Washington is rejoicing. Today is 65 degrees and is the first day this month without rain. Cute happy soaps (made by our very own Nicole in Customer Service) celebrate our improved moods and outlook on life.
Essential Oils Enhance Your Life
I pored over our sales reports for the last few months today. I realized that our essential oil line has been sadly underutilized in sales lately. I’m unsure if it’s because we started out as a fragrance oil company ten years ago and are mostly thought of as primarily a fragrance oil company. Or if it’s because our pricing/quality is judged as sub par. If it’s the latter, someone please put me out of my misery and tell me.
I’m half way through my certification for Medical Aromatherapy and loving the course! These are some things I’ve learned lately:
* Removing parts of the essential oil (for example, removing terpenes from essential oils to make them more friendly to perfuming) hurts the overall effect of the essential oil. The whole sum of the parts for essential oil is important to keeping their full therapeutic value.
* Famous researcher Paolo Rovestsi showed that inhaling essential oils of rose and lavender reduced feelings of depression and anxiety. Imagine combining that research with a brisk 30 minute run or walk outside to try and combat depression without prescription drugs!
* Only 1% of flowering plants produce an essential oil in any significant amount.
If you’d like to be introduced to Essential oils, Bramble Berry carries the neatest little starter essential oil starter kit. It has everything you need to start exploring the world of aromatherapy.
We also carry a huge line of essential oils, organic essential oils and synergy blends. I am currently burning the Calming Synergy Blend in my bedroom in the evenings and am loving the scent and effect.
Some ideas for improving your life through essential oils:
* put a 5 drops of Lavender Essential Oil on freshly laundered socks before tossing into the drier. Your entire load will come out smelling of calming lavender.
* fill a bowl with water. Put 15 drops of an uplifting essential oil like Peppermint, Bergamot, or Lemongrass into the water. Inhale deeply to wake yourself up and then soak a washcloth in the aromatic water. Wring the wash cloth out, toss it on the floor of your car and enjoy the fragrance all day as the washcloth dries out.
* Make a nighty-night linen spray by mixing 2 oz distilled water with 20 drops of Calming or Sleepy Time Synergy Blends. Shake well before use each and every time and of course, test on an inconspicuous place on your linens before dousing your entire bed. It’s impossible to predict which fabrics will bleed and fade.
There are many more uses for essential oils in soaps, lotions, face and body preparations and massage (to name a few!). Watch for more posts about using essential oils in your daily life. I am very inspired by my Aromatherapy Certification Course and look forward to sharing more essential oil tidbits over the next few months.
Another great idea from Sparkle Cookie
I just love the creativity that Sharon from Sparkle Cookie exhibits. You might remember that she made the adorable Sparkle Fluff that I blogged about in March.
She’s back with an even better idea. I can’t believe I’ve never seen this idea. It’s lotion bars in a cupcake sleeve. What a great idea! After all, lotion bars are meant to be used all over your body or in place of massage oil and this makes them easy to pour for the manufacturers and also very easy to use for the end consumers.
It’s a great idea. Thanks for sharing, Sharon!
Organic Beauty Radio Pangea
I have a completely professional crush on the Pangea founder. Listen to a wonderful (long) interview with him at Organic Beauty Radio. For those of you that haven’t seen their wonderful soaps and lotions, Pangea makes organic (or as organic as you can get!) body care and skin care products. You can buy the entire product line on their site.
If you want to learn more about Pangea, there’s a great article here and here.
The highlights: he pays his employees a minimum of $12.50 per hour, has a vegetable garden at the warehouse so all his staff can eat organic veggies, and employs a cook to cook lunch for all the staff.
The downlights: Pangea has been open for five years and has only shown a profit for one of those years.
It’s hard to balance profitability and social responsibility but Joshua sounds like he’s well on his way to figuring it out.
Where Donkeys Go To Get Cute
All prints and art by Catherine Ledner and available for $1200 from Beholder-Art. You can even try them in your house for 7 days to make sure that having a giant chicken staring at you makes you happy. Amber at Bramble Berry is so enamoured with the squirrel that she’s made it her wallpaper on her dual monitors.
