#my shipping cost is already pretty high for it just being sent as a standard letter and its to partially cover shipping supplies but still

[alpinelogy]

heartbreaking: someone from [redacted] just ordered my graphics and despite me living in [redacted] most of the year i will still be sending them from the motherland cause idk how to send mail in this country. and also they do not know i am a resident of [redacted] i am pretty sure

[thedenimdentist]

Flame Panda: worth the hype?

Introduction

For those of you who are pretty invested in handmade, hand welted, MTM boots, Flame Panda needs no introduction. In fact, if you aren’t already familiar with this small boot making family out of a small village in China, then maybe you aren’t actually the boot enthusiast you believe yourself to be. lol just kidding. But really, for anyone interested in high quality, beautifully built boots, Flame Panda is a brand worth looking into. Their main source of advertising and business is through their instagram @flamepanda11, which is run by their Peng. They're still a relatively small family owned business, but they’re following is growing exponentially (and for good reason). 

I would go more into the background of their business and what they have to offer, but nothing I could write would compare to the information covered by Jake @almostvintagestyle on his blog: his review of his beautiful chunky monkey boots and an interview with Peng himself. So, if you’d like more background information on what Peng and Flame Panda have to offer, head over to his blog. Otherwise, on with the unboxing/review!

Ordering Process

As with most boot brands out of Asia lately, Flame Panda boots can be ordered via DM through his Instagram @flamepanda11. Unfortunately, there is no website or catalog listing all the patterns, leathers, or customization options he has available. Luckily Peng is very helpful and open to discussion regarding your MTO boots. He takes an active role in creating you the best boots possible, giving constructive input and suggestions rather than just mindlessly giving you whatever you ask for. Peng knows his materials and abilities best, and has a solid grasp on how to combine the two to create a quality product that meets both yours and his satisfaction.

The following are the exact details I requested regarding these black boots:

Model: 6 inch boots

Last: 181 last

Upper leather: black Maryam horsebutt

Upper stitching: black

Hardware: 5 copper eyelets, 2 quick hooks, 1 eyelet

Toe design: brogued cap toe, unstructured

Welt construction: 270° 2 row stitchdown (beige)

Lining: kangaroo

Midsole: single leather midsole

Edge finish: natural edge

Sole: black Dr. Sole half sole/heel

Heel design: incline curved

Sizing

For those of you who haven’t read my reviews before, my feet are stricken with large bunions on the pinky sides of my feet. As a result, picking shoe sizes have always been extremely difficult. (See my previous reviews for details). Below I’ve listed my sizes for all the other boot brands I own.

Thursdays - 10.5

Onderhoud - 45E

Benzein - 45E

Red Wing, Iron Ranger - 9.5EE

Truman Boot Company - 11EE

Viberg (1035 last) - 10.5

In trying to determine what size I would be in his boots, I sent Peng all the following images/information:

As many helpful measurements I could think, with images of how I took those measurements.

I also informed him that I wear this thick, memory foam orthotic in all my footwear.

And lastly, I provided him with a photo and the dimensions of the removable insole of another pair of boots that fit perfectly (in this case, my Onderhoud derbies). I also took photo of how my orthotic relates to these insoles, as well as a photo with my ugly foot. (TMI? Possibly. But I’d rather provide too much information than not enough, and it definitely paid off.)

Now that I think about it, I don't even know what size Peng ended up making for me. Regardless, these boots ended up fitting perfectly. This goes to show that Peng really knows what he’s doing, and can size you appropriately if given enough information. 

Price & Shipping

For this particular boot in black Maryam horsebutt, Peng charged $685 USD including global shipping. I purchased these boots on 6/29/2020, and was quoted an unusually specific 95 day wait time. However, I didn't end up receiving these until 12/29/2020. While this is significantly longer than expected, Peng kept me up to date in his progress via Instagram DMs, so I never felt forgotten. (He told me that he and his family were moving locations during this time and production was running behind schedule. I didn’t mind, as I COVID was keeping me home majority of the time and didn’t have any reason to wear these boots anyway.) These days, I believe his wait time is closer to six months (which still really isn’t too bad for MTM boots).

Unboxing

Securely packaged, with tape as no object.

A box inside a box. A nice touch, actually. A lot of other boot companies simply ship the single boot box wrapped in butcher paper and tape, which often results in some minor box damage. In this case, the outer protective box took all the beating during transit, leaving the actual boot box in pristine condition. While this doesn’t have any affect on the quality of the boots themselves, it’s a good demonstration of the care and thought that Peng puts into all aspects of his products. He really holds himself to a higher standard, and I appreciate it.

Another reason to love Peng. He typically includes a small gift with every boot order! In this case, this nice little wallet. 

In addition to the complementary thinner, cheaper single boot bags that most boot companies provide, Peng also included a larger canvas drawstring boot bag with a screen printed logo.

These boots came with three sets of laces. They were pre-laced with some standard width, flat, waxed cotton laces. Included in the box were two additional sets of laces: a pair of wider flat waxed cotton laces, and some round waxed cotton laces. 

360 Degree View

Left boot:

Right boot:

Sole:

The Leather

The black Maryam horsebutt Peng used on these boots is absolutely gorgeous. The leather feels very substantial and hefty, and has a very nice sheen. The horsebutt also has a very subtle marbling and grain that shines through from certain angles. It’s a little difficult to capture in photos due to the deep black coloring of the leather, but you can take my word for it. These are incredible.

From what I’ve seen, I believe Peng is one of the best in the business when it comes to hide selection and clicking. He is extremely picky when determining what portions of each hide he actually uses on his boots. For instance, here is an example of him picking apart a hide, circling all the imperfections that he plans on excluding during clicking for boots.

This critical eye for detail increases Peng’s overhead considerably, as a significant portion of his leather is filtered out as unusable and unfit for boots. While this does increase the cost of his boots relative to other smaller boot brands coming out of Asia, it is also a big reason why the leather on his boots consistently break in and age so well. I have yet to see a pair of Flame Panda boots that have any unsightly creasing or loose grain, and I’m sure my pair will be no exception.

The 181 Last

Here’s a closer look at the tope shape of the 181 last. It’s got a nice almond toe shape without going overboard with pointy-ness. The outer sweep of the toe box has a more gradual, soft curve than the Onderhoud last, and even more so the Benzein Kujang last. It’s a clean and strong shape, with more of a sophisticated vibe than your typical work boot.

Outsole

Nice and clean outsole stitching by hand, with no overly wonky stitches.

The Liner

I chose to have this pair fully lined with a warm brown kangaroo leather. This makes the upper feel even more robust and structured (especially noticeable around the ankle/shaft of the boot), and gives them a bit more of a luxurious feel when on foot. (Also, note the half gusseted tongue. I highly prefer gusseted tongues over the standard floppy tongue. I specified during my order that I wanted a gusseted tongue, so I’m not 100% sure this tongue would come standard. Might be worth asking when/if you do order a pair for yourself.)

The Brogued Cap Toe

This is my first boot with a brogued cap toe. While I still think I prefer plain toes on my boots, I do like how this brogued cap looks here.

270 Degree Stitchdown Construction

Peng is probably most known for his 360° storm + embedded eversion welt. However, it is on the chunkier side, and I felt it would take away from the clean, sleeker look of this boot. Thus, I opted for double row stitchdown construction, which I think turned out quite nicely.

Peng’s welt stitching is very tight, parallel, and uniform, with a higher stitch count. Esthetically, I think it looks pretty similar to the 270° veldschoen stitching on my derbies from @renavgoodsco (seen at the 12 o’clock position below).

12 o’clock: Renav 270° veldschoen

2 o’clock: Truman 270° stitchdown

4 o’clock: Ostmo boots 270° custom welt stitching

6 o’clock: Benzein 270° veldschoen

8 o’clock: Role Club 270° flat welt

10 o’clock: Onderhoud 270° veldschoen

Inclined Curved Heel

If you haven’t been able to tell already, these are not the inclined curved heels (aka woodsman heels) that I had initially requested. While this is a pretty significant misstep on Peng’s end, I actually don’t mind too much. For low block heels, these appear to have been executed very cleanly, and it does complement the rest of the boot pattern quite nicely. If I had been dead set on having woodsman heels on these boots, I could see this being more of a dealbreaker. 

Upper Stitching

Overall, the stitching on the upper is clean and tight, with a very uniform stitch count. There are a few spots where there are a few mis-stitches, which I will point out later. For now, here are a few macro shots to appreciate Peng’s stitch work.

One area on the upper where the stitching isn’t exactly perfect is along the left cap toe. As you can see below, there is one spot in the broguing pattern where it gets a little too close to the double row of stitches, and the thread actually tore into the brogue hole. Functional issue? No. But just something small I noticed.

A second spot that might be considered less than perfect is this stitching on the right boot, where the quarters meet the vamp. It looks like there may be an extra stitch in the vertical line extending beyond the horizontal stitch. This is seen on both the inside and outside quarters, and only on the right boot. (I included a pic of the stitching on the left boot a few photos back, where you can see the stitch lines come to a perfect T.) Again, this is being extremely nit-picky, and has no real bearing on the durability or quality of the boot itself.

A third and possibly the (relatively) biggest stitching imperfection was this loose thread on the front corner of the inside right quarter. It appears as though the end of the thread came out of the stitch hole. I later trimmed the loose thread and singed it with a lighter to prevent it from progressing, but there is still an empty stitch hole in the leather where the thread once was.

While we’re on the topic of imperfections, there is also a little bit of what appears to be black polish smeared along the brown welt of the right boot. Not a big issue, nor is it even a stitching or construction issue. Again, just thought I’d point it out to be thorough.

On Foot

First off, I would just like to praise Peng for absolutely nailing the fit of these boots. My feet are ugly and stupid, and sizing any footwear has always been a nightmare. However, using just the measurements and information I provided above (since getting measured in person was not an option), he still managed to build a perfectly fitting boot for my imperfectly shaped feet. I’ve worn them a few times now, and I’ve had zero pain whatsoever.

That being said, these boots are by far some of the stiffest boots I’ve ever worn—in a good way. I can tell these will require a good amount of wear to really break them in and have them relax and shape to my foot, but I’m looking forward to it. (Note, I’m in no way saying that this extended break in period will be at all painful; rather, just that it’ll take some time for the upper leather and sole to soften up.) These boots feel like tanks, and lacing these up make my feet feel invincible. I felt like Steph Curry wearing double ankle braces when I first tried walking in these, but the shafts are slowly starting to break in and roll with wear. The soles were also initially very rigid (like I was walking on planks of wood), but are beginning to flex more as I continue to wear these. Also note that I had these built on single leather midsoles! I can’t even imagine how stiff these would be if they had 1.5 or double layer midsoles (which are a quite popular request, from what I’ve seen on Peng’s Instagram).

