Thermal Printers=no ink, cost reduction

First thing anyone should know is I hate paper, if you are printing something in my mind you are doing something wrong.  There is NO reason anything should be printed today.  What is the need in todays world?  It’s not just the environmental impact, but also the cost of the ink, paper and printer.  Plus if you are printing it throws a red flag that tells me something needs to be programmed into the system.

There’s one last piece of paper that we have to get rid of in our operation (and that will end soon now that we can burn the shipping label onto the box).  However, take a look at your thermal printers…they don’t use ink (thermal=burn onto paper), and not only that most shipping companies will provide you with these for FREE.  The paper too… We print our packaging slips (soon to be removed and force customers to view orders completely online.  Do you REALLY need a packaging slip?).  And the shipping slip will be burned onto the box…and at last we will be 100% paperless.   (note: how we operate: order arrives, goes into our order management software, then goes out to the picking software, then at point of packaging the shipping label and package slip is printed).

Globalism, technology and the necessity of adapting: The reality of selling online in today’s global marketplace

It wasn’t until a trip to Japan, when I stepped into Burton Snowboard’s Tokyo retail store, that I fully understood the effects of the Internet on the global retail marketplace.

The same board that we sell in the U.S. for $559.99, sells for 92,400 Yen (roughly $924 American dollars). Burton makes double the margin, and I finally understood why they’re so controlling over price and distribution.

Enter the real world of today with eBay, freight forwarding companies (international customers ship their items to a U.S. address and then have the item forwarded), gray market, coupon codes, payback programs, comparison engines, exclusive member pricing sites, global online communities and whatever the latest trend is with online retail. Simply put, online shoppers are going to find a way to get the goods they want at the lowest price possible. There is no stopping globalism and when companies do, only more problems arise.

I often refer to the book “StarFish and Spider- The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations” by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom when discussing what we at Sierra are faced with on a daily basis. In this book they review business case studies where industries attempt to control the marketplace rather than embrace current business trends. In the end, rather than cutting off the “Spider’s” head as they hope, they end up cutting off an arm of the “Starfish,” which then grows into a wildly new problem.

The Internet is one big starfish that is growing on a daily basis.

When the music industry went after Napster, they thought they won. Only to be confronted by its offspring – the free open source file sharing program BitTorrent and its imitators, which were even worse for the industry.

The snowboard industry finds itself with a similar dilemma today, with manufacturers attempting to control price and distribution throughout the Internet, and customers just trying to save a few bucks on gear in order to be able to afford ever-increasing lift ticket prices.

Our goal at Sierra Snowboard is to provide the best deal for our customers here in the U.S. and the world, because we know that if we don’t, someone else will through outlets such as those described above.

Our integration of community, e-commerce and manufacturing is a very unique combination that everyday provides us inspiration and entertainment. Our active community of 220,000 plus members from all parts of the world embodies what new age retail and brand management has become.

Our community has been built organically through our Meet Up To Ride calendar, our community forums and chat rooms, and the willingness of our staff to listen to the wants/needs of our community.

We’ve always placed more value on building customer loyalty by ensuring each customer has a great shopping experience with Sierra, than on any individual order that customer might place.

Embracing technology and a global marketplace as discussed in “The Starfish and Spider” will continue to build and destroy businesses of today. “Social Commerce” is the latest buzzword around the online world, but that will be replaced just as “Web 2.0” has.

Traditional manufacturers are moving into direct sales and retail, but as many have learned, it’s a whole new world out there and very few have adapted to this new market.

Customers rule in this world and if you don’t listen to their needs, business will struggle.

Embracing and maintaining open lines of communication with our community members and customers from day one has allowed Sierra to learn some amazing things.

Sitting right next to me as I write this, Creative Director Phil Wiles is typing away at a forum post responding to today’s termination of our Burton Snowboard Dealer status. We met Phil through our first online snowboard design contest that we posted in our community forums. Since that time, Phil has designed seven world class snowboards under the Sierra Snowboards brand name. The incredible thing is that Phil lives in London, England, and through our global community we have been brought together.

As we look around our industry, we’ve learned that very few manufacturers or retailers have been able to make this transition to the online world. This is not isolated to just the snowboard industry, but pretty much all industries. Many company executives are pleading with interactive marketing agencies for help getting on the social marketing thing. “We need a Facebook and Twitter page,” they say.

What they need to do is listen to the marketplace and adapt your business model to embrace technology or die. The world is telling you what to do on forums throughout the Internet, maybe you just need Google translate to help.

Track the progress of today’s events below:

Script error on check out page

Logged in this am to help a friend buy some $7 boardshorts and whammo…got an error while checking out.

Talked to Travis and this was the reason:

Back up, log file on db is not shrinking all of a sudden.  Ran out of
space, was 150gb, usually 1 gb.  I manually shrunk it and will check it out when get home.

Verizon customers emails going to spam folder

It’s always good to ask friends/family/customers whoever whether or not your bulk emails goes to their inbox or spam folder.  Verizon recently flagged our ip for being a spammer which meant any customer using verizon for service/email would have our emails flagged as spam…here’s the process to get whitelisted. (put on a safe list to send their customers emails).

From: whitelist@verizononline.net
Sent: Friday, June 19, 2009 8:09 AM
Subject: Possible Spam: Re: [AB-C29538715Y] RE: Whitelist Request for IP Address 67.43.166.133 (NOT BLOCKED)

Excessive spam activity is being detected from mail hosts at 67.xx.xxx.xxx. This is the cause of the problems. When the activity drops to acceptable levels, the block will be released.

Essentially too much of your mail is going to non-existent or invalid e-mail addresses. Clean up your lists based on the bounce backs and this should not be an issue.