Citibank is holding my money hostage
Citibank has an aggressive rate on savings accounts – around 5.15% FDIC insured. That’s a nice premium when our local bank is running 4.00% for savings accounts (at the highest). We’ve been putting away 30% of our net profits every month into this Citibank account so that we can pay our tax bill when it comes due and pay those quarterly estimates as well. June 15th is a quarterly estimate day.
I went to my online Citibank account to transfer the funds to pay my quarterly tax payment today. Much to my surprise, there was an error message. I called Citibank. After a long wait, I was told that whoops, my account was frozen and whoops, I couldn’t access the money for 5 to 7 days. The reason the monies are being held hostage is so asinine and stupid that it’s not worth wasting time to explain.
This account doesn’t just have $30 in it. It’s a large sum of money that belongs to the government. I need to pay the IRS today. I don’t have 5 – 7 days to wait. Despite talking to 5 people, no, Citibank can’t release the funds. They’re stuck. Unless I want to drive to Seattle to get them, Citibank will have my money for a week while I scramble to get my quarterly payments paid and funded today.
That’s not the customer service I want, expect and pay for from Citibank. I would close my account in a huff to show them exactly how I feel. But, they’ve bought themselves some time by freezing my account – five to seven days to have my money as a customer for just a little while longer.
When overcharging isn’t the best practice
Otion recently was photographed for an advertising campaign by a local, well-respected PR firm. Bramble Berry has actually worked with this firm before and had been happy with the output. The photographer was at Otion and took many more photographs than were needed for the ad. I asked if we could have a couple of the photographs for use on our web site and promo material.
When we’ve been photographed for various news stories in the past, the publications have always allowed us to have a few photos for our own use. But our own local PR firm, who is already being paid for the photo shoot, wants to charge an extra $150 per photo. And these are for the discards that aren’t even being used.
As a small business, I probably won’t pay $150 for a photo. Had the photographs been more reasonably priced, I would have paid $25-$45 per photo gladly. The photos are of no use to the PR firm. Wouldn’t it be better for them to price lower, sell more and help out another small business? After all, it’s all pure profit for them once they’ve got the perfect shot for the ad campaign.
The lesson I am taking away from this is to charge what the market will bear, not what you feel the the market should pay.
Answering customer concerns on shipping
Bramble Berry recently got a bit slammed on a soapmaking chat list over shipping charges. Ouch. I hate getting slammed over things we can’t control and shipping is one thing that we can’t control. In fact, in a clever little trick involving not charging for gas fuel surcharges that Fed Ex charges us (which varies by the day), Bramble Berry managed to lose money last month and the month before because our shopping cart underestimated shipping charges. Whoops.
This blog is a way to address customer concerns in an honest and open manner. I want feedback on the shipping conundrum. I wish there was a better way to get products to customers other than shipping.
I agree – shipping charges are ridiculous! I hate paying them on my online orders as well and it seems like they just keep going up, up, up. Getting all of our products to Bramble Berry (in Washington state!) from our different vendors is a bigger chunk of money every year as well. With gas becoming a scarcity, we have higher transportation costs to look forward to both with our commercial orders and also just getting to and from work in our own cars.
We ship all of our Essential Oils and Fragrance oils in Amber Boston Glass Rounds with Phenolic Cone Lined Caps. Glass definitely is heavy (and more expensive than plastic) to pack with but we’ve found that glass just really seems to do a better job in the long run for our customers. If we pack in plastic, the fragrance gets degraded pretty quickly from the plastic and the fragrance shouldn’t be stored in it either. It seems to be a disservice to our customers to try to pack in plastic. I know it’s insane to think, but with the box, packing peanuts, foam and the glass bottle and cap, your 16 oz. of fragrance weighs 2.5 pounds. Since Fed Ex and UPS round up, that ends up being a 3 pound box. And, a 3 pound box to ship from Washington to Tennessee costs about $11 to ship. Ouch!
