southern.scents

I know I should be happy but..its just kinda hard right now. I still did have a few orders today so . Im not gonna even mention that the information was false on my website. I m just gonna roll with it. I put a few things on sale for the newspaper feature as well as added a tag saying our current processing times would be longer than usual. Other than that, Im leaving it alone and Im going to look positively on the situation. Thanks for all of the encouragements and feedback. That REALLY helps.

My biggest thing was all of the now false information that was included.

Adam.. You should be very proud of yourself.

You accomplished something some of us never have..

I have yet to have a newspaper run an article on me..

(Guess they did a background check and decided against doing an article on me !!LOL)

I enjoyed the article.

It shows you and your product and I am sure you will get lots of business from it.. People LOVE young entrupenures and want to support them..

It may not be what you wanted, but it is a start and will direct people to your site..

Like MM said, put a blurb on you site explaining what you explained to us about the article..

Gotta run.. Boys have football practice...

Thanks you and MM for the encouragement. It really does help.

I fixed the link...

:cry2:So, as everyone has heard, I was having a story release on my business this month. Well, I got my copy today. I am SOOOO disappointed. Check out the title. It doesn't even make "sense." Also, the article that they posted was written over 6 months ago. They had me send a new one including pictures but it was lost somehow and they never contacted me for it again. Overall, they posted an article about a business that existed 6 months ago...not an article about the business that exists now. I had a huge list of retailers, I cut down on some of the products that are listed. All of my fragrances are rename and some of the ones they listed are not even on my list anymore. Most here could probably understand my dissapointment. They even used a pitiful picture of me....so so dissapointing. Even the product pictures are super pixelated. I get their paper every month and I have never seen an article look this bad.After 5 months of waiting for it to come out...here it is in all its glory...

www.southern-scents.com/Grace.pdf .

Thanks a lot for the info. I think she just went on a Google hunt to find whatever sounded important, because the first email sounds so silly, and then the second email is all legalese. 50% of me wants to write her back with all that info Mary, and yet 50% says let it go. I do not like going back and forth with people. If I write her back she will be really pissed because then she will think I am calling her a bad mother (which who knows, maybe she is.) I am definitely never selling to her again, what's to stop her from letting her child drink the perfume next time thinking its Coca Cola?

I went through all my labels today and added "not edible" to each and every one. You are right, we do have to assume everyone is stupid these days!

I agree, it was stupid on her part and forgetful on your own but remember that customer service is the most important product you carry in your store and that it comes free with every purchase. Be very kind, understanding, and if I was in your shoes, I would send an apologetic card and a small gift.

Do you do any custom scent/color combos? If so, you are a bit restricted on what you can stock. I find with friends/co-workers it's always the same question. "What do you have with you?" I keep a case of a variety of candles in my office at work. Many last minute birthday presents have been bought that way.

Very, very good point. So it kinda seems to me like your answer at this point would be to keep a few of your best sellers on hand for spur of the moment purchases and then fill orders as they come in.

In your case, I would say you should fill the orders as they come in. That way you have less money tied up in one area.

For those that have websites, how do you ship candles in the heat/summer time?:undecided

What was are you using?

What % of FO are you using?

What type of container if any are you using?

That's what is weird...I keep my AC at 69 and yet my candles burn differently at hotels up north when I keep the AC at the same temp?

That could still be due to humidity and/or elevation.

I ship via USPS Priority Mail only and shipments only leave on Mondays and Tuesdays so that they will arrive before the weekend arrives so they won't have to sit on a truck over the weekend.

You are very welcome.

Just for the record, the topic talks about how most consumers will burn their candles in room temperature so the climate in temperature aspect won't affect burn. Elevation on the other hand is still debatable as well as humidity.

If I recall correctly, there was topic about this in the past that seemed large and informative. Give me a second and I'll see if I can find it.

Here ya are.

http://www.craftserver.com/forums/showthread.php?t=67629&highlight=%2Bclimate+%2Bburning

I only accept paypal, checks, or money orders. It hasn't affected anything yet. You can accept paypal payments without your customers having to have a paypal account so that helps out for me.

You are very welcome. Remember www.whois.net . You can lookup the owners address, phone number, and email, domain name servers, and so many more useful goodies.

Web Sales are worth a lot but $500?!?!?!?! If I was you, I would look into something a little cheaper. Try diyestores.com or designer218.com . Those are less than about $125 a year.