Conclusions

I know it’s still early, but I can confidently say that these Flame Panda boots are one of the highest quality boots in my collection. They are definitely the most robust, and despite a few minor finishing issues, the level of cleanliness and finishing by Peng and his family is unmatched by the majority of boot makers worldwide (at least from what I’ve seen on Instagram). Other than maybe Goto-San of White Kloud (@show_goto), Peng is one of the best at not only sourcing beautiful leathers, but clicking as well. I have yet to see a pair of his boots with any unsightly creasing or grain, which gives me the confidence to recommend him to anyone who may be interested in purchasing a pair of these, or any of his other boot patterns. 

I apologize if this has started to sound like a sponsored or endorsed advertisement, but I genuinely love these boots, and I believe Peng is a great dude who deserves the recognition he has been receiving lately. He is super generous and genuine, easy to talk to (albeit sometimes slow to respond, with the sheer volume of DMs he now receives), and is constantly striving to improve his materials and skills. And with a personality and passion like that, how could anyone not want to support him? These may have been my first pair of Flame Pandas, but they definitely aren't the last. (In fact, they’re already not. lol)

Anyway, hit me up via Instagram if you have any questions about Peng, Flame Panda, or anything else denim/boots related. Also, follow along over there to see how these stunning black Maryam horsebutt boots age with wear. I’m excited to see how they break in, and so should you. Ttfn!

[lushscreamqueen]

TEENAGERS FROM SPACE on The Schlocky Horror Picture Show

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Hello, good evening, and welcome to the Schlocky Horror Picture Show. I'm your host, Nigel Honeybone. Possibly the most terrible and mystifying place anything could come from is Outer Space. The second most terrible and mystifying place is, of course...Puberty. So tonight we add terror to terror in the utterly mystifying Teenagers From Outer Space. No, not one of those lame 1980s college sex romps as you might have guessed from the title, but a rather entertaining black and white effort from 1959 starring, well, ME! I was only paid once, but as you're about to see, I play just about every disintegrated character in the film! I swear, I've never had so much screen-time in a single feature! Look out for my tattoo. The film is actually about aliens who land on Earth to use it as a farm for its food supply, and the crew of the ship includes several teenagers who look much older than the title suggests...sort of like 90210 in jumpsuits. So without further ado, please allow me to semi-ambiguously present the 1959 semi-classic...Teenagers From Outer Space! BREAK: Next we invade your personal space with clawing, slimy crustaceans, and then after the ads we'll get back to Teenagers From Outer Space on the Schlocky Horror Picture Show! MIDDLE: ...and welcome back to the Schlocky Horror Picture Show. I think there are far too many nice people in Teenagers From Outer Space! Well, at first, anyway. The town is filled with nothing but nice people who want to help out, just begging for disintegration. You see, we've been invaded by Bryl-creemed aliens in jump suits who want to use Earth as a breeding ground for Gargons, which are like yabbies that grow to ginogorous proportions! Teenagers From Outer Space was filmed on location in and around Hollywood with a number of tell-tale landmarks like Bronson Canyon and Hollywood High School giving away the film's hazy locale. One notable aspect of the film is that it was largely the work of a single person, Tom Graeff, who plays Joe the reporter. He also wrote, directed, edited, and produced the film, as well as providing cinematography, so-called special effects, and music coordination. Production associates Bryan and Ursula Pearson and Gene Sterling provided the film's $14,000 budget, which was less than half a shoe-string by the standards of the time. All three played major roles as a result...not because they put money in, but because it wasn't enough money to hire more real actors. They employed a lot of guerrilla tactics in order to cut costs. Director Tom Graeff secured the location for Betty Morgan's house for free by posing as a UCLA student, which would have been true five years earlier. The old lady who owned the house even supplied the electricity for free, so she deserves disintegration. Other cost-cutting ideas didn't pay off so well. The space costumes are simple flight suits clearly decorated with masking tape, dress shoes covered in socks, and surplus Air Force helmets. The disintegrator ray was a five-cent "Hubley's Atomic Disintegrator" cap-gun, for those who can't make out what's written on the side, with a small light bulb and a mirror glued to the end reflecting an offstage light providing the awesome special effects that make this weapon look almost laughable. And apart from a shadowy giant lobster that would have needed an expensive over-sized claw prop if it ever got close enough to actually attack someone, all the other events are either stock footage or take place off screen under the horrified gaze of our actors. The best effect is those ray guns leaving mere skeletons behind. It's something Tim Burton would use later on in Mars Attacks, but he chose not to ask me to reprise my role. Disintegrate him too, bastard! Strangely enough, Graeff also pre-recorded some of the film's dialogue for several scenes, and had the actors learn to synchronise their actions with the sound. The musical score of the film came from stock, the same stock score has been recycled in countless B-movies such as The Killer Shrews and the original Night Of The Living Dead, so don't

be surprised if you find yourself humming along. As you know, I don't usually harp on too much about bad acting, but I must admit that the acting in Teenagers from Outer Space is particularly bad, and the source of most of the movie's unintended hilarity. This shouldn't be too surprising, as Derek, the alien who wants out of the seafood business and runs away, is played by one David Love, one being the number of films he acted in. Production associate Bryan G. Pearson, whose real name was Bryan Grant but used a pseudonym to avoid union troubles, is Thor. I'm not doing that joke. He had one off roles in TV shows Border Patrol, Perry Mason and Daniel Boone, but in this he's the alien sent to track down renegade nephropidaphobe Derek, along the way asking a lot of questions, being rudely insistent and rather inconsiderately disintegrating people. And the occasional dog. We meet Betty Morgan, played by Dawn Bender (which I'm sure we've all had), as the owner of the dog vaporized by Thor. Vaporized, by Thor! And swept up, by Loki's beard! Bender had acted sporadically since the age of two, and bizarrely chose as her swan song a story about aliens on a sightseeing tour of middle America. Admittedly Thor is a little more murderous in his sightseeing, but not much worse than drunken backpackers. Now they need a good, firm disintegrating. Ursula Pearson, here playing Hilda was Bryan G. Pearson's wife. Of course, Bryan Pearson's real name was Bryan Grant, which means Ursula Pearson's real name was Ursula Hansen. However they were married, which I think they did just to confuse me. I could go on talking about the intersection of Inane and Insipid, but perhaps I should mention the best known actor, if not the best actor, or indeed the known actor...anyway, the one face you probably will recognize if you don't blink is the Spacecraft Captain, who is none other than Starker from Get Smart himself, King Moody. Yes, that's as grand as it gets. Much to the astonishment of nobody sane the film failed to perform at the box office, placing further stress on an already-burdened Graeff. He suffered a breakdown and proclaimed himself the second coming of Christ, which was quite deluded as Roger Corman was clearly the second coming of Christ. After a number of public appearances followed by a subsequent arrest for disrupting a church service, Graeff disappeared from Hollywood for many years. Perhaps that tinge of insanity adds to the low budget charm of Teenagers From Outer Space. One irresistible scene occurs when the love interest is in her room and she manages to change into the very same dress! It's something that couldn't be duplicated with all the money in the world, and probably shouldn't be. And won't be, if I have anything to do with it. Now lets get back to to the disintegrating conclusion of Teenagers From Outer Space! CLOSING: How do we know they're a superior alien race? Because they keep saying it all the time, that's why! It must be true, they have spaceships, big foreheads and those nifty ray guns that instantly turn their targets into skeletons. I sometimes wish I had something like that when dealing with my producers, but it's probably better that I don't. How many aliens did they manage to squeeze into that flying saucer, anyway? It turns out their flying saucer is bigger on the inside than the outside, a bit like the TARDIS. That's pretty advanced, but it still looked like a tight fit in there. They may be a superior race that's invented space travel, but they haven't invented soft furnishings yet. And how were they going to cart back a fully grown Gargon back to their home planet in such a tiny ship? Oh, and did you spot my tattoo? I was really, really drunk... Anyway, please join me next week to have your innocence violated beyond description while I force you to submit to the Horrors of the Public Domain, on The Schlocky Horror Picture Show. Toodles!

[cienie-isengardu]

makeup-wonder-woman said:

Very interesting points. Thank you for sharing!

Thank you! : )

@erenaeoth​ replied to your Some thoughts about TLJ                               

I agreed with basically everything you said here. I was pretty disappointed by this film. 

Thank you! Though to be fair, I’m not really disappointed by the movie  - I like it even more than TFA and I get more invested in characters than before. My mind just like to overanalyze stuff, when I get really interested into something : )

@soloontherocks replied to your Some thoughts about TLJ                                

  1. Admirals don't fucking justify top secret plans to captains, especially not captains who, when they do find out, IMMEDIATELY leak the secret plan to the enemy. It's a military, not a slumber party.     

First, why Holdo’s plan is supposed to be top secret? This is not a standard military operation. People are in desperate situation, running from enemy while general Leia is heavy injured and other leaders dead, so they need something to hold on more than ever. I didn’t say Holdo should told everything everyone - it was her right as senior officer to withhold the most important details, especially if she suspected that someone betrayed Resistance (what could be suspected after FO tracked them so easily in hyperspace). But she could at least ensure people there is a plan to save them all and / or that she will reveal everything at the right time. I take into account Holdo may not have plan in mind right away, and she may be thrown into deep water without warning or time to get ready, but in such critical situation, people need to know that their “new” leader is capable to save them all. That they can trust her judgment. Looking that Poe never met her before - only heard of Holdo’s sucesfull(?) battle - there is a big chance that many other officers & troopers weren’t familiar with her either. Let’s be real for a moment, taking place of admired general Leia in such critical situation was tough for sure, but soon after the meeting was over we learn that Rose already stopped three attempts to desert (with Finn being fourth), so I don’t think that Holdo’s short speech raised the soldiers' morale that much.

Poe waited until the meeting was over to learn more about vice-admiral’s plan. I agree that senior officers don’t have to justify their plans to captains. But Poe was just recently demoted (and yeah, it was silly of him to assume that Leia wouldn’t demote him officially or that Holdo will not know about that... or he simply forget himself, since many bad things happened fast after his demotion) and until then Poe was the (wing?) commander and really trusted officer of general Leia. And if I’m not wrong, commander rank is much closer the vice-admiral rank than captain, so Poe probably from habit wanted to know what is the plan so he could help / be ready for the upcoming fight. Holdo refused to give him input data - what was her right to do, sure. But looking how desperate Resistance situation was, was there any logical reason to do so? For me it felt just like a way to show a man with lower rank his place to spite instead for any other reason. Especially since she assumed that Poe is hotheaded and thus may be a dangerous man. The lack of trust between them resulted in a conflict that eventually cost the lives of many people. What is more important, Holdo could bridle Poe much earlier on two other occasions - one, when he called her out publicly (after he noticed on monitor that fuel is transported into freighters) and when the mutiny started. Why not tell desperate people what the plan really was then, to stop the mutiny before something will go wrong for good - and in process, kill their own people?

Don’t get me wrong, I get that military has chain of commands, but as much as admirals may chose to not share vital info, they may chose to share it as well, if the situation call for such action. Admirals are people after all, and there is many ways to command people. Some officers are charismatic, while some are not trusted/liked much by their subordinates, and some officers are more strictly than rest, but I strongly believe that good officer is the one who can see when being strictly to rules is necessary to keep control over situation and when it doesn’t work (or even make critical situation worse). Officers must be able to adapt to all kinds of situations, including working with difficult / insubordinate men like Poe, especially if survival of crew depends on it.

