News and More News and Big News
Since we messaged about the product concerns, we've seen a lot of changes in the way customers add product to their la Cartes. For the better. Thank you.
Today you'll see the changes in SweetTALK. There will be 5 categories that you can add and comment on threads in. They are:
1 - Box of Chocolates - random topics
2 - CropSwaps - for the swapping
3 - Questions for Croppers - Q&A section
4 - Share your Sweetness - where you will post your pics and ideas
5 - Temptations - sweets you want to see on CropChocolate.com
You will also see a search option where you can find stuff by name, topic and more. Pretty cool stuff.
Here's the big news. We are going to do a contest that's gonna be SWEET! We will be giving away cruise tickets for a scrapbooking cruise we've been organizing, a Cricut Expression Cutting Machine, Slice Cordless Design Machine with all the tips and stuff and more. It will be a facebook challenge based off of your designs so get ready to play and WIN!
Sweetly,
The CropChocolate.com Team
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
A Request from CropChocolate.com
Since we started doing swaps we've seen some troubling things happen. Customers are hoarding product. Some customers are deleting their cookies right after they add 3 items to their la Cartes then they add 3 more and 3 more and so on.
We know you're trying to help your friends by adding these items to your la Carte but it's causing a lot of issues with our inventory tracking and planning.
For one, with so many customers adding divisions of 3, we're overselling product by 10 to 50 units. We purchase items in 120 units, 240 units and 1000 units and they're selling out within minutes. This is creating several challenges for CropChocolate.com as a company.
1 - We cannot plan purchasing with so much inventory tied up by hoarding.
2 - We have over $60K tied up in customer la Cartes who have more than the requested amount of 3 units max. We have several customers with over $10K in their la Cartes.
3 - Customers are losing interest in CropChocolate.com because every time something new comes up, it's gone within minutes--sometimes seconds.
4 - Every day we have between 500 and 800 new customers visit CropChocolate.com. Each customer costs us an amount because of various campaigns we're running. For the first time in the company's history, we're losing these new customers because all they see is a "SOLD OUT" button. They usually check back a few times then they're gone for good. This will create a huge loss to CropChocolate.com and will limit the number of new items we can show per week.
5 - CropChocolate.com has increased it's payroll expenses by 4x because of increased demands on customer service. Since we don't employ full-time customer service managers--Jamie is a stay at home moms and student and Mary and Heather are newly-weds and college student--we set up a separate entity for customer service. CropChocolate.com owns the entity but Jamie, Heather and Mary run it and have ownership too. They charge CropChocolate.com a rate based on intervals and CropChocolate.com pays based on that rate. Various bonuses are included as well. It's really a win for our customer service team and it's well deserved. The problem is, the managers also have responsibilities at home and at school.
There are many more challenges but we think you get the gist of where we're going. Please take only the number of products you need. We often times repeat product because of the quantities we purchase. From time-to-time we understand grabbing something for friends but we will not be able to sustain all we're trying to do at CropChocolate.com if the hoarding continues.
We have tons of new product coming up from new brands to CropChocolate.com. Please help us to keep this site SWEET!
Best,
Jon N.
Since we started doing swaps we've seen some troubling things happen. Customers are hoarding product. Some customers are deleting their cookies right after they add 3 items to their la Cartes then they add 3 more and 3 more and so on.
We know you're trying to help your friends by adding these items to your la Carte but it's causing a lot of issues with our inventory tracking and planning.
For one, with so many customers adding divisions of 3, we're overselling product by 10 to 50 units. We purchase items in 120 units, 240 units and 1000 units and they're selling out within minutes. This is creating several challenges for CropChocolate.com as a company.
1 - We cannot plan purchasing with so much inventory tied up by hoarding.
2 - We have over $60K tied up in customer la Cartes who have more than the requested amount of 3 units max. We have several customers with over $10K in their la Cartes.
3 - Customers are losing interest in CropChocolate.com because every time something new comes up, it's gone within minutes--sometimes seconds.
4 - Every day we have between 500 and 800 new customers visit CropChocolate.com. Each customer costs us an amount because of various campaigns we're running. For the first time in the company's history, we're losing these new customers because all they see is a "SOLD OUT" button. They usually check back a few times then they're gone for good. This will create a huge loss to CropChocolate.com and will limit the number of new items we can show per week.
5 - CropChocolate.com has increased it's payroll expenses by 4x because of increased demands on customer service. Since we don't employ full-time customer service managers--Jamie is a stay at home moms and student and Mary and Heather are newly-weds and college student--we set up a separate entity for customer service. CropChocolate.com owns the entity but Jamie, Heather and Mary run it and have ownership too. They charge CropChocolate.com a rate based on intervals and CropChocolate.com pays based on that rate. Various bonuses are included as well. It's really a win for our customer service team and it's well deserved. The problem is, the managers also have responsibilities at home and at school.
There are many more challenges but we think you get the gist of where we're going. Please take only the number of products you need. We often times repeat product because of the quantities we purchase. From time-to-time we understand grabbing something for friends but we will not be able to sustain all we're trying to do at CropChocolate.com if the hoarding continues.
We have tons of new product coming up from new brands to CropChocolate.com. Please help us to keep this site SWEET!
Best,
Jon N.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Update on Email and Swaps
This week is turning out to be a big development week. Chris delayed a backpacking trip to finish the internal email system and to launch the CropSwap system. Like everything Chris does, this will be intuitive and seamless. Tonight we finalized the logic of the swap and now we're coding and designing. Our goal is to launch it in the next few days so we have a request--will you limit the number of swaps you do in the next day or two so we can put resources towards this new launch? If you need to check out by all means, email us. If it can wait one or two days, please be patient so we can use Jamie, Heather and Mary's time to resolve order matters and to help in testing...hey we're a small company, we all wear many hats.
