.
Now here we are, almost one year later, experiencing some real pains of a growing small business. Initially my thoughts were that we'd grow slowly by selling one-deal-a-day. Then a month later we introduced DARKchocolate and HOTchocolate. Soon we were selling 4 items a day with hopes to grow to 12 items per day.
About the time we were growing our inventory and adding Fancy Pants Designs and BasicGrey I got married. We did a quick weekend honeymoon to Ouray, Colorado so I didn't have to be away from CropChocolate.com for more than a few days with plans to go on a longer honeymoon once things started to settle. They never did. We still took a longer honeymoon but I woke up at 3am and worked until 10am when my wife and I would leave the hotel for breakfast.
After 4 months of marriage we got some exciting news. We were pregnant and due the 7th of June! I watched my wife jump down 3 flights of stairs from excitement running from the blood-testing lab to the car. We said a prayer together in thanks then hurried to tell our parents.
Some of you how have shopped at CropChocolate.com may remember October and November--we had a tough time acquiring new product and we showed repeats for what seemed like an eternity. In early October we found out that the egg didn't drop into the uterus and the pregnancy was in my wife's left fallopian tube. An ectopic pregnancy.
The day we found out about the ectopic pregnancy the OB-GYN gave us two choices; chemotherapy or surgery. With counsel, we chose to go with the conservative route and opted for a dose of chemo. That evening we my wife took her anti-nausea pills and we prayed and gave thanks for health. The next day, while working from home, I was alarmed to hear, "Jon! JON!" Her fallopian tube was rupturing. We rushed her to a prepped operating room and an hour and a half later I sneaked into the recovery room just to see my wife's face. Her eyes blinked fast when she saw me. "Are you OK baby?" she asked. That's so her--bleeding to death for 24 minutes then asking if I was OK.
For 2 months I spent all my waking hours taking care of her. I could only do what I could with CropChocolate.com and that's why we weren't showing any new product. I would just call the manufactures that we had already shot product from and ask, "Can we buy 200 more of those?"
Why am I telling you this? CropChocolate.com hasn't come without challenges or growing pains--on a professional level and a personal level. Our 3rd day in business we featured the Desktop Carousel by Making Memories and sold over 2,400. That was an amazing experience but painful as we weren't ready to ship that many orders. Our first la Carte order since relaunching in January we fulfilled over 5,000 items--that was amazing but painful as we weren't ready to ship that many orders. Our orders grew until this month when we had almost 4x January's volume. We were still running a week behind from March when the April la Carte email went out. And now here we are...
Here's what we've done to assure the errors of the past won't come back to haunt us. While visiting the warehouse a few months ago I noted that when we would deliver product to the warehouse, the product would be cut open and placed on a rack ready to be picked. But there was a problem--we usually don't sell one product but kit it together and sell several products. This inefficiency has created a bottleneck almost insurmountable. We were surprised that we weren't making more errors with this process. My wife and I bought a bunch of small plastic bags and have been going through all the inventory, creating these kits. Now all we have to do is walk down the aisle, grab a bag and throw it into a box. The person fulfilling the order no longer has to walk down several aisles to pick 3 or 4 items for one kit. What's more, there's no longer a guessing game of, "Are there really 150 sets of blossom jars or are there 120 of one style and 6 of another because the other style was double or triple shipped?" We know exactly how many kits there are and the employee can just grab the kit out of one bin.
When we were shipping UPS a driver would come to the warehouse every day to pick up packages. USPS doesn't have the resources to do this is our area so they send out a truck to pick up boxes when we have enough to fill the truck. We have worked with them to create a winning process where your packages are sent when they are boxed and labeled.
We are still occupying the same warehouse space but instead of outsourcing the labor, we will be managing the employees. We believe business exists to enrich many people's lives so not only are we paying a generous salary but we have created a bonus structure in the hope that one of our employees can quit an evening job cleaning at a catering service.When we changed over from UPS to USPS our systems were not set up to upload USPS tracking numbers. In addition to the many changes we have been making on CropChocolate.com, we are working with the company that prints our USPS labels. This has been a tricky process because we'll get to the point where we feel it's ready but the order numbers are not syncing with the tracking numbers. We don't want to send out bad information so we're waiting until it's seamless.
Our developer is also working on the login issue some of you are having. We value each of you not because you purchase from us--as we learned this week that some of you just like getting ideas from the site--but because you are people, and we like people.
We know many of you are becoming impatient and frustrated with the delays this week, even month. I talked to a customer this past week who ordered product on the 10th of March and still had not received it. She had every right to be frustrated with CropChocolate.com and to question the operations and integrity of our business. The tracking number email would have quickly informed us of this error and let us now that we had a customer who paid and did not receive their product. We've had problems delivering to APO addresses because we once shipped UPS. We are still trying to resolve some of these issues and feel terrible, especially since these packages are being delivered to families of armed services members.
These are items that we are addressing and creating measures to assure this never happens again. As always we are open to suggestions and input. We were touched by the comments you left on the site today supporting our efforts and supporting CropChocolate.com.
We have created a few more systems to allow us to scale in size that are part of our secret sauce. We we are in a position again to offer SWEET deals, a SWEET service to SWEET customers...rather SWEET people at SWEET prices.
Thank you all for understanding and for your loyalty and support.
Best,
Jon N.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Past Scrapbook Deals and SweetTALK
You have probably already noticed the new tab on the far right of the menu bar titled Past Deals. It's where The Crop used to be. Now you can look at the past deals, read the past comments and refresh your memory on why you added something to your la Carte. What's more, you can go to your la Carte and click on the product name and it will take you to the certain item you added.
Another great feature we added is SweetTALK. It's a live thread that you can communicate back and forth on. You can create your own thread or comment on another user's thread. We ask just one thing... keep it sweet and clean.
We are continually working to make your experience at CropChocolate.com a sweet one by adding features, new product and new shipping solutions to our company.
Thank YOU for growing with us through our pains and for being patient as we re-engineer our shipping process.
Jon N.
You have probably already noticed the new tab on the far right of the menu bar titled Past Deals. It's where The Crop used to be. Now you can look at the past deals, read the past comments and refresh your memory on why you added something to your la Carte. What's more, you can go to your la Carte and click on the product name and it will take you to the certain item you added.
Another great feature we added is SweetTALK. It's a live thread that you can communicate back and forth on. You can create your own thread or comment on another user's thread. We ask just one thing... keep it sweet and clean.
We are continually working to make your experience at CropChocolate.com a sweet one by adding features, new product and new shipping solutions to our company.
Thank YOU for growing with us through our pains and for being patient as we re-engineer our shipping process.
Jon N.
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