I know I’m quite bitter about this part of movie, because it feels for me like drama for the drama’s sake only. We don’t have that much female characters with higher rank of power and the one we just met on screen  was used to create totally avoidable conflict, just to pit characters against each other and then killed off. Which is shame, because Holdo seems like interesting character that could bring into story a lot more than that. Then again, she could end like Phasma, a lot hype and then not much of chatacter :(

Re: dress, don't be fucking misogynistic.     

Misogynistic? For wanting to see estabilished high ranked female officer in full military uniform? I don’t see what one has anything to another. If Holdo was a real person then whatever she would wear would be her choice. But she is fictional character and that means someone made decision to present one of few female military leaders in dress during evacuation-turned-into-run-for-life of Resistance. I feel disappointed because I rarely see in SW (or most fiction, really) female characters estabilished as succesful admiral/high ranked officer wearing actual uniform.

During Empire era, Mon Montha wore dress, but she was the political leader first and foremost, Leia as general wear rich(?) clothes, and now vice-admiral Holdo was put into pretty dress. What raises my question, why Holdo couldn’t wear uniform like rest of (male and female) members of Resistance?

Hell, I would love to see Leia in uniform too, especially now, because how often in SW we see elder woman as military leader / general?

  @anpan-chan replied to your Some thoughts about TLJ                                   

@soloontherocks He wouldn't try to sent Finn and Rose on the main enemy ship at all. So, no leak. Problem solved just by talking. Holdo failed as a leader. Experienced admiral who can't command and reassure people in life or death situation, no matter how good is she in millitary strategies. She failed. I can't blame the crew for not blindly trusting her, after all, she acted like a traitor. And Poe did all he could in this situaion.   

I tend to feel similar to you, Anpan-chan, that Holdo at least partially was responsible for the whole mess, but to be fair, Poe wasn’t helping much either. What is kinda disturbing, since both were Leia’s close associates. It’s understable that they didn’t have a chance to meet before but frankly, Resistance wasn’t THAT big group at the time of evacuation and both of them were officers serving under the same general. I wouldn’t mind if the movie focused more at putting their differences aside for common good than fighting against each other that lead only to death of so many people :(

soloontherocks said:

You’re an idiot and I’m not going to bother explaining to you why a senior officer isn’t supposed to explain her orders to a subordinate currently facing disciplinary action. Please try joining the marines and asking them to explain orders for you.                          

You know, calling someone an idiot yet refusing to explain why you think someone’s idea is wrong is frankly pointless. If you have military knowledge, please share, so we could move forward with discussion, otherwise what was the point of your remark, beside being rude?

Isn’t supposed? Why not? Isn’t that a choice officers make for themselves, depending on the specific situation, as in: take the best action to avoid  unnecessary injury or death of subordinates?  Once again, this is not clash between officers on the battlefield but during critical fight for surviving of crew that is in quite hopeless situation. If we agree that Poe was subordinate  currently facing disciplinary action, Holdo could just arrest him after he publicly call her a traitor. Maybe that would be wise, it would eliminate element of risk from turning into mutiny / giving away knowledge about plan. Then again, there is a chance that Poe’s friends would stick to him than to some unknown, untested admiral who seems doing nothing smart to save them. With once again lead all rebels into crisis.

Chain of command is one thing, important for sure, but shouldn’t officer actually be capable of commanding people AND reckoning with other officer's opinion on matters that may lead a crew into fratricidal fight, especially during critical moments like the one from TLJ??

[kokania2-blog]

Taking The Mystery Out Of Buying Furniture Online

Having been a part of e-commerce now for over 10 years. I've had the wonderful opportunity of speaking with folks all across the country who have been in the market for new furniture over the years. Many of these individuals were seasoned web shoppers with a lot of knowledge about how products are shipped and what to expect at the time of delivery. They had purchased large ticket items before and shopping online came very natural to them. There are also customers I talked with who were making furniture their first online purchase. They had never purchased so much as a CD or DVD online before and were starting out pretty big so to speak. These customers were always very pleased to find what they were looking for but may have been somewhat unprepared or perhaps didn't get a chance to read some of the information online about what to expect at the time of delivery or how the product would be packaged when it arrives. I'd like this article to be a guide for consumers who are new to purchasing furniture online and perhaps this will answer some more common questions related to buying furniture online that aren't normally addressed when shopping furniture stores online and take the mystery out buying furniture online.

How is furniture shipped? Furniture is shipped several different ways when you purchase it online and when you buy online it is important to read on the website how the product is being shipped so that you are prepared at the time of delivery to receive your new furniture. Most sites are pretty good about sharing this information to their customers so that they will have an idea of how the furniture is coming and who will need to be home to receive it when it comes. Below are the three common ways furniture is shipped when you purchase it online.

UPS/FedEx/DHL/ Ground Services These are common services used by many online retailers and is used typically for items that are RTA (Ready to Assemble) furniture. [More about this later.] This packaging is small enough that one person can easily manage it and the retailer will usually provide you a tracking number that you can use online to track your package for the date of delivery. The delivery driver will usually bring it to your door but if you live in an large apartment complex or on a second floor they usually deliver to a central location.

These delivery drivers usually run the same routes every day and typically will come with the delivery around the same time frames of the usual deliveries they do in that area. There isn't a way to schedule a delivery time with this type of delivery as these companies are just too large with too many packages going through their systems to be able to set up timed deliveries so it is best to be able to have someone home to receive delivery on the day they specify or if you know your delivery driver and you live in a safe area where packages can be left at your door you can always leave a note to leave your package.

Standard Truckline Curbside Delivery These services are usually done through a truckline like Roadway, Yellow, Overnite, Estes, Conway, USF and so many more. Many of the products shipped with these carriers are too large for FedEx or UPS and need to be shipped with a carrier able to handle larger packages. Many of the products shipped with this service are RTA (Ready to Assemble) furniture but many others come fully assembled when being shipped with this method so it is very important to know from the retailer how your product comes packaged. The nice thing about this service though is you can schedule your own delivery for a day that works for you in most cases within a time window of several hours.

Standard curbside delivery service is just that. These are often delivered on semi-trucks with 50 foot long trailers that are not going to be able to back into your drive let alone go through neighborhoods with low telephone or powerlines or where semi trucks are prohibited from being used or can't turn around. The driver will bring your furniture to the back of the truck but someone will need to be able to receive it and take it inside. Sometimes a service to help customers get it to their front door is available and can be added for a fee to the order. It is referred to by many different names. Lift-gate, inside first threshold, inside residential delivery and many more. The fees for this can vary greatly and if you can have help at the time of delivery this is something that is worth saving as most often your furniture will be in several boxes and typically one to two people can manage most of the furniture products shipped.

White Glove Delivery This one has always brought a smile to my face as I remember years ago a customer telling me she was rather disappointed. I asked why and she told me that the delivery folks weren't wearing white gloves when they delivered her furniture. Well... white glove delivery is just an expression used that indicates the furniture is being handled by moving professionals into your home. This is actually a very premium service that not many online retailers offer due to the high costs of the service. The advantage though is that a professional moving company is hired to pickup your furniture and bring it to your home where two professional furniture movers will bring your furniture into the room you need it and help un-box it. If your furniture comes already assembled then you are ready to go as this service usually doesn't include setup or assembly of furniture. The important thing about this service though is it gets the furniture right into the room where you need it. Much like truckline delivery you can setup a day and time window with the shipping company to schedule delivery.

Is my furniture assembled when it is delivered? Furniture retailers often ship furniture RTA which in the industry is short for (ready to assemble). This means that the product is shipped unassembled in parts and that there is some assembly required by the person receiving the furniture before they can use it. The reason for this is not to make it difficult on the person buying the furniture but as a means of packaging it in such a way to prevent shipping damage and by packaging it smaller it can ship by a less expensive means which helps to keep the pricing lower for the furniture. Some furniture is shipped assembled in the box though and depending on the size of the piece of furniture purchased you may need assistance receiving it so double check with the retailer if you are unsure. I always liked the retailer joke that said they tried shipping people with the furniture to assemble it but they often got lost or never made it back so they don't ship people to assemble the furniture anymore. (Anyone need me shipped to Hawaii to assemble some beds?)

What happens if my furniture arrives damaged? A very good question. Fortunately most furniture arrives just fine when shipped and rare is it that problems happen. However there are times when perhaps a forklift accidentally runs through a box or an item is accidentally impacted and it's best to be prepared for what to do when this happens. Since it doesn't happen often, customers are not always prepared for what to do if their furniture has suffered damage in shipping.

Whether an item is shipped UPS/FedEx/DHL or truckline retailers usually ask that customers look over the product themselves since the retailer can't be there to help should there be an issue. Signs to look for are crushed ends on a box, impact through the box or areas of the box that have been taped over by the shipping company. These are sometimes signs that the furniture may have had an issue in shipping. It is actually best to open up the packaging and inspect the surfaces of the furniture to be free from scratches, dings and dents before you accept it. If you find something you can't live with, it's best to note that while the driver is present on the receipt the driver has you sign or to simply refuse the product due to damage. That way a replacement can be sent to you at no charge. Many customers aren't aware that this is an important extra step in receiving their furniture much in the same way the retailer receives it at the warehouse when it is first inspected. It's your furniture after all and you want to make sure it's exactly the way you want it before accepting it.

When ordering furniture online you can take much of the mystery of delivery away by finding out several things. First, find out how it is being shipped and with what carrier. This will help you understand the information you'll be getting and how to best use it. Second, ask how it comes packaged and if possible the weight of the packages so you can decide if you need to have someone there at the time of delivery to help you. That way you'll know ahead of time how to plan for getting the furniture into your home. Third, when your furniture is delivered check it over well to make sure everything arrived safely and if you find anything make a note of it on the delivery receipt you sign. Ask the retailer up front before you buy what things you should do in case of damage. It's a perfectly reasonable question to ask to be prepared in that rare instance that something does happen to your furniture during shipping. Fourth, enjoy your new furniture! It can be very rewarding to find exactly what you're looking for online when you were unable to find it locally. This is the reason online retailers exist so that they can offer products that their customers want but can't find anywhere else. If you keep these things in mind when ordering your furniture online, you're sure to become a seasoned web shopper.

[prosperopedia]

Buying and Owning a UPS Store Franchise – My Experience

Several years ago, my wife and I owned an online sporting goods business. We shipped a lot of products, which meant we spent a lot of money on shipping. As any online retail knows, shipping costs continually are on the rise, and people don’t like to pay those costs, especially since Amazon has trained the general public to expect free shipping on almost everything. 

At the end of one month, as we were reviewing expenses and trying to figure out how to cut costs, we decided to pursue becoming owners of a UPS Store franchise. We had heard that UPS Store owners get significant discounts (essentially wholesale prices) on shipping, so we figured that having a UPS Store would help us improve our overall margins on our sporting goods business. We decided to jump into the process of learning how to become UPS Store franchisees.

