Posts tagged business
Makin' Latex
KINK ENGINEERING: The life and times of a latex saleswoman...
Brace yourself for the initial angry wave of criticism: how dare you, I hate it, it’s ugly, you’re stupid. The Internet runs on knee-jerk reactions. People will test your work against their pet theories: It is not free, and thus has no value; it lacks community features; I can’t believe you don’t use dotcaps, lampsheets, or pixel scrims; it is not written in Rusp or Erskell; my cat is displeased. The ultimate question lurks beneath these curses: why wasn’t I consulted? You take the criticism into consideration no matter how much vitriol wraps it, file away bug reports where appropriate, reply politely if it’s worth it, and shrug. Then wait a few days. Now comes the more significant feedback—possibly praise, and, if you are lucky, not opinions but problems—things that you can think about and fix. Some people are trusting and friendly; others swear and append “I AM VERY UNHAPPY” to their emails in misdirected righteousness. Again, you must shrug. People are used to complaining to faceless organizations that don’t respect them, and often assume an offensive posture, expecting that a display of anger will gain your attention. They don’t understand that you are the team in I. The only option is politeness—remember always that you are dealing with other primates.
That’s exactly EXACTLY right.
(via soxiam)
This one got on the Planet Money Blog.
Mr. Money and his Lucha Lady!
Happy #Luchaday Everyone.
More Latex Luchas in the Gallery - and in the store where we just launched our Lucha Latex Line.
I’ll keep posting stuff from our guest stars throughout the day, there’s some interesting people out there!
Infographic: Latex Lucha Hood Color Selections on our store. I’m trying hard to make it easy to get a really good customized color scheme. :)
More Lucha Latex in the Gallery - and in the store where we just launched our Lucha Latex Line.
I’ll keep posting stuff from our guest stars throughout the day, there’s some interesting people out there!
We’re a FEATURED ARTICLE on the NPR planet money blog! Awesome.
My company just got mentioned on the NPR PLANET MONEY BLOG!!!
ALERT: We will be suspending sales on the Kink Engineering section of our online store next week, for 6 days.
This will only effect the Kink Engineering section of the store:
All hoods, vacbeds, capes, sleep sacks, and the like will be offline from Saturday April 28th to Friday May 4th.
All sheeting will still be online for purchase and we will be shipping out sheeting at our usual snappy pace.
Why close the KE store for a week?
We have a bunch of back-orders that need to be finished (a bunch of which were waiting on our recent shipment of black sheeting), a bunch of design for a new line of products (watch this blog!), and a performance coming up at the Torture Garden Toronto event.
So to serve you better in the long run, we’re going to not serve you for a few days.
During this time we will also be doing some revision on our online store to make it function better for our customers.
Thank you for your patience and patronage.
From a customer: About our Vacbeds
“WOW…. Your company builds a great product which both of us are extremely pleased. What a great sensation. Truly holds the suction for a long time. Thank you and I hope to send some new business your direction.” ~Happy Customer
You know… it’s REALLY hard to do good work in the business of creating products, when faced with competition from other companies that only seek to sell LOTS of products, not stick to selling good products.
It takes a constant pressure to improve what you can, and to maintain what you have made great already. It takes willpower to avoid the quick buck of shipping the work offshore where it’s cheap, but also totally un-customizable, and un-supervised and far worse un-cared-about. It takes the ability to say NO to other things. It takes the ability to understand not just what the customer is willing to buy, but what they really want, and how they intend to use your product - then design it from top to bottom as a good experience. It also means listening and learning when it goes wrong.
So with all that to be done to make a good product - it’s natural that you end up burned out after a while. But it’s all worth while when a customer sends you something like this. A little reminder that your hard work has actually made someone’s dream into a reality.
Summary:
- My design made someone happy today.
- Then they let me know they were happy… so I’m happy too.
- Me and my employees earned a living wage, which is honest and reasonable.
- The customer paid a fair price for something they really wanted without flashing lights and false advertising.
- The world is net-positive on this transaction.
Awesome.
P.s. If you don’t know what a Vacbed is… click through this image
How come more baseball players don’t just live in normal apartments, reading magazines and making spaghetti? That’s pretty much the definition of happiness right there, no matter how much money you have.
That’s our secret.
Archean and I aspire to be happy… not to be rich and powerful. Surprisingly, the time you save from trying to be rich and powerful leaves a lot of time to work at being awesome at what you do… which may eventually make you rich.
That’s a fact that is awesome!
John Roderick (via yourmonkeycalled)
(via yourmonkeycalled)
To 99% of our customers… we love you!
To the 1% that are a pain in the ass… not so much.
So a customer orders a $6 roll of latex trim trip, and our store charges him $10 to ship from Toronto, to the South West of the US…
Customer Email:
“I am starting a new business and believe your product will work with my product. I am not going to pay 10$ for shipping a tiny roll to me. If you want my business, let me know. (Phone number)”
Our Response Email:
Hi (Customer Name),
I’m hoping that your passive aggressive email was an April Fool’s Day joke, but we’ve gone ahead and refunded and cancelled your order just the same. It is not our policy to chase clients who communicate with us in that way. We appreciate your business, but not enough to accept your hostile tone.
Shipping charges: Our shipping costs are fixed and we try our best to keep them at the actual cost of shipping within the limits of our online store’s ability to do so. We are shipping from Canada, and there is a minimum cost for parcel post to the USA that we can’t do anything about. The cost of shipping becomes much more reasonable with larger orders, but yes, it does seem large for small objects that are larger than a letter, but smaller than a breadbox. Had you ordered 2,3 or even 8 rolls of trim, your shipping charges would not increase substantially. As a business owner, you certainly must understand the concept of economy of scale.
We value our clients, and aren’t out to make money from excessive shipping surcharges. We (unlike many online retailers) automatically refund shipping over-charges that we note when we compare the amount charged to our customer, and the amount we paid to the post office. That being said, most of our clients understand that shipping costs what it costs, especially when shipping across the border.
We can appreciate your frustration at the high cost of shipping in respect to a small product, but sending us a terse email does little to help the situation. It does telegraph the fact that your business is one that we are not interested in working with as long as you are going to communicate in that way. Just remember that business to business communications are always, in the end, person to person communications.
We wish you all the best of luck with your new business.
Cheers,
~Matt.
SIX MONTHS?!?
Archean did a quick calculation… between the 4 main people at Ego Assassin and Kink Engineering, working 15 hour days, 16 days straight, and with some hours added on for our other staff (totalling 80 more hours) - this project that we completed in 2 weeks was the equivilent amount of man-hours that one person working full time (9-5) would work in SIX MONTHS.
I suppose that’s why we’re so damn tired.
I suppose that’s also why the finished product is something we are so VERY proud of. I can’t wait to show it off to you all… as soon as I have some clearance, which might be many months.
Still… great gig! Back to basics for a while though…