Good morning and Happy Labor Day! Can you believe it's technically the last "summer" holiday and we're already in September? If you've been following us on FB or Twitter, I'm sure you've seen something about the POP UP SALE and FB auction we're kicking off today, in honor of Labor Day and it being our last summer sale, so to speak. I don't think we've ever covered a blog post about our POP UP SALES, so here is a good time to do it, while we're covering our FB auction.
POP UP SALES
We did our first POP UP SALE in April of this year, I believe. I never intended for the sales to become a weekly or bi-weekly event but it has evolved to just that. What is a POP UP SALE? A POP UP SALE is a FB exclusive sale for our FB followers, allowing them the chance to get items at extremely discounted prices. Sometimes we announce POP UP SALES, other times we don't and surprise followers. We post the pictures directly onto the FB wall, what the item is, what size (if clothing), how many we have in quantity, the price and shipping, then prompt followers to leave their email address. If there's 5 available, we'll send invoices to the first 5 that comment and so on. We give a 12 hour time window to have these invoices paid. For the most part most of the invoices sent are paid but there are those few that are ignored. We do try and stick to a tight 12 hour window but if you do contact us and let us know, we're usually good to keep the invoice open. A few other things to know about POP UP SALES...
1. If you comment on several items, we do our very best to combine shipping.
2. Items are normally not shipped from POP UP SALES until 5-7 business days after invoice is taken care of. We do our very best to include this info in the invoice but sometimes it's overlooked as we are distributing invoices very quickly.
3. Over the span of 5 months of doing these sales we have had situations where items were missing and invoices were overlooked. This is not intentional or us "scamming" you, as one customer recently told us. Ha! Sometimes, you just have to laugh. Please keep in mind that we are using a PayPal system, where there is no third party database, that's helping us manage orders, as our etsy shop or website allows. FB is basically our "online store" during this sale and when there are at times, well over 100 women commenting different items, it's extremely easy for us to overlook a comment. Again, we do our very best but mistakes do happen. I paid my invoice but never got my item. Once customers pay their invoices, our production team prints out all of the invoices from that sale. We try to print these invoices out after all of the invoices are paid but a lot of times production is wanting to start on it, as there is a 12 hour time window and if one item has been reissued a couple times, it could prolong the shipping status of others, and they start printing. If your invoice is not taken care of at this point, it's not printed. If it has been taken care of, again, it's extremely easy to overlook printing an invoice, which is why there have been occurrences where items have been paid but not shipped. It's simply an oversight on our part and we do our best to right it ASAP.
4. Quantity control and oversells: Before a POP UP SALE commences, we go through our inventory and see what we're wanting to get rid of or sale, count the quantity (keep in mind we're counting fabric and how many production can get out of what we have in fabric inventory), which is where we normally put the quantity on the post. There are times when oversells occur, which means there are too many comments and not enough to go around. When this happens, if we're able to obtain more fabric in inventory, we'll email the customers and let them know or offer a refund. We try to avoid this but it does happen every once in awhile.
5. POP UP SALE items are FINAL SALE.
FB Auction SALE
I've seen online auctions and always thought they were really neat but honestly never thought of doing one. One of my very dear friends suggested we do an online FB auction when I told her we were in the works of doing an "end of the summer" type sale. Her theory was "So many of us want items during your POP UP SALES but because we log on to FB way after you've posted, we don't even stand a chance. A lot of these items, I want so bad and other women do too, why not have an auction and let us outbid each other. If I really want an item, I'm going to fight for it. Ha!" So, today we're kicking off our very first FB online auction, which I'm very excited about. We will have two FB albums on our page, one that's POP UP SALE and the other that's Auction Sale. What's the difference in the POP UP SALE and Auction Sale? Our POP UP SALE will have items in quantities over 1, which makes auctions pointless. Our auction sale will have items that are one of a kind and we're also including some fall items that you'll see at full retail in our etsy shop and website in the coming week or so. We will post the starting bid, ask you to leave your bid. The auction will end tonight, September 3rd, at 11:59 PM (PST). Once the auction has ended, we will close the post out by asking the highest bidder to comment with their email address, where we can email an invoice. Again, we will use our 12 hour window to pay the invoice, otherwise it will be redistributed to the next highest bidder.
Now, I'm off to finish preparing for this fun sale today! I hope to see you there!
Charity and DB Team!