Below I will describe the details of what we experienced.

In summary, based on what I learned and observed going through the process, I do not recommend purchasing a UPS Store franchise unless there are particular reasons you have that make owning a UPS Store more attractive than the scenario I will discuss here.

How Franchising Works

 Starting a franchise business has both pros and cons associated with it. The major advantage of owning a business that’s part of a franchise network is that you get to take advantage of a proven system that usually has been tried repeatedly and has succeeded. Some well established franchises, like McDonald’s, are almost guaranteed to succeed. Becoming an owner of that type of franchise is usually only available to people who have already been very successful at running businesses.

There are advantages and disadvantages that exist to different extents depending upon the franchise organization and the industry being served. To give you more context for my experience vetting the UPS Store, here is a quick review of pros and cons of franchise ownership.

Pros of Franchise Ownership

Franchise businesses take advantage of a core set of business functions offered by the franchisor. These often include brand awareness and a potential already existing customer base that is familiar with the product offering, general marketing and demand generation, training and implementation of core business functions and technology systems, and professional, experienced guidance on situations you may not know how to handle well without help from the franchising organization.

Cons of Franchise Ownership

Franchises usually have more up front cost than starting your own independent business. Plus there are ongoing royalties that have to be paid to the franchisor. In the case of the UPS Store the royalties (comprised of both the standard 8.5% fee and another 2.5% for ad royalties) add up to 11% of your revenue.

Franchisors can severely limit an entrepreneur’s creativity and ability to find ways to grow the business. There are often strict requirements about which suppliers must be used, how a store or business should look, and policies governing other aspects of the business that restrict a franchise owner and can make it difficult to succed. I will explain some of the issues I found with the UPS Store as we did our research and interviewed several UPS Store franchise owners.

Franchise Ratings Don’t Tell the Whole Story

One of the reasons we were so excited about opening a UPS Store was how much the idea was touted on websites like Entrpreneur.com and other franchise media outlets. In fact, even years after we decided that owning a UPS Store was not in our best interest (for specific reasons I’ll explain below), I found Entrepreneur.com ranked it #4 on its franchise 500 list.

Because of these franchise ratings, which most often reflect simply how many new locations are being opened and other data that show success for the franchisor (not necessarily the various franchisees), there are lots of upstart entrepreneurs with little experience who jump at the chance to have their own retail location, complete with a bit, highly recognizable glowing signage, but who fail to give a hard look at the actual numbers.

The excitement we had at seeing the UPS Store promoted as such a great opportunity by a trusted, “independent” source for entrepreneurs (Entrepreneur.com) quickly gave way to a much more grounded reality as we dug into details about how the stores work and how much the owners actually make. 

Buying an Existing Store Versus Opening a New Territory

As I went through the required screening interviews with the UPS Store franchise development representative, I learned about startup costs and the process, which seemed pretty straight forward. I was told that in our area (about 15 minutes south of Provo, Utah), we could expect our startup costs to be just over $200,000.

I wondered whether there might be a store in our area that might be for sale, one that I could possibly get a good deal on from someone retiring or moving, or who had some other circumstance that would make it so that their selling their franchise to us would allow us to have a good head start and reduce our risk. 

I was able to find one for sale, but I was surprised to find that the asking price for the existing business (several years old) was much lower than the cost of starting a new one. My business sense made me think, “Shouldn’t a business be increasing in value, not decreasing?”

My wife and I scheduled a meeting with the couple who owned the store. We went to dinner to talk about some of the details we needed to know as part of our due diligence in potentially purchasing their business. During our meeting, my wife and I (a young couple with a two young kids at the time) described our family goals and our business aspirations in light of our interest in buying their business, and we tried as best we could to hide our excitement about the possibility of owning our own retail shipping location. 

I was surprised at the response. Instead of being salesy at all, the couple came across unequivocally with a demeanor that said, “You don’t want this!” After the meeting I discussed with my wife how it seemed like they were trying to tell us to spare ourselves from the mistake they’d made. 

I found out why when I looked at the financials they sent over the next day.

Owning a Chance to Make $60k Per Year?

Although it’s been more than a decade since that meeting and since we were able to look at the details of revenue, costs, and other aspects of the business, I don’t want to give too much detail that might compromise these unfortunate business owners. Nor am I unaware of the possibility that the store could have been managed under new ownership in a way that would have made it much more profitable.

However, I will say this. In this and many other situations I’ve seen with people attempting to purchase franchises, there is too often a lack of looking at the situation objectively along with not comparing it to alternatives.

In too many cases, people make the mistake of purchasing for hundreds of thousands of dollars a business that maxes out at an income of less than $100,000 per year. There are lots of different ways to calculate ROI that would tell you that’s not a good idea. If you have the skills required to run a UPS Store business, you should also be qualified to fulfill a job that makes at least $60k annually and should likely be able to find something closer to six digits. Those jobs usually don’t come with nearly the amount of stress and extra hours as owning a UPS Store franchise.

Investing lots of money into a business that doesn’t have high earning potential (more than $100,000 per year) is simply a poor decision financially.

When I looked through the financial statements of this couple and realized what they’d endured during the time they were running their store, I was heartbroken for them. I was also grateful that they didn’t seem interested in transferring their misfortune to me by misrepresenting the opportunity.

This situation is not unique. According to data reported on Balance SMB, it is estimated that 60% of UPS Store  franchises do not break even. That’s not a great track record. 

Interviews with UPS Store Franchise Owners

For anyone who is considering purchasing any kind of franchise, I highly recommend interviewing current or former franchise owners. The franchisor will often have a list of hand-picked franchise owners they want you to talk to. You can learn a lot from those, but I also recommend finding others to talk to, ones who are not poster children for the franchise. 

In my case, I called both the existing UPS Store franchise owners. One of them tried his best to be loyal to the UPS Store while still being objective about what I’d be facing as a new franchise owner. He told me about the extent of control that UPS corporate has over

A policy had recently been put into effect that UPS Store locations could not have a visible clock in their stores. This franchisee was not happy about the policy, but had to comply to avoid penalties from the franchise auditor.

Regulations about signage, where to buy supplies, and other restrictions made him feel like he couldn’t lower his costs or find creative ways to increase his margins. 

Likely the most egregious issue for me was this directive from those who provided revenue support to him. He told me that they’d recently encouraged him to use this strategy for growing (or at least not shrinking) his business, “You need to find ways to make money outside of shipping!”

The recommendations included promoting other services like copying and faxing, greeting cards, and other add-on sales items. However, in keeping with the strict franchising policy he was also severely limited in what he could offer in his store. 

No candy bars. 

No essential oils.

Nothing that would detract from the UPS Store brand.

UPS Store Owner Forums – What Other Franchisees Said

I had already made up my mind, deciding not to, after my interviews with existing franchise owners and my meeting with the couple whose store we had been interested in purchasing. However, to be thorough, my wife and I decided to check out reviews from other UPS Store franchise owners online. What we found was disappointing and in many other cases, heartbreaking. Surely there are people who succeed with UPS Stores, especially those who are already good at retail and who can naturally handle the restrictions while having the acument required to maximize revenue. However, we found too many stories from people who  had invested their life savings or who made similar sacrifices for the privilege of owning UPS Stores, who lamented that they didn’t do more due diligence beforehand.

This UPS Store owner in Florida complained of lack of support from UPS despite paying high royalty fees.

One of the most notorious of the complaints that I found was a lack of support from the UPS corporate, no synergy, and commonly the opposite.

Many of the store owners told about how they made great efforts to attract local clientele to come to their store, people who would pay retail shipping prices on a repeat basis. They would later find that UPS had contacted these customers and set up shipping accounts directly with them, which meant that instead of making decent margins each time they came in to ship a few packages, their revenue potential was reduced to something around $1 for handling each package and passing it on to UPS for shipping. 

This habit by UPS was seen (rightly so) as cannibalization of the franchisee, their own local customers being poached in an effort to increase the profits of the franchisor. I have to agree with their assessment.

Some Resources for Researching UPS Store Franchising

I hope this description of my vetting experience has been helpful for you, whether you’re investigating getting your own UPS Store franchise or you know someone else who is. It may very well be that you can be successful, and that the model works for you, but it’s important to know what you’re up against before you make the money and time investment.

You might also be interested in a few of the resources I used to do research on UPS Store franchising, including an article from Balance SMB that evaluates pros and cons of a UPS Store franchise, an Amazon seller forum thread where the question is asked about whether buying a UPS Store to get discounted shipping rates (the same reasoning I used) is recommended, and a video review posted in 2018 by Franchise City, UPS Store owner reviews on Glassdoor.com, and a post about how much UPS Store franchises make on UnhappyFranchisee.com. The comments made in the discussion section of the Unhappy Franchisee post are very telling, as there are several franchise owners who vent the details of their respective situations.

If you are a UPS Store franchise owner or have something you want to share about the topic, feel free to comment here or contact me with your opinion.

If you are still determined to get into business by opening a UPS Store franchise, PLEASE make sure you do all the requisite due diligence first.

  The post Buying and Owning a UPS Store Franchise – My Experience appeared first on The Handbook for Happiness, and Success, and Prosperity Prosperopedia.

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[mariannewhughes]

Replacing your iPhone battery? Here’s what you need to know.

Does replacing my own battery void my iPhone’s warranty?

If you need a battery replacement, your warranty probably bit the big one already. Apple’s standard iPhone warranty lasts one year, and a typical battery works quite a bit longer (500 charge cycles, or roughly 18-24 months by our math teacher’s reckoning).

By the way, US law states that third-party modifications or service (like battery replacements) cannot void the warranty, unless the manufacturer can demonstrate that it damaged the device. Look into Magnuson–Moss if you want to know your rights here.

Why is there a shipping charge? Can’t you just do it for free?

Shipping smartphone batteries used to be like shipping socks, until a certain Note started catching fire and causing panic aboard airplanes. Nowadays, there are a lot of goofy restrictions when shipping li-ion batteries, with some deliveries taking as long as two months depending on the shipping carrier. In response to these issues, if your order contains a battery, we ship it via UPS Ground by default—more expensive, but much faster and more reliable in comparison.

That being said, if you prefer our $5 USPS First-Class Mail shipping option and you don’t mind risking a long delay for your battery:

Go to your Order History and click “Request Change” on the order within 30 minutes of the order being placed.

Call or send us an email (support@ifixit.com) letting us know you want to change the shipping method to USPS First-Class Mail.

We will modify the order and refund you the shipping cost difference.

If you want all the gritty details, or are just having trouble falling asleep, then pour a glass of warm milk and read up about your battery shipment options here.

Wait, don’t other places offer free shipping?

Our battery shipments are securely packed and properly hazmat-labeled. When you buy an iPhone battery from someone offering free shipping, we can’t tell you for certain if that someone is simply fibbing to the carrier to dodge the hazmat fees—but, that’s probably what’s happening. If you feel comfortable buying your allegedly high-quality parts there, hey, don’t let us stop you.

