Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Back in the Game

Part of our streamlining process for the business included weeding out "dead weight" gifts on the website and redesigning some existing gifts that we wanted to keep. Dead weight gifts are things that never really took off, for whatever reason (often a mystery to us.) Redesigns become necessary when major components or containers become unavailable (frustrating!), or we find a better way to design a gift. We've had some new ideas simmering on the back burner for awhile, as well as the urgently needed holiday designs for this season. Bottom line.....we had alot of work to do!


Julie set the photo shoot for Monday, and we were off and running. We've been so busy, it came down to the weekend to get it all done. We spent most of Saturday cooking up new designs, and continued to add more on Monday morning until our photographer came. We're fortunate to have Laura Brazak (Laura Brazak Photography), who's willing to come to our shop and take the photos in-house. She's a good friend of Julie's, and does a great job with our products. (Adjusting cookie boxes, shower gel, and Kit-Kats to the proper angle can be challenging!) In the olden days, Julie had to load all of the new gifts into her van, lug them to the photographers', and then cart them all back again to our shop. Logistical nightmare.

Happily, Julie and Laura have the shoots down to a science, and it all goes pretty quickly...adjustments made, photos taken, done. It's all pretty laid back, and so not stressful! Laura finished the job yesterday in no time. We still have some holiday gifts to work on this week, but most of our standard designs are done for the time being. And then there are the spread sheets, descriptions, and uploads to do. But...we're on our way!

After the photo shoot yesterday, I looked at all the great new gifts, and then looked at Julie. "I guess we're not rolled over playing dead anymore....it looks like we're back in the game!

Saturday, October 06, 2007

Where's is Susan?!!

Susan was our Girl Friday. She came to us a couple of Christmases ago, and decided she liked the work (and us) enough to come and help us part-time on a regular basis. She has a young family, and needed the schedule flexibility that we could offer her. She made gifts, checked in and organized stock, ran errands, made deliveries when we could spare her, and made the store presentable when we couldn't find time. On top of that, she was awesome with customers. We trusted her to hold down the fort for us when we both needed to be out of the store. It was a great fit! Unfortunately for us, Susan moved outside of the city over the summer. She lives too far away now to come in for the few hours a day that she was available.



So here we are, reorganizing our operation, gearing up for the holidays (with piles of stock hitting the door everyday), and business on the increase. At the moment we're trying to complete the 150 small gifts we're making for one of our regular corporate customers, due to go out the door on Tuesday. Susan was always our g0-to girl on this type of project. We made the prototype, she would pretty much take it from there, and we took care of everything else that was going on.



It's a 3-day weekend, and we're planning major time in the store to try to catch up. The weather has unfortunately been gorgeous for months. I say unfortunately because we've had little time to relax and enjoy, AND we still can't ship the damn chocolate because of the heat! (Bah, humbug!) There are holiday designs, photos, stock, and staffing to figure out, and we both have job committments outside of our business this year.



Probably this is enough complaining for now, don't you think? Many people in our industry would love to have the customers and volume that we have. (And and we've worked way to hard not to appreciate it ourselves. ) We know we'll get it all done, just as we always do, and eventually we'll find another Girl Friday. But Julie and I just look at each other and say, "Where is Susan?!!"