Ah, Friday. It has been a long week. Business has slowed a bit, something we expect in August, when we assume that everyone is frantically trying to get all the things they had planned for the summer done. We are no different, and the projects lined up for August seem to loom larger than the time left. In about 6 weeks, we will be taking off for Lake Powell and a cruise with the wacky Kokopellis, something we look forward to all year. It is an interesting group, and a little different every year. One of the best traditions is the one where one person or group of persons cooks for everyone else one night each. After a long day, everyone except the cook(s) gets to kick back with a glass of wine (or whatever) and wait to be served. It may seem daunting at first, but the benefits become obvious, especially after your turn has passed!
One of the little details you have to figure out with mail order retail is how you are going to ship the items you sell. We used to have a business where all of the items we shipped were large and heavy and were shipped to businesses and we had a UPS daily pickup account for that. Duckwork's packages tend to be much smaller, and most are going to a residence, and a little research indicated that USPS (postal service) would be the best choice--they also provide all the priority mail boxes for FREE and throw in delivery confirmation when I use their online label system. The complications presented themselves almost immediately. Epoxy and fiberglass cloth and large orders of sailcloth are drop shipped for us, and these go by UPS--they are heavy and large and viscous liquid is not something the post office is particularly happy about. So there have to be exceptions to the "most items shipped by USPS. The shopping cart gives us very little "explaining space", and our experience has been that most customers do not read the small print anyway. We feel badly when someone is disappointed with our shipping methods, but to be honest, it happens quite infrequently, and we have not found a good way to make everyone happy.
In fact, that would seem to be a constant theme for a small business like ours, and probably just about every business. Keeping everyone happy is not just next to impossible, it is totally impossible. But we do our level best with the 24 hours a day we have.
Still working on getting all our ducks in a row.
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