We’re working tirelessly to make this better, but there aren’t any shortcuts. (If you ship your iPhone to Apple for repair, you’ll pay $7 for shipping there, too.)

How long will it take me to do the repair?

The short answer: Not too long; depends on which iPhone you have.

The longer answer: Check the battery replacement guide for your iPhone to get an idea of what’s involved. An iPhone 4S battery can be swapped out by almost anyone in about 10 minutes, while an iPhone 7 can take an hour or more if you go whole-hog and replace the waterproof adhesive liner when you’re done. Other iPhone models lie somewhere in between.

No matter which iPhone you have, this isn’t the sort of thing you should do in a hurry—as with any repair, working patiently and carefully is the key to success, while working 20 minutes before you have to catch a bus is the key to tardiness and/or tears.

  When can I expect my iFixit battery to arrive?

UPS Ground offers guaranteed 5 business day delivery timeframes. The closer you are to California, the sooner it’ll arrive. We see that batteries sent to the East Coast often take 4-5 business days to arrive.

The best way to see when your sweet new battery will arrive is to add it to your cart, go through the first stage of the Checkout process and you’ll be shown the expected delivery window. If you decide you want the cheaper option through USPS First-Class Mail, please keep in mind that this method is not guaranteed to arrive by an expected date and is subject to delays in transit.

Are your batteries OEM?

Our batteries are made to the same specifications and ratings as an OEM part, but cannot be classified as ‘OEM’ because they are not made by Apple. Apple doesn’t like to sell OEM parts to anyone, so they are extremely hard to find. Our parts are brand new, fully tested, and come with an industry-leading warranty. You can learn more about our parts quality standards over here.

If you see someone else advertising their iPhone batteries as OEM, beware.

What if I don’t live near an Apple Store, but don’t want to do the repair myself?

Doing it yourself might be easier than you think, but we understand if you’d prefer to let a professional handle it. Click here to find someone who can help with that.

What if my iPhone is too old for Apple’s battery replacement program?

We’ve got you covered. Apple’s new program pertains to specific models, but really any iPhone with a tired battery will benefit from a new one. No matter how old or new your iPhone may be, we want to help you keep it running at peak performance for years to come—we’ve got parts, tools, and free repair guides for every iPhone released since 2008.

Okay. Can I just make my own iPhone battery?

Sure, but we’re not telling you the secret ingredient.

Is it sriracha?

Okay, you got us there. Pretty much everything is better with sriracha.

What if I have more questions you haven’t thought of?

Drop your question in the comments below and we’ll ask our mom. If you have a question about a specific order that you’ve already placed, visit our Customer Support page.

[topicprinter]

Link to blog version with pretty chartsCandy Japan 2017 Year in ReviewHello /r/entrepreneurs, Bemmu here.I run a site called Candy Japan, which ships boxes of Japanese surprise candies to subscribers around the world, twice a month.Five years ago I started writing these annual review posts after being inspired by patio11's year in review posts. They are a great way to reflect on each year, and inspire me to improve. In this one I'll start off with some background for those who haven't been following the previous ones and then proceed to the numbers for this year.My backgroundAs a computer science student in Finland I had a lot of side projects, with some of them generating some income as well. Learning Japanese has also always been a major life goal for me. My minor subject was Japanese, and as part of my studies I spent 2 years as an exchange student in Tokyo. I was still eager to continue to improve, and wanted to live in Japan again.After graduating and having saved up some money, in 2011 I decided to make it happen and moved to Japan with my wife. She is from Japan, and I first met her when she was an exchange student at my university. We settled in Tokushima, which is a smallish city (by Japanese standards) in Shikoku island. The reason for picking Tokushima was the company she entered after graduating.Even though I had no job waiting for me in Tokushima, I could follow along as some online projects I had started in Finland were still generating revenue. Pretty soon however they started to dry up, so I had to come up with something new.Starting Candy JapanStarting to look for a new project, I recalled bouncing around some ideas with a friend while we had been on a holiday together. I had mentioned to him this website I had heard of called BirchBox, a service that sends people makeup samples on a monthly basis. I thought it was an interesting model – a subscription not for software, but for surprises.Is there anything we could send like that? Maybe introduce items from around Asia.Since we were both busy with other projects at the time, we didn't end up doing any of the ideas we had bounced around. But now that I found myself in Japan with free time to start something new, I decided to try it.With my wife's work locking her here in Tokushima, I didn't want to start traveling around the world to hunt for items, so I decided to find something I could just send from Japan instead. Anything would be fine at first, I could always expand later (never did though). What would be easy to try to send? I saw a lot of unique candies here, and looking into it I discovered that they were also trending on YouTube. So candy it was.While I was an exchange student I had a side income from selling comic books (by using the university post office no less) from Japan to Finland, so I emailed those past customers to see if they would be interested in subscribing to candy. Two people agreed, so I started sending stuff to them.Next I put up a simple website. At first it was just a landing page, but over time as it grew, I wrote a bunch of code to automate things (no readymade solution existed back then). I submitted the website to the link sharing site Hacker News, where some bloggers spotted it and posted about it. Other bloggers saw those posts and reblogged it. This in turn caused the site to rank #1 in Google for the head term "Japanese candy", sending even more visitors to the site.Story up to 2016The Hacker News post, blog mentions and Google rankings combined to mean that by the end of 2011 a total of 300 people had become subscribers. It turned out to be a stable number that lasted all the way to 2014. It wasn't just that people were subscribing for that long, but also new subscriptions were roughly matching the number of cancellations to keep the subscriber count stable.Then in 2014 something wonderful happened: the subscriber count roughly tripled. I didn't do anything clever to make that happen, rather I got lifted by a wave as the whole concept of Japanese candy started to trend. If you take a look at Google Trends for the search phrase, you can see overall interest increasing.As you can see the number of searches slowly builds, but from 2014 to 2015 it rapidly doubles, making it about three times as much as it had been in the early days. This was directly reflected in our subscriber count.By no means was this still a big business, but Candy Japan alone could now cover our living expenses, and I started to get hopeful that it could get bigger still.Next year in 2015 it seemed that my hopes were coming true; the subscriber count crossed 1200. Or so I thought. What seemed to be the best year ever turned out to be miserable: I discovered that I had been hit by credit card fraud. All those new subscribers beyond the first 800 were actually fakes who had subscribed with stolen credit card numbers.I had already sent them the items, but now had to return all the money and on top of that pay a bunch of fees. Add insult to injury a lot of shipping addresses turned out to be fake as well, so I had hundreds of boxes returned to my address. Our mailbox was constantly swamped and our apartment was littered with returned boxes I had to manually examine to see if they were from legit subscribers or fakes.While this fraud issue was going on, I was also in the process of moving my tax residency to Japan. It was a stressful year spent dealing with fraud and taxes. I even got a phone call from a US police officer after someone had complained to them about an unknown charge on their card, because their number had been stolen and someone used it to place a candy order.I survived, but discovered I don't handle stress quite as well as I thought I would. I was panicky and high-anxiety a lot of the time. I'd rather forget that year, but it did teach me a valuable lesson:Fraud is something that affects any business that accepts credit cards, even charities. Even if everything seems to be OK, make a habit of reading through new orders as they come in. Pay attention to email addresses, shipping addresses and bursts of failed payments. You can spot suspicious behavior if you do this.I thought I didn't have a problem, until thousands of dollars started getting reversed. While I did know that a small percentage of all ecommerce is fraud, I always understood that as fraud being interlaced with legit orders. 100 real payments, 1 fake payment, 100 real payments, 1 fake payment. But that's not how it played out. Rather it was 10000 real payments over years lulling you into believing that everything is fine, then suddenly getting hit by hundreds of fake payments in a matter of days.If 2015 was a high-anxiety year, 2016 was rather quiet by comparison. Subscriber numbers did continue to slide, as competition was getting tough while also the overall interest in Japanese candy was waning. I ran some marketing experiments, but was unable to find any good channels. Japanese yen becoming increasingly expensive, forcing me to increase prices and leading to even less sales.2017This year was a bloodbath. From the start of 2017 to the end, subscribers declined by 40%, going from 636 to 385 members.Here's the subscriber chart including 2017.Sales statsSales net of refunds: $141,220Expenses: $102,846 (candy, shipping, boxes, ads)Profit: $38,374Wage per hour (assuming ~2 hours per day): ~$50Site statsVisits: 138kUnique visitors: 114kPage views: 241kTraffic sources of note: Search engines (30%), Social media (22%), Paid ads (13%)What went wrong?In 2016 I had five popular posts (1 2 3 4 5), while in 2017 I only managed two (1 2). The posts tend to send a lot of high-quality traffic, so the impact was bigger than you might expect. I haven't figured out how to invent posts from thin air when I simply have nothing new to share. This year I simply didn't have as much to blog about.Organic search traffic declined from 68,383 clicks in 2016 to 41,358 clicks in 2017. I think the reason for this is twofold. First, competition is getting tougher, meaning there is fierce competition for head search terms. I have been pushed off the first page completely for some.Secondly overall searches for Japanese candy declined by 33% according to Google Trends, while on YouTube searches more than halved. There was a point when a lot of YouTubers were doing a video showing their reactions to eating strange Japanese candy, but now that is ancient history.Changes in USDJPY exchange rates made me decide to increase USD prices. Naturally a higher price leads to less conversions.Another major hit was that all the packages we were sending to Germany started bouncing back. After this continued for several shipments, I decided just not to ship to Germany any more. This meant losing 10% of subscribers and needing to send a lot of refunds for packages that never arrived.Things I triedTried paid YouTube ads, and while I did get some subscribers, in the end they were just too expensive to keep running. Tweaking the ads was very time consuming and expensive (but fun). I learned a lot though and gave a presentation about it at a Hacker News meetup in Osaka. I managed to decrease their cost, but not enough to break even.Tried putting all of our old newsletters on the site. Had to reformat them by hand from ill-defined HTML newsletters to MarkDown. Attempts at automating with BeautifulSoup failed, as there was no coherent layout. I submitted them to webmaster tools, but this resulted in… silence. Less than one organic search click per day (chart).Improved site response time by serving the landing page from a static file served by Google CDN instead of from Python. This may increase conversions slightly and could improve SEO, but there is still a lot of work to do to make the site faster.Tried to branch out by asked my customers if they would like to subscribe to Gashapon capsule toys, but the result was near-silence. I have a bimonthly newsletter with a great open rate, I wonder what other ideas I could throw at them?Tried redesigning the site to be more colorful and not so gloomy, but am not sure if it helped or hurt. I don't have enough data anymore to say for sure, as you need hundreds of conversions to say anything meaningful.Tried to learn how to take better product photos for putting on the site to match what my competitors are doing, but was unable to take decent shots by myself. In the end hired a photographer to do it (result).The pictures look good, and will probably boost conversions a bit. Again I can't be sure of the impact due to lack of data. Who knows, maybe visitors might feel that seeing the products ruins the surprise or something.ConclusionI wish I could report having discovered some kind of a breakthrough marketing trick to reverse the decline, but sadly no.For the time being Candy Japan is still popular enough to keep running, and since I have most things automated I see no reason to shut it down. If the trends of declining popularity of Japanese candy and increasing competition continue, 2018 will be another down year.I will start spending more time trying new projects again. Hopefully nothing involving physical products this time!Thanks for reading, and do subscribe if you'd like to try some candy for yourself. You can use the code ENTREPRENEUR to get 10% off.