For me when I had them marked at $5 I could not give them away I jumped the price up to $6.50 they started flying of the shelves. Do not underrate them.

After making them for years They are just an okay sellers for me.

Humans are weird that way. Try to sell them a 16 oz candle for $5 bucks and their like, "Whats wrong with it." Try to sell it at normal price, 14-16$ and its like its an entirely different product.

I also sell mine for $5 for a 4 oz bottle and they sell great. People just love them. Market them as being instant, flame free, portable, whatever it takes to get your customers interested (with in reason.) I love them personally because they are easy to make.

Uh I'd be more worried if your site disappeared just cause Frank feels like it, then you'll really look like an idiot when the article is printed out for all those readers and they go to your site and it's no longer there.

then what!!???? I would so move and really it's NOT hard to move your site. You get a temp. site while your site is live and running. When you're done, then you change your server host at go daddy.

It took me less than a day to copy and paste from one site to another.

go to godaddy and point it to new server and bam you're done. it's really nothing to it. but it sure would suck if your site disappear and then you got nothing to copy and paste.

Don't say we didn't warn ya!!!

Meg

Thats one of the reason I am trying to move my site.

As far as how hard it is. Maybe yoursite was not hard to move but are sites ARE hard to move. You have to move all of the software, the databases and then you have to install it all again, edit the configure.php files and pray to God you didn't have errors in the database or some other files. I have attempted to move it as well as having three other code writers attempt. Two said they couldn't do it and I have one person working on it right now...

Adam, are you seriously gonna stay with HCM? Give it up and move.

I plan on staying only until I have a copy of my site working somewhere else. If that never happens, then I will just have to stay put. A article about my business comes out next month. I won't have time to rebuild a site...

Order September 15th-30th for shipment between August 8th-30th

Which year would that be?

LOL, yeah, I am a little backwards there huh????

I think that I am partially prepared. I have cut my normal fragrance line down to only 8 of 20 and I am only offering two season fragrances, one for fall and one for xmas. I have on my website currently that orders are poured as they come in and that larger orders may occur longer production times. I will not substitue fragrances, however. I want my customers to get what they order and be satisfied. I really would like to have lots of items poured but as debscent said, I dont want to have five pounds of one FO in stock and not sell any of it. Thats fifty bucks that I could have used somewhere else.

What do you guys think of offer the order periods.

Order September 1st-14th for shipment between September 20th-October 7th

Order September 15th-30th for shipment between October 8th-30th

and so on and so forth

Or should I just say, do to the large response the article has generated, orders may take up to three weeks to ship.

I will have some supplies but I want to make sure I will have time to order if the need be.

THERE is no way in the world I will shutdown for this. This money would be valuable to my business and eventually my life. I will start college next year. I plan to attend Millsaps University and the prices there are about 32,000 per semester notincluding housing, food and books. I have a 27 on my ACT and plan on taking it two more times so I will get some scholarships but I would love to be able to pay for my own college without taking out loans.

Thanks for all of the ideas, goodlucks, and best wishes.

Hi everyone. As some of you know my business was to be featured in a newspaper that goes out to several counties in central Mississippi. There would be approximately 60,000 copies going out. Well, the more I though about it, the more I wanted to know for sure I had the exact look, etc that I wanted for my business so I had them postpone the story. Well, the story will come out NEXT MONTH!!!!! Great huh? Well, no. I have been trying to build up inventory for this large event. I figure if only 1-2% that see the story purchase I will be struggling to keep up. The dillema now is what if I can't keep up with the orders. What if 30% of the customers order. There is NO WAY that I can plan for that and have enough stock on hand.

So, if you were in my shoes, had little money free at the moment, how would you handle this. I was thinking of saying, you can order between The 1st of September and the 14th of September and it would ship by the 30th of September, order between the 15th and 30th and it ships October the 14th. Or should I just say that due to the large response that our feature has generated, all orders will take 1-3 weeks to be shipped. They did put in the article that due to the fact that all of my products are handmade, they should expect some delay.... They said that they featured a florist one time a month before Valentines day and she ended up closing for half of a month to restock all of her gift items because she sold out.... I am so neverous but so excited....

Hi everyone. Thanks for all of the comments. I really like them and everyone does too. Thanks again.

Adam

Its there but it won't drop into the base installation of oscommerce. I did make some modifications to a base mod of oscommerce dropped in the DB, it worked but still had some errors.