It’s funny to think about, but if you order more, the price per pound for shipping drops. For example, I can ship you 250 pounds for about $110 to TN. It’s totally counter intuitive but the larger and heavier the package is, the less it is to ship, per pound. So, if you saved up all your orders from us for a few months and even got a 25 pound box, it would end up being just around $25-$30 to ship that versus the $11 to ship the one little teensy box.
High shipping costs affect everyone – especially small business owners. If anyone has any great suggestions on this, I really want to hear them. We’re thinking of everything from a second location on the East Coast to having a Bramble Berrytruck that delivers orders all across the country to getting shipping zone captains that take all the orders via pallet and then distribute them to customers in their area. We’re trying to think outside the proverbial box. Help us. If you have any ideas, however crazy, we want to hear them.
Packaging Makes the Experience Blissful
I was entirely enamoured with Blissful Bath’s soap and toiletry products before I even opened the box. They managed to completely enthrall and delight even before I opened the package. Why? As you can see from the photo above, Blissful Bath really knows how to wrap a package! The beautiful, classy box, complete with a Tiffany-colored ribbon caught my attention and set the stage for a well received product. I was already primed to love my Blissful Bath products, even before I took the ribbon off. Lesson one: Presentation Counts
Wen I opened the box, I found equally impressive products inside. The photo above demonstrates the branding that Blissful Bath goes through. Notice the similar font and color on all the products, except the specialty Happy Birthday Cake. Lesson two: If you have a brand strategy, work it!
I was a little surprised to see that there were no ingredients listings on any of the products. In terms of reselling the exquisite goodies in stores, ingredient listings are a must. I phoned and chatted with the store and the very friendly happy gal that answered the phone said that they wholesale to stores. So, I’m waiting for a phone call from Lee Anne, the owner, to just chat about how they’re getting around the ingredient listing thing. The ingredients are on the web site, easy to find, for anyone that is worried about allergies or just plain curious about formulations. Having just gone through a painful and long re-do on 156 labels that we’re working on (all because we forgot spaces for UPC codes – rookie mistake! duh!), I hope that Blissful Bath doesn’t end up redoing their labels at some point down the road.
So far, I’ve used the Butter Bath Bomb and the Shower Butter. I was delighted with the Butter Bath Bomb, finding it to be the perfect amount of moisturizing without leaving me or the tub sticky and oily. The scent was lovely and the bath fizzy lasted quite some time. I was pleasantly surprised when it kept fizzing and fizzing for several minutes!
The Shower Butter is a basic lotion bar with the instructions to rub on damp skin. I was pretty excited with this idea, imagining that Blissful Bath’s savvy creators had managed to put an emulsifier in the Shower Butter to make it turn into a lotion on my damp skin. Alas, the butter was not happy with the fact that I was still damp and just sort of scootched on my skin and beaded up in an unattractive manner. Sadly, oil and water still don’t mix. So, I toweled off and proceeded to rub myself all over with the Black Raspberry Martini and am now happily dry and moisturized and smellin’ fine.
I’ve left the best to last. These little happy confectionery creations are amazing little bubbles of joy and happiness. I am so bummed that I don’t have any friends with a birthday coming up! I want an excuse, any excuse, to give someone the adorable Happy Birthday Cake!
This clever little feat is done with: soluble dextrose, colorant and candy sprinkles.
I tasted the frosting and forced my younger brother at Otion, to do the same (much to his dismay and confusion) and the frosting tastes somewhat sweet. Since dextrose is a form of sugar, this makes complete sense. I am so impressed with the artistry and presentation of the little Cakes. The amount of work it would take to do this extra step is well worth the $5 for this mini-bomb, with the frosting, complete with the little flag.
Based on my very positive experience with Blissful Bath, I would highly recommend them for any gifts you need to give or for a little respite for yourself. Their products are crafted with care and the the packaging just puts the extra special touch on their goodies. If you’re in MN, you should stop by their store. I’m jealous. I wish I could. If you do, please be sure to take photos and let me know what you thought!