[cessanderson]

We got a new deck http://ift.tt/2hGC9aF Sara @ Russet Street Reno So, the entire summer we've been stressing over and paying installments for a brand new deck!  I still have to seal the wood...but here it is!

Not sure if I've really shared many photos of the sad 14'x14' deck we had before, but here it is in all it's glory. 

And the best view, the wonky leaning stairs.  This photo is not altered in any way.  Whenever family or friends express surprise that we didn't just 'fix up the deck' I show them this photo. 

The stairs were absolutely falling apart, the stringer was totally cracked at the top, and of course they were sinking into the ground.  

Not to mention all the rotted wood, we were finding more and more spots after the previous owner's attempt to camouflage the worn deck started peeling off. 

Are you thinking about trying 'Deck Over' on your old deck?  I wouldn't recommend it!  It peels off after one winter.  Rather than trying to fix what we had, and spend who knows how much making the stairway safe/replacing it, we decided to just replace the entire deck and enjoy it as long as we live here.  This way, we could configure the stairs in a more logical spot near the door, and we could make the deck bigger since we use it all the time.  I had three contractors come bid, and two were very high (over 15K!) for a 21x14 deck, the third was around 9k and came recommended by neighbors, so we hired them.  I won't lie, the process was terribly stressful.  This hole in our siding was there for several days.

I quickly found out why this company was so cheap.  The communication was bad, and only about half of my requests made it from the owner to the guys doing the actual work.  If I hadn't been home while they were working, the deck would not have been as long as it should be (I wanted it to reach the end of the dining room window) the far end would've been angled instead of straight, the stairs would've been in the wrong spot, and the Trex lighting would not have been added.  Whew!  Luckily, I was there and everything was done properly. 

We don't like the look of composite decking, so we opted to go with pine decking and cedar railings.  I didn't want cedar on the floor because of how easy it is to scratch, and our deck guy wouldn't do pine railings because of the tendency of pine to twist.  He upgraded the railings to cedar for just a couple hundred extra.

 When it started coming together, it was very exciting!

Our deck guy wrapped the entire frame with cedar at no cost, which was great because the pine framing is not attractive.  You can see it half-wrapped above.  At his suggestion, we did a landing for the stairway.  If the kids fall, they will only go down 5 steps instead of 8!  We totally love it.

We opted for the modern black aluminum balusters, and we are so glad we paid a little extra for this.  It totally changes the look of the deck.

You can really see in this photo the difference in shade between the cedar railings and the pine decking.  I will admit, I hate the difference, but I think once I stain/seal it will match better.

The cedar is already starting to turn gray, so I'm going to be cleaning everything well this weekend and using Ready Seal on the entire thing.  This is the company our deck builder recommended, and they send you a sample jar of all of their colors plus handy little swatches on cedar and pine for $15 shipping.  Great deal!  I'm going to post about that as soon as it's done.  Until then, we are loving it all!

Ok, I'm not loving my ugly chair cushions, and we are actually missing some.  I desperately want new cushions and pillows, but we just can't spend any more money on this area this year.  I think I will treat myself to some great ones next spring while the selection is huge. 

I don't have a close photo of the hideous light that was up here, but you can see it in one of the before pictures up top.  I received a free cylinder light like we have in the front because they sent me an LED one rather than standard bulb.  They don't want the incorrect one back, so I put the LED fixture back here.  It's big, but it works great!

 Our stairs have low voltage lighting going down, and it is glorious at night. 

 It looks so pretty, and will look so much better once all our clutter is put away. 

 The landing makes the deck look so much fancier and pricier than it was!

We plan to build a patio at the bottom of the deck, and the slight alcove created by the stairs extending past the deck makes a perfect area for planting.  Right now, it's perfect for storing toys and our grill. 

On this side of the deck, we were eager to cover the view of the river rock.  Loose rock was not our first choice, but the guys doing the work didn't get the memo that we wanted crushed limestone so we could compact it.  Remember those communication issues?  Yeah, us too.  Anyway, I bought some nice native prairie perennials and we set to work digging out the grass and planting them. 

It was hard work, but we did it.  Zach loved taking all the 'sod' and putting it in the lawn and leaf bags.  He wouldn't wait for us to get most of the dirt off, so I hope the workers take these heavy bags! 

The planting area will wrap around the front side of the deck, we will worry about that next year. 

Almost everything I planted here is tall, the false sunflower on the corner can get 6 feet tall and 3 feet around!  The purple flame grass get 4-5' tall, the Baby Joe Pye Weed is about 4' tall, the Shasta daisies are 3-4' tall, and the black eyed susan will stay about the height it is now. 

It is our ultimate plan to have the garbage and recycling cans live in the garage, but for now they just don't fit.  We won't plant anything in front of the cans until they get into their new spot. 

So far, the kids are pretty excited about the deck.  There are still some rough spots and splintered wood around the screws that I have to take care of, but I'm mostly ok with them running around barefoot.  Ok, only Zach comes out here because Ashford hates being outside.  WHY??  It's so sad!

And here is what it looks like at dusk with the lights on.  Moody!

We eventually want to add some string lights, but for now, the deck post lights are awesome.  And here are some fun before and afters for you.

    Thanks for reading! 

[nicxludi]

A month in the Philippines

MAY 2017

Ludi and I were lucky enough to spend May touring the Philippines. It’s such an amazing and welcoming place, it didn’t take us long to adjust to the Filipino lifestyle and we could have easily stayed for another month - or 3.

To be honest, doing a bit of research on our itinerary and reading the international news beforehand wasn’t so reassuring.

Philippines’ reputation as a travel paradise has taken a big hit over the last few years due to a series of high-profile kidnappings and infiltrated terrorism in the South Islands. If you visit your embassy’s website for advice on travelling to the Philippines, you’ll most likely find a map similar to this one.

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And then you start googling a bit and find yourself reading articles of foreigners being kidnapped and ISIS sieging Mindanao. Don’t let this stop you from visiting the Philippines. While the threat is there, it is mostly only localised to the South Islands (which we didn’t visit – didn’t have time anyway, Philippines is huuuge) and everything is done to ensure the safety of travellers, from Army ships surrounding popular islands to heavily-armed security in buildings like banks and even supermarkets. Once you start talking to locals you realise what’s been portrayed in the international press is slightly over the top – they’ll tell you to keep your wits about of course, but to relax and enjoy yourself first of all.

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Coron Island, first stop to paradise

Ludi was travelling from Nepal and I met her in Manila as I flew over from London. We didn’t stay in Manila for too long and caught a plane the next day for Coron Island. We stayed in this overwater hostel called Divers Paradise, perfect little place to explore the city. The highlight of our time in Coron was definitely getting on a fisherman boat and just island hop for a day. I got the drone out for the first time there and was blown away. It was amazing already but seeing it from above was surreal. Watching the sunset from the top of the hill was pretty scenic too. We also got to eat chicken heads (and brains) on a skewer from a roadside stand and, still to this day, I deeply regret it.

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El Nido, the place to be

From Coron we then took the Ferry to El Nido on Palawan Island. El Nido is this awesome village full or restaurants, bars and other quirky little places, right on the beach. Atmosphere was very different to Coron, loads more to do, especially at night. Out highlight was I think spending two afternoons at Las Cabanas Beach, just a scooter ride away: from there we took a kayak out and paddled away to our own little secluded island. The sunset on Las Cabanas beach is unreal; you can watch it from this beach bar called Beach Shack, lounging on bean bags, sipping on some pineapple shake. Ferking amazing - pics don’t do it justice at all. We got to dance the night away at Shaka Bar; one of the cool things about going out in Philippines is that most of the time Filipinos will be going out to the same places. It’s cool to see that and it’s definitely different to other places in SEA like Thailand or Vietnam where most bars and clubs would be full of tourists and backpackers. Oh and we stayed in this little hotel tucked away from the main street, owned by a French guy from Lorraine, the region I come from. The place was so chilled, just like its owner. Highly recommend it – say Nic sent you. Probably won’t remember me.

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Port Barton, reggae and pineapple shakes all day errrday

From El Nido we took a bumpy bus ride down Palawan to Port Barton. Port Barton is this tiny fishing village made of literally two roads, a very different atmosphere again to Coron or El Nido. If you think you know what chilling out is about, well think again. Port Barton is slow life 101. We stayed at this place called Blue Moon right on the beach, and not sure how, managed to get upgraded to the Honeymoon suite, a huge hut with its own little porch right on the beach front. The Blue Moon is the perfect place to spend a few days and read / meditate / figure out what the hell you want to do in life. We met some really cool people in Port Barton and got to swim with turtles in their natural habitat which was pretty fly. This fisherman called Baba took 8 of us on his boat for a day, showed us the best snorkelling spots and islands, fished for us and cooked us lunch while we were swimming with turtles, and all that for like 8 quid. I mean – it doesn’t get better than that.

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Moalboal like locals

We left Port Barton for Puerto Princesa (which we didn’t visit) to catch a plane to Cebu. A taxi ride away from Cebu City we found Moalboal. Moalboal is this little backpacker village, not amazing in itself (a few good restaurants, a couple of backpacker bars) but a great base if you want to discover the region around it. From Moalboal you can get to the famous Kawasan Falls, these turquoise-blue waterfalls which you may have seen before on some popular travel youtube video or Instagram account. Pretty cool spot that definitely lives up to its reputation. We got to hang out with a bunch of locals and do some cliff jumping; the drone also crashed in the water but somehow survived (actually flew back out like freakin Moses). We got drunk on the beach with a bunch of Fiipinos who invited us to the local annual fiesta that happened to be on that weekend. Great way to experience a real Filipino village party, hosted in and around the city stadium. They called their nights out “jazz nights” there, which don’t get fooled, doesn’t include jazz at all. Some of the hostel peeps would rather go back and get drunk at the hostel, but we decided to stay and had the best time. Don’t get smashed at your hostel kids, just get smashed with locals – way more fun. Also have to point out that at this point, most of the drinks we’d had on the Filipino territory had been offered to us by locals. Week 3 and we probably had paid for 2 beers and a G&T all together. Such generosity I tell you.

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Living the dream on the Bohol hills

Next stop after Moalboal was Bohol, which might have been my personal highlight of the trip. Bohol is this island west of Cebu, home of the “OHMERGERD A SCHTICK” meme, the tarsier. This little dude.

