It's been awhile since I blogged about anything really pertinent and it's mostly because blogging about my life right now might seem really dull. It's a lot of rinse, lather, and repeat. But I've been working hard to ramp up my productivity and really improve my customer service for the shop.

As everyone is well aware by now, I was floored with orders from the featured seller spotlight and had no idea before then what I could really handle. Now, well, I know what I didn't know before. I have identified a lot of problems with how I run my shop, post my listings, and have devised solutions for each.

Problem: Manually keeping track of order status is time consuming, wastes paper, and wastes energy.
Solution: I built a brand new Order Tracker where customers can now search the status of their order on their own when I am MIA, which I am bound to be with having a 40-hour a week day job on top of this. Using Mail Merge and Excel, I managed to swiftly import my sales data to my Movable Type interface right here on this site.

Problem: Custom sample packs are too hard to produce in a short amount of time.
Solution: Unfortunately, with the way that Etsy delivers its sales data, it's just too difficult to track buyer notes for more than ten orders at a time AND keep my turnaround time at a minimum of 14-21 days. So, to keep me sane, I will not be posting listings for custom sample packs in advance of purchase. I will only be listing pre-picked packs with plenty of variants involved. If you still prefer a custom pack, you must convo me for a sample pack to be created just for you.

Problem: Custom DIY kits are too time consuming to produce for the price offered.
Solution: Like sample packs, DIY kits will come pre-packed with essential and fragrance oils that I've chosen to represent a genre or category of perfume. Similarly, layering notes will be grouped in 4's and 8's in terms of octave in the olfactory scale or perfume genres. I'll have new add-ons for the kits where you can purchase an octave for a reduced price, or purchase solid perfume kit in lieu of a basic oil kit. Again, I'll try to list as many varieties as I can to cover all the smelly bases.

Problem: It takes too long for me to ship my larger items.
Solution: Unfortunately, perfume is a waiting game and I can't always brew ahead of time. I don't know what I'm going to need down the road. So I've broken up the perfumes into two groups: catalog and on demand.

• Catalog perfumes are, just that: items in our general catalog. We'll keep these on hand as often as we can and just won't list them if they're not in stock. If we're out, you can reserve a perfume for shipping when they're back in store at a date we'll communicate to you upon reservation made. Turnaround time: 14-21 days or TBD.
• On demand perfumes on the other hand, are brewed in smaller batches and might be listed in advance of their brewing. Their turnaround times will be longer because of their brew nature. No reservations are accepted for OD. On Demand perfumes will also include ALL custom work not already mentioned. Turnaround time: 21-36 days potentially.

Beyond these solutions, I've also detailed exactly what types of products we'll be listing when we reopen, but I'll have to save that story for another day. Please comment if you have any questions about the new solutions!