In addition, we are still seeing some recourse from the double shipments from a few months back. We have some inventory shortfalls and we have noticed some of you have those items in your la Cartes. If an item has a zz - in front of it, this is one of the affected items. If you see this you will know that we no longer have those items in stock. Here's what you'll see:
zz - Desktop Organizer by Making Memories
Thank you for being such loyal customers as we have refined and changed over the past year. It's been a rough but fun ride! Rough because of our errors, fun because of the relationships we've enjoyed.
Thanks again and here's to more great changes and more SWEET product!
Best,
Jon N.
This week is turning out to be a big development week. Chris delayed a backpacking trip to finish the internal email system and to launch the CropSwap system. Like everything Chris does, this will be intuitive and seamless. Tonight we finalized the logic of the swap and now we're coding and designing. Our goal is to launch it in the next few days so we have a request--will you limit the number of swaps you do in the next day or two so we can put resources towards this new launch? If you need to check out by all means, email us. If it can wait one or two days, please be patient so we can use Jamie, Heather and Mary's time to resolve order matters and to help in testing...hey we're a small company, we all wear many hats.
In addition, we are still seeing some recourse from the double shipments from a few months back. We have some inventory shortfalls and we have noticed some of you have those items in your la Cartes. If an item has a zz - in front of it, this is one of the affected items. If you see this you will know that we no longer have those items in stock. Here's what you'll see:
zz - Desktop Organizer by Making Memories
Thank you for being such loyal customers as we have refined and changed over the past year. It's been a rough but fun ride! Rough because of our errors, fun because of the relationships we've enjoyed.
Thanks again and here's to more great changes and more SWEET product!
Best,
Jon N.
Monday, August 2, 2010
FLYING SOLO...oh boy!
Hello Crop Chocolate family, it is McCall here and this is my first post so I hope I don't disappoint!
I am just updating you on the week ahead--Jon took off this morning with 10 scouts to hike Utah's highest mountain, Kings Peak at 13,528 feet! I have to admit that he is pretty amazing, he is doing it all - we spent the weekend packing each persons food, checking gear, giving away supplies, reassuring parents and somehow he managed to show me what I need to do this week to keep things running. I am a bit nervous but with your patience I am sure we will make it!
This could be my only chance to post about Jon so I better tell you that this is the longest he has taken off work since Crop Chocolate started in March of 2009 and in typical Jon fashion he is doing it for a group of boys that would not have the chance to do something like this if it weren't for him. Before we met he did trips like this in his sleep and he has literally climbed and/or been to the summit of most of the major peaks in the US including guiding up the Grand Teton in Wyoming - one day he will take Huck there and I better be ready to be right by their sides! Needless to say his life has changed a lot over the past year and a half and I am so glad he gets a chance to go be where he loves, he even took Beamer with him (it maybe his last big trip, he has always gone with Jon but coming up on 8.5 years old a 50 miler is harder than it used to be for the good old golden!) Most of all we both want to express our gratitude to our customers, really our friends, for supporting and creating a company that allows him to do these types of things for people he loves!
Here is to a week of flying solo at home and on CropChocolate.com and with a little luck it should go by pretty fast and pretty hiccup free (except for Huck because he gets them all the time now and the first time I could not figure out what in the world was going on for the first 29 minutes of his 30 minute episode!)
All the best and of course SWEETLY,
McCall
PS - not to worry we have the same great deals coming your way, the decadent deal will show on Friday, customer service is answering your questions and managing your swaps, and the warehouse is sending your orders out ASAP!
Hello Crop Chocolate family, it is McCall here and this is my first post so I hope I don't disappoint!
I am just updating you on the week ahead--Jon took off this morning with 10 scouts to hike Utah's highest mountain, Kings Peak at 13,528 feet! I have to admit that he is pretty amazing, he is doing it all - we spent the weekend packing each persons food, checking gear, giving away supplies, reassuring parents and somehow he managed to show me what I need to do this week to keep things running. I am a bit nervous but with your patience I am sure we will make it!
This could be my only chance to post about Jon so I better tell you that this is the longest he has taken off work since Crop Chocolate started in March of 2009 and in typical Jon fashion he is doing it for a group of boys that would not have the chance to do something like this if it weren't for him. Before we met he did trips like this in his sleep and he has literally climbed and/or been to the summit of most of the major peaks in the US including guiding up the Grand Teton in Wyoming - one day he will take Huck there and I better be ready to be right by their sides! Needless to say his life has changed a lot over the past year and a half and I am so glad he gets a chance to go be where he loves, he even took Beamer with him (it maybe his last big trip, he has always gone with Jon but coming up on 8.5 years old a 50 miler is harder than it used to be for the good old golden!) Most of all we both want to express our gratitude to our customers, really our friends, for supporting and creating a company that allows him to do these types of things for people he loves!
Here is to a week of flying solo at home and on CropChocolate.com and with a little luck it should go by pretty fast and pretty hiccup free (except for Huck because he gets them all the time now and the first time I could not figure out what in the world was going on for the first 29 minutes of his 30 minute episode!)
All the best and of course SWEETLY,
McCall
PS - not to worry we have the same great deals coming your way, the decadent deal will show on Friday, customer service is answering your questions and managing your swaps, and the warehouse is sending your orders out ASAP!
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