Now, it’s also where you’ll find the famous Chocolate Hills, and loads of other unnamed hills as well. If you get out of the main city and climb up you’ll find this gem of a hotel called Sunrise Sunset Marquise. We got to stay in one of the suites there, it was magazine-worthy. High up on the hills, air is fresher and it was a nice little break from the scorching heat we’d had so far. The food was overwhelmingly good and view was sensational. It cost us £25 each a night, this hotel in European standards would probably be around the £300 a night mark. Absolute bargain I’m telling you.

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2 weirdos in Bataad

From Bohol it was back to Manila for the penultimate part of our trip: Luzon Island and its rice terraces. The best place to see the rice terraces in Philippines is this tiny village called Bataad. Bataad is only accessible by foot from Banaue, and Banaue is only accessible from a night-long bus ride from Manila. In other words, it’s a fucking mission. But damn, was it worth it. Bataad is truly unspoiled, unlike its big sister Banaue, and we got to stay in this tiny little place on top of a hill, looking down on the rice fields. Never saw anything like this before. Waking up to this every morning was pure bliss, and being cut off from civilisation with no wifi, data, signal or even at times electricity was surprisingly refreshing. We loved it so much we stayed there 3 nights (most people just spend one night or hike through it on a roundtrip hike from Banaue). Couple of weirdos staying for 3 nights. The landlady was washing our clothes by the end of it and pretty sure if we’d stayed one more night we would have been considered part of the family. Anyway, a pic is worth a thousand world so check this out.

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Give Manila a chance

And there we were, back to Manila for the last 5 days. We stayed in this boutique hotel called Amelie, great place to explore the city. Again, most people thought we were weirdos staying in Manila for more than a day. We decided to give it its chance and well, it delivered. Loads to do and see in Manila, and it’s a nice way to ease back into the City life after all those laid-back, super-chilled places we’d visited. Manila is a capital city and you’ll find great restaurants, loads of history and cultural spots (something we didn’t necessarily find elsewhere) and great places to visits like the Spanish neighbourhood or the expat quarter. Definitely recommend this French / Japanese fusion joint called Le Petit Soufflé. I know, it’s not Filipino food, but fuck it, do you go to the UK to eat English food all the time? Thought so. I flew back to London but Ludi actually stayed for 5 more days in Manila before flying to Bangkok, and she thought it was pretty safe – so if you’re a lone traveller, especially a female, well you can still enjoy the city without fear (daytime that is). Something we didn’t expect from the feedback we got before the trip.

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So that’s our Filipino trip. It was truly amazing beyond words and I hope it got you itching to visit. There’s a lot said about this country all over the international news at the moment, with the new president and unfortunately the terrorist threat in the South Islands. While this is true, spending a month there we didn’t feel threatened in any way, and the beauty of those islands and the generosity of the Filipino people truly made this trip an unforgettable experience.

[krissysbookshelf]

Broke Book Buying... Another Discussion....

      It blows my mind how often I find myself having a conversation with people who tell me that they would love to be able to read they just can't afford it. This is one of the most ridiculous statements I have ever heard.

  Because I am still stuck mentally on the whole topic from when I discussed it with this person earlier I'm going to give a few tips on how anyone can afford to read.

Some of you will roll your eyes and skip this post because yes, I've talked about it before and that's okay but if you feel like reading about it you're welcome to continue. Either way I'm going to talk about it and someone is going to hear it. :)

  There are plenty of ways to afford reading books. Yes, even brand new books.

It doesn't matter if you're a penny pincher or if you're living check to check, or only have enough spare change to fill a soda can. Heck it doesn't matter if you don't have any money to put into it at all. There are multiple ways and places to buy books, get books, and cheats to buying books.

  Now I understand that there are many people out there that are very specific about what they are willing and not willing to read that's okay.

However if you're a fan of reading brand new, untouched books that have just come out and they're selling for $30 bucks at your local Barnes and Noble or Half Price Books stores chances are you're probably going to miss out.

But there are some upsides to shopping at both.

Barnes and Noble keeps a limited inventory of clearance items in their stores set up on small tables that you can buy books for a discounted price. Barnes and Noble also has coupons that you can bring with you to get a better deal on those prices as well. Once in awhile they limit the coupons to non sale items but usually its okay to combine.

  Half Price Books is a great place to get a deal on books. As its name states half price usually only charges have the list price of their inventory, they provide coupons for calendar buyers and email followers, they have sale days and a clearance section that will blow your mind and a blended inventory of both new and used items.

Don't want to pay that's okay.

You still have an opportunity to find and read the same books but for free.  

You may have to lower your standard bar just a teeny bit but you might be surprised to know that you can acquire the same books that you want to read from your local library.

Yes, I said library.

  To those of you who bash people who go to libraries - get your head checked. You're missing out one a very fundamental experience of being a book reader.

I understand that some libraries have limited stock on their shelves and they may not have the book you are looking for when you go in. If they don't there is a way to get what you want.

You can request the book through the front desk attendant, or B. You can go online and pre-order the title from another library and it transfers for free to your local location where you can pick it up - and read it for free. Please note if you do not have the internet nearly all libraries have computers that allow you to access their database and request the title you want if you're too shy to ask yourself.

All that's required of you is patience for its arrival and picking it up.

  Also, keep in mind that many libraries also sell certain books too. You can actually buy them for cheap. Most libraries have "friend sales" that sell books between 25 cents to a dollar. If you keep your eye out you can double your savings on the days that the library have excess purge sales. They will pull out the back stock and cut the price in half, offer twofers (two for one deals) and more.  This is a great way to walk out the door with bags and even box fulls of books on the cheap.

  Another good place to buy books really cheap are at charity and thrift shops. If you don't know where one is its easy enough to do a search to find what's local to you on google or other map apps. A lot of charity stores and thrift shops sell books, movies and music anywhere from 10 cents to a dollar and all the proceeds go back to the community.  This is a great way to give back and get cheap books.

  Church sales and yard sales - fantastic and cheap and you can almost always find some rare diamonds that most stores don't carry on their shelves anymore for those rare and out of print book fans, or people just looking to save money.

Charity Thrift shops I suggest getting an early start on because that's when all the good stuff is put out. I love charity shops because I know that money I spend is going to a good cause.

Keep in mind for the yard sales I highly suggest getting out on a very early Saturday or Sunday morning and taking a drive. See what's going on in your neighborhood.

Community posts and websites often let you know when a church is going to do a sale but its also fun to get out and early bird it in places that are right in your own area.

Most the people you buy the books from at yard sales and charity stores are very grateful and in need of the money. They appreciate you buying up all they got. :) Plus, hey, it can't hurt to add a coin to the good vibes karma bag right?

  Some people suggest places like Craigslist but I personally often shy away from that or from recommending it simply because it could be a security or safety issue I usually stick with what I know you can trust. So if you go with that please be careful with giving out personal information to strangers or meeting strangers to buy what they're selling. I want you to be safe.  

  Another good way to reading for free is borrowing. Borrow from your family, borrow from your friends. See what your mom or cousin or sister and brother may be reading. You might find a new reading buddy or someone who can break down and do a book talk with you. Just keep in mind if you borrow something to give it back. No one likes a permanent borrower. That's just stealing.

  I'm a big believer in RE-READING. Yes. Reading what you already own. Find a title that you may have shelved and left sitting for awhile. Its always nice to visit old friends and it doesn't cost you anything.

  You can also join an online book trade program. A lot of people take part in these. You list what you have someone wants to borrow it has something you want and you trade. Its a good cheap way to find like minded readers like yourself and read what you want.

  A good way to buy cheap used books online are through places like Amazon, Book Outlet and Thriftbooks. Be aware of condition terms to make sure that the books you get are in decent shape before ordering but its cheap and the shipping isn't too harsh. Although, recently Amazon has increased shipping price to pay for their new mortar store and air port delivery expansion costs on their company. (Don't trust me? Read the fine print notification they sent out. I believe its around page 2,000 in the fine print terms.)  

  For me personally I'm a big fan of discount stores. I'm a big fan of hitting up multiple locations when it comes to discount stores because each one is going to have different inventory.  Plus, you never know what you're going to find.

Some examples of discount stores (local to me- you'll have to find your own you don't have these near you.) The Dollar Store: yes, the dollar store has books. I admit a very small amount of books and a very limited selection but you can get lucky once in awhile. Indoor/Outdoor Swapmeets and Antique Shops: These places are usually bursting with books. Similar to yard sale experience but its totally worth it if you love the hunt. Side note: Antique Shops tend to list the item prices a little on the higher side because both the seller and the store make a profit from the sale.

  Savers, Goodwill, even Ross all have books.  (Lately most Ross locations have been reducing inventory on books since they don't really sell well in their stores so this availability may change)

Goodwill, Salvation Army, and Savers are fantastic places to get books if you want to save some money and don't mind buying used books.  The pricing varies but you can buy a book from Goodwill, Salvation Army and Savers for anywhere from 89 cents to $4.  

  There are even some cheat tips to getting a better discount on buying books at Goodwill, Salvation Army and Savers. Some might call it cheating the system a little bit but when you want to save money and they let you get away with it, why not take advantage? Heh.

Okay if you've been into a Goodwill or Savers or Salvation Army you've probably noticed that most of their items have personalized price tags on them.

Pay attention to this because it will pay off if you want to get a better deal.  Places like Goodwill, Savers and the Salvation Army have specials that they run every day of the week that coincide with one of the colors coded on their price tags.  Every day they have mark down sales on certain items. One day of the week will go to items like clothes, another day will go to furniture items, the day after that will go to toys or books etc.  

Usually Salvation Army doesn't do as high a discount and their prices are a little higher so keep that in mind when shopping with them.

However for both Goodwill and Savers they're a little more affordable when it comes to pricing and they give a better discount on the sale pricing.

Most of the time Salvation Army offers a 20% discount while Goodwill and Savers offer a 50% discount.

So on the sale days these stores will announce that they are offering the discount which is typically half off on a "such colored" price tag. To give you an example they'll say today is 50% off items with a purple tag or sticker, or 50% off items with a brown sticker or blue etc etc.

So if you happen to come across an item with that color whatever the price is will get you half off that price listing.

Pretty sweet.

But - hold out because it gets better. Both Goodwill and Savers have their own form of coupon discounts. If you register to get emails from Goodwill they have available on their website a coupon that you can either print out or show to the cashier on your phone when you pay that will get you an additional 20% off and its good all month.

Savers is a little more complicated however its totally worth it.

When you go into the store tell them that you signed up on their website and members will be provided with a discount card that get you special discounts that shoppers who just walk in and shop  don't get.

Signing up with Savers is free and it provides members who have a card access to additional rewards, points, discounts and sales that no one else gets.

To sweeten the pot both Savers and Goodwill have HALF OFF days. 50% off everything. Usually it only falls on a certain day but if you go in and get a haul, get half off and add your bonus discount and or your coupon along with the mark down you walk out the door with a huge load and you get to pay next to nothing for it.

Pretty cool huh?

  Another good way to get books cheap is shopping at your local book shops. Privately owned bookstores are a great way of getting books for cheap and its always fun. A lot of the owners are wonderful and its nice to have a place that you go to regularly that you are familiar with and who are familiar with you.  Its like having a second home.