Three Cups of Tea
I just finished the book, Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson and David Relin. I am so inspired by one man’s desire to improve the lives of school children in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The story is about a wayward climber (Greg) who is sheltered at a small city in Pakistan. Vowing to come back to help the villagers by building them a school, he actually comes back, builds his school and doesn’t stop. The story is a thrilling tale of heroism, sacrifice and an excellent lesson in current politics in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Better yet, it reads like a fiction novel with richly drawn characters, action and a plot that arcs and finishes to a satisfying conclusion.
If you buy the book from Greg’s non profit, 7% of the purchase your copy of this book will be donated to the Central Asia Institute.
Green Tea & Chocolate help your teeth
You’ve probably heard about Green Tea and its amazing antioxidant abilities (keeps you younger! keeps you cancer-free! prevents Alzheimer‘s!) but did you know that it also has a trace element of fluoride? The fluoride found in green tea hardens tooth enamel and makes teeth more resistant to decay. Wow, all of that and supposed weight-loss help too? Sign me up!
As teeth get older, they start to lose some enamel which affects whiteness, shine and luster. Those of us that are more vain are thrilled that scientists are diligently working on a cure for losing tooth luster. Apparently chocolate has the same compounds that green tea does to help prevent enamel loss. Or, you could just skip the chocolate and use a flouride toothpaste. You’d probably harness more of those green tea weight loss benefits if you skipped the chocolate.
My favorite green tea is Pink Grapefruit infused Green Tea from Republic of Tea. It never seems to get bitter, even when I forget to take it out of the cup. Even better is that this tea is affliated with the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and Republic of Tea, thus far, has donated $556,000 to the cause just from sales of this yummy tea.
Do something good for yourself and buy some green tea. And, if you’re feeling charitable, make it a Sip for the Cure tea and help others while improving your life.
Today Show on Lip Balm Addiction
Dell’s "customer service" not improved
Dell supposedly has improved their customer service. I’ve seen countless blogs mentioning their new and improved customer service infrastructure and fawning articles in business magazines about how Michael Dell is getting back to the basics. Well, for this gal, that’s just lip service as far as I can tell.
My husband ordered a massively expensive laptop for a new engineer in his firm. This machine was built to be so powerful that it could probably easily run small countries. It had more computing ability than 15 Big Blue machines. All in all, an incredibly complex, expensive machine and a powerful tool to use.
As the day quickly approached that the new engineer was to start work, my husband phoned Dell to ask where the computer was. It was 4 days overdue at that point. It turns out that Dell had canceled the order. Why had they canceled the order? Because there was a part out of stock. When my husband asked who they had notified about the cancellation, Dell told him that no one had been notified. The order for this $10,000plus machine had simply been canceled.
The sheer idiocy of canceling a custom order with high profit margins is beyond ludicrous for a company struggling to regain the title of number one PC seller in the world. Not informing the customer that they canceled the order is criminally bad customer service.
Needing the machine, my husband put in the entire order again. He was promised he would have the machine 3 days before the new engineer was due to arrive. The date the new computer was due came and went. My husband called Dell. They promised to overnight it to him. The next day came and went with no computer. Again, a phone call to Dell but this time, he got only an answering machine. Multiple calls and emails later, he had extracted a new verbal promise of overnight shipping and Dell would throw in a 15″ monitor for free. The next day, no machine. When Chris finally got a hold of a real person, he found out that whoops, the new order had been put on the “slow track” rather than receiving the priority service he had been promised.
The new engineer started without a computer. He was not able to work any billable hours without the computer and thus sat, as an expensive highly paid asset, underutilized. The Dell laptop finally came almost a month after it was ordered and four days into the new engineer’s tenure. Dell paid for overnight shipping, the free monitor and a few other minor goodies, undoubtedly negating all the profit on the custom built laptop.
To add insult to injury, Chris didn’t even get an apology on the Seth Godin Scale of better than 1. He got a slightly mumbled half apology from “Ygnacio” at Dell after the first delay and nothing after that. It was beyond disapointing – it was downright pathetic. If I were an investor in this company (and thank goodness I’m not!), I would pull all my money out. And, I’d pull it out fast.
Makes me want to get married … again
The gorgeous artistry of this cake makes me want to get married again. And the description of the flavor (orange zest filled with dulce de leche with guava) is making me starry eyed.