Sincerely,

Verizon Online Abuse
http://www2.verizon.net/policies
http://www.verizon.net/security
Abuse@verizon.net

__________________________
Second email:
——————————————–

Thank you for contacting Verizon Online Security. After investigation,
Verizon Online Security has determined that the request you submitted is
not being blocked.

Either the IP you submitted was not the sending server or another issue may
exist.

Also please note: If the error message you or the person trying to contact
you receives is not a 571 error that has a link to
http://www.verizon.net/whitelist then you have another issue.

Please double check the IP address you submitted and if an error is found
you can resubmit the request via the webform at
http://www.verizon.net/whitelist or whitelist@verizononline.net email
address for further investigation.

Sincerely,

Verizon Online Abuse
http://www2.verizon.net/policies
abuse@verizon.net

Zappos, smart product comparison tool

I really like this concept: http://www.zappos.com/n/v/game

When shopping for snowboard gear people like to compare a lot of product.  They usually want some sort of independant 3rd party advice on which one to choose, and this tool has great potential.

Cart empty message after clicking “submit order” on checkout

Hmm I have yet to be able to reproduce the empty cart scenario after
trying a number of techniques. I even set the stock to zero just before
hitting Submit Order button, which yielded the appropriate response.

The more I think about it the more the IP changing seems to make sense,
assuming that it behave the same as if you logged in with a different
user, or logged or, both of which result in an empty cart from what I
can tell. However, I would image it’s hard to time that just right. We
do have a lot of customers but for it to happen a couple times a day for
a few days seems a bit much to let this be the reason.

Under 1lb, go USPS

At last we have integrated USPS for our orders under 1lb.  This is mainly accessories (socks, stomp pads, wax), and we are able to save 50% on the shipping…

checkout: users enter wrong info 1/5 times

amazing, simply amazing…I’m reviewing our order logs and 1/5 orders the user has entered invalid info.   There are several basic things we want to add to the checkout page:

-southwest.com insprired: please confirm your billing information as wrong information may delay your order.
-please re-enter your email address (people always enter wrong email, so they don’t get confirmation emails.  which of course they like to give us a hard time about…)
-ups avs is not perfect…usps was suppose to be better, but we are still in the very early stages of usps integration)

Additions to Receiving Software – adding sizes/colors not on purchase order

• You scan as normal on a receiver
• If an item doesn’t scan, then you try to find that item on the receiver.
• If you can’t find the item at all then you put it aside
• If you found the item but it’s not the correct size then click the “copy” link next to the size that does exist.
• This will popup a form with defaults already loaded from the item you are copying.
• You need to edit the following “Product Size/Color”, either/both “Size(numeric)” and “Size/Color (alpha-numeric)”, and UPC.  You may need to change the Vendor code if it’s different then the one you are copying.
• When you are ready, click “Add”.  this will add the new item to the bottom of the form.  It will be in it’s correct position once you update the page.  But at this point the item is now in the system as if it was entered on the PO.  So you can now scan this item like any other.  You’ll need to make sure that you place the mouse cursor back into the scanner piece at the top of the page before you start scanning away.
• This new system will allow product duplicates.  I’m not so worried about Gravis since we know that every item is new.  But in the future, you can only use this new feature if the size does not already exist in VP.  Not just on this PO, but in VP period.

Capture vs Pre Authorization of credit cards.

I came across this discussion today on how to handle charging the customers cards at point of sale or when the item is shipped.

Q: I signed up for real time authorization with my credit card gateway. Quick question. I know I can authorize and then capture later. Why would I want to do this? Why don’t I just authorize and capture at the same time and just refund customers if I do not have enough in inventory? We have tons of items and real time inventory is impossible.

A1: Becuase you’ll usually get hit with processing charges on both sides of the equation (charging and refunding). Even assuming just a 2% rate, you just wasted $4 because you couldn’t fulfill a $100 order. And that didn’t even include per transaction fees. So it’s probably closer to $4.50 you just wasted.

Another scenario: You charge someone on the last day of their billing cycle, so it appears on the next credit card statement he recieves. Oops, can’t fulfil the order, so you issue a refund the next day (but that refund won’t show up until the customer’s staement the next month). The customer gets his bill and sees the charge, but you told him you’re not sending the product. He complains to his credit card company, which issues you a chargeback. So now you’re out an additional $10-20 plus the $4.50. Plus you have a chargeback on your record. Too many of those and you’re processing rates go up (or you get dropped completely).

A2: Technically, you are not supposed to charge the consumer until the merchandise has been shipped. Do merchants do this though? Yes – all the time.

Doing a post-authorization – you are only charged a transaction fee. If you you do a sale and then refund, you will be charged transaction fees, and discount rates. This can get pretty expensive.
Plus what happens if you have a large sale and then potentially have to refund it and no money in the bank? This could cause a red flag.
Also keep in mind that pre-authorizations usually only last a couple of days (depending on the issuing bank). And even though the pre-authorization has expired, you can still potentially do a post-authorization / sales via the virtual terminal.

A3: Pre-authorizations usually only last a couple of days (depending on the issuing bank). And it depends if it is a credit card or debit card with a Visa / MasterCard logo. There is not one specific answer for you saying: Visa allows three days.

The card associations (while they matter) it is up to the issuing bank. Most debit pre-auths will be shorter than a credit pre-auth.

And if the pre-auth has expired, you can go into your virtual terminal usually and finalize the sale. You can run the risk of being denied (if the customer has gone over his / her limit). The sale is not gauranteed like it is with the pre-auth. Of course, if the sale finalizes – the money is yours.

Depending on what the consumer tells the issuing bank will determine the chargeback. A lot of times, it could be time. If you told them it would be there at a certain time and it was not, consumers (depending on the issuing bank) will have grounds for a chargeback