Friday Wrap-up: Wow (that’s a Vista Wow, btw)
I give this week a big Vista Wow. For those of you unfamiliar with what a Vista Wow is, it’s a Wow full of surprise, irony, disappointment, frustration, humor, and pretty much any other complex emotion you can think of, all wrapped into one. Bill Gates coined the phrase with the launch of Windows Vista.
My bullet point wrap-up of the week:
- Customer relations debacle of the week: I’ve had to tell all my customers who ordered Kits they won’t be getting them yet. I had hoped to get the first batch out this week. Not helping the issue is that all my suppliers shut down next week for the holiday. I haven’t done manufacturing before and didn’t know that this is normal. They didn’t mention it to me until this week because they assumed I knew. Grr.
- Pain of the week: UPS is a pain to work with. Their 800 number people don’t know anything, even when they assure you “they’ve worked there 11 years.” I can’t ship any kits until we work through our relationship issues, which currently are many but are possibly on the mend.
- Import snafu of the week: DHL, on the other hand, is great to work with, but won’t release certain products I have coming in from Thailand for certain reasons, mainly supplier- and IRS-related. Hmmm.
- New RedPost/Goshen of the week: a new, local grocery store (which is part of a larger regional chain) called Martin’s now has a RedPost sitting right inside their entry. It’s probably the most high-profile RedPost yet as far as traffic, although I’m betting the percentage of people who actually look at it will be the lowest of all the locations. The picture’s on the right. You can view all the locations here.
- Scariest moment of the week: Not more than one hour ago, the backhoe that’s working on pulling up concrete right outside World Headquarters 1.0 accidentally swung through a door in the side of the building. The door came flying in and the backhoe guy came quickly afterwards with many words of apology. Fortunately nothing was damaged. Nor were any people. But we’re all a bit scared and ready to move to World Headquarters 2.0.