  Book Fairs: These are a little trickier as books fairs are usually a yearly event. State Book Fairs are a hoarders dream. An example of a state book sale because I live in Arizona is the VNSA book sale. Its once a year in February takes place at the state coliseum - its an all day event. Be prepared to wait in line because everyone from everywhere goes there - get your hands on the nearest available cart - actually, better yet... Bring your own because the flatbeds available are almost always gone. You will die loading up on the amount of books, music and movies they have available for next to nothing and all the proceeds go to local community charities.

  There are also other bookfairs much like scholastic which usually take place at certain schools. You can check their website for where the book fair tour is currently or going to be located.

It is open to the public however they do prefer that student relations attend the sale - this also gets you a better discount so if you have a child attending the school its even better. But if you don't its okay. Keep in mind prices are a bit steep but its always fun.

  Do you like shopping at Walmart? They have a section for books and even better different areas they sell discounted and clearanced items. A lot of times Walmart will pull items off the shelf that aren't new that month and mark it down for clearance to get rid of it. This is a great way to buy books on sale. Check their clearance isle and their mark down bins. The discount is worth the digging to find that gem.

  A great way to get books for free is to join websites like Goodreads granted, its not guaranteed that you are going to win, there are only a limited amount of books being given away and the drawing is random however they still hold giveaways on the site that you can take part of.

  Speaking of giveaways you can also follow your favorite author or publisher or blogger website, social page, email newsletter, and or blog. Almost all of them do certain giveaways for their readers and followers.

Please do not manipulate this generous and delicate system. Also, if you win a book from them please post a review and give credit to the provider. Its the reason they hold the giveaways to begin with. Plus, it pays to pay it forward as well as showing gratitude for a labor that takes a lot out of the author.

  Do you shop at stores like Target? Want to get a better deal? Pay attention to their price stickers.

Target's "unofficial" markdown schedule:

All Target inventory goes through a markdown phase that is in set increments: 15%, 30%, 50%, 70% and so on, up to 90%. Here’s the unofficial markdown schedule so you’ll know exactly when to look for the best deals:

   Monday: Baby items, children's clothing, electronics, and office supplies/gift wrap/stationery

    Tuesday: Home décor, women's clothing, and domestic items

    Wednesday: Food, health and beauty items, men's clothing, toys, and garden items

    Thursday: Lingerie, housewares, sporting goods, shoes, and luggage

    Friday: Cosmetics, jewelry, hardware, automotive, and home improvement

The "every two weeks" markdown schedule: Target typically further reduces unsold clearance merchandise every two weeks once the markdowns have begun, but this can vary based on region, amount of unsold inventory and manager discretion. If you are watching an item and see that it has been marked down 30% or 50%, come back in another two weeks to see if it has been marked down further.

How to read target clearance tags:

    15%: When an item goes on clearance at Target, the first markdown is usually 15%. You can tell exactly how much the item has been marked down by looking at the upper right-hand corner of the red clearance tag. If you see the number 15, it is marked down 15%. The original price of the product will always be listed on the left-hand side next to the word "was," and the new price of the item on clearance will be located on the right, next to the word "now." The last digit of the item will usually end in the numbers 6 or 8 (for example: $7.48).

    30%, 50%, 70% and 90%: If you look closely at the red clearance tag, you might notice the higher clearance numbers 30, 50, 70 or even an amazing 90! These numbers correspond to the percentage off that product is now being sold for.

    Price tags ending in $0.06 or $0.08: If the price of the item on clearance ends in $0.06 or $0.08, the item will be marked down again during the next markdown cycle as long as there is inventory in the store. The item typically will remain at the current percentage off for two weeks before progressing to the next level.

    Price tags ending in $0.04: If the last number in the price of the item ends in $0.04, the item has been marked for final clearance, and this is the lowest price at which Target will sell the item.

    Random price tag endings: Often, Target price tags end with $0.00, $0.01, $0.05, $0.07, etc. I spoke with some store managers and was told these endings are arbitrary and simply indicate an item is on clearance with no specific meaning, and the item will continue on its clearance cycle.

    Sectioned clearances: Seasonal merchandise such as holiday, back-to-school, and summer items are examples of these clearance products. Many of these are holiday-branded and will be reduced at a much faster rate than the typical two-week increment because Target needs the space for new inventory. Often the products begin at 50% off, then are reduced to 70% off, and continue on up to 90% off within two weeks. Also, items may not be individually marked; the entire section will be at one discount rate.

    Gift card bonus price endings: Though unrelated to clearance items, anything that ends with $0.49, $0.79 or $0.99 indicate a Target Gift Card promotion is in effect. The Gift Card offer details will be listed at the very top in red, and the amount of the gift card will be listed on the card or offer.

A great way to get a free book when shopping at Target for your everyday items during the gift card promotions is to use the card you receive for making the purchase to buy your book.

  You can even get free e-books from sites like Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo. There are always special price days listing different books for free for a 24 hour period. Granted its not always going to be exactly what you are looking for but you have a chance of finding some really great books to read plus possibly some new authors you hadn't yet discovered.

  If you complain that you don't have an e-reader like a Kindle or a Nook or Ipad, that's okay because there are plenty of free apps you can download onto your computer or your cellphone that allow you to read your digital books that way. If you have a book in a format you don't have a reader for you can always try Calibre its a great program and reads nearly every format available and its free.

  So as you can see there are plenty of ways of being able to afford buying or getting books, so no excuses. Collect your spare change that you keep laying around the house and make a book fund. Save your pennies you leave laying around the house then head out and see just how far those pennies will go. You might be surprised.

  Do you have any tips, tricks or secret ways that you save on books? Tell us about them in the comments below!

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Around 6 months ago, I wrote a post on this subreddit that resonated with a lot of people here. I’m typically not a huge content creator, but that last post created a bit of value for people just starting out on their journey as entrepreneurs. Since then, I have had the most significant and impactful few months in my life as an entrepreneur as a direct result of my experience successfully raising over $360,000 on Indiegogo (around 1000% of our funding goal)But first, here is a bit about my history as an entrepreneur. (Sorry for being redundant, as I am copying and pasting this mini-bio from my last post) I have been the founder of 3 companies, and a partner (but not a founder) of one.An 8-figure business2 x 7-figure businesses1 x 6-figure businessFirst Company: BizMedia Digital Video Agency did 60k in revenue in the first year, 600k in the second year, and by the third year was a 7-figure business from there on out.Second Company: dbrand Vinyl skins for smartphones, laptops, gaming consoles etc. Grew this business to almost an 8-figure business within 3 years before being bought out by the founder (and one of my best friends).Third Company: Hitsu Socks Online and retail manufacturers of funky socks designed by street artists. An epic journey that had me cycle through 4 different partners until I found my current partner who is an entrepreneur far beyond me who has taken this from a struggling, money losing (but fulfilling) side project into a real business with real legs which is finally a business doing 6-figures. But it was a real grind to find the path with this one. Happy to say it's on the path to real growth.And my fourth (and now full-time focus) business: Unbound Merino This is the subject of this post and we on track to reach 7 figure in our first year in business (if including the crowdfunding revenue)I wanted to write this post to share everything I learned in the process of launching a successful crowdfunding campaign.I wrote this post to gather my thoughts like I did in my last post. It is a list of my reflections on every aspect of our campaign from the initial idea, to execution and right through to fulfillment. Before launching, my partners and I read everything we could find online about crowdfunding. If you are thinking about launching your own campaign - I advise you to do the same. What I have written below is mainly the stuff I couldn’t find online and learned from experience. There is a lot more to creating and running the campaign that isn’t included, but this is a compilation of the lessons I learned that the internet didn’t prepare me for. Hopefully my experience adds some additional perspective to the many great articles / blog posts / guide books that are floating around on the web already. I tend to ramble and am sure I’ll miss some details – so please let me know if you have any questions. Happy to answer them!How We Found Our Manufacturer:Finding a manufacturer is no easy task and was by far the most nerve-racking and worrying part of our whole launch. We needed to prove that we had potential to be a great buyer (even though we weren’t sure if we would even put in a single order), but also hold them to a high standard. We chose to manufacture in China because in my previous experience manufacturing in Canada, the US and China with my sock brand - China consistently housed the best manufacturers we worked with, hands down. The stigma of Made in China meaning it’s made cheaply or poorly or that the factories are sweatshops full of underpaid children is complete and utter nonsense. Manufacturing in China CAN be cheap and shoddy (if low cost manufacturing is what your goal is) - but they also have the most advanced production facilities on the planet. To us, finding the right partner in China was a no brainer.Of course - we turned to Alibaba to find our manufacturer. If you have a strong network in the world of manufacturing, you may not need Alibaba. But we needed it. We had no connections to any manufacturers who work with merino wool or who make shirts / underwear. Socks we had covered from our other business. And so the digging began. Our goal was to find a manufacturer who didn’t require minimum order quantities that were unrealistic to us. Between 1000-3000 units per style was on the low end, and that’s the ballpark we were playing in. We really assumed we would need to be closer to 500, but we figured we could always ask whoever our manufacturer would be to start with only 500 units if we were already ready to order. We would just tell them that later.Here is how we started.We searched through as many different manufacturers as we could. Searching for ‘merino wool shirts’ to start. We would click open a new tab for every manufacturer who looked even remotely fitting. Browser window after browser window was opened until we had way too many tabs in each browser to count. We must have opened a few hundred tabs of potential good fits. And then, one by one we looked through their page to see if we liked their photos, pricing, believed they were established enough and let our gut feeling guide us a bit. After closing the tabs of those who were clearly not a fit, we reduced our list to around 80-90 manufacturer pages. Now it was time to start reaching out. We created the following questionnaire which we sent out to every single manufacturer that still had an open tab in our browser. Obviously this questionnaire is unique to our production needs. We just tried to write it so it appeared we were thorough and were willing to fly to China to meet in person.Quantity Need: 3000 - 5000 Piece/Pieces (this was bullshit, but we had to look like a worthy buyer)My name is Dan Demsky.I am an entrepreneur from Toronto, Canada. I am the founder / partner in 3 businesses (1 recently sold): Hitsu Socks (www.hitsusocks.com) bizmedia (www.bizmedia.com) dbrand (www.dbrand.com) --ExitedI am looking to start a new business retailing Merino wool underwear and came across your page.I have a few questions.1) Do you have different styles / fits / colours for your shirts that aren’t shown on the Alibaba page?2) Are they 100% Merino Wool?3) Do you have any Merino Wool blends with other materials?4) How much are they at your lowest minimum order quantity?5) What's the cheapest price you can offer and what quantity would need to be reached to get that price?6) How long does it take from the moment an order is placed to fully complete production and to have it on a shipping container on it’s way to Canada?7) Can I visit your factory if we decide to do business with your company? Where exactly is it located?8) What are the options for branding our shirts? Heat transferred logo? Stitched label? Please provide pictures of all the readily available options.9) Where is the wool sourced from? Can you let me know all the details about your wool supplier and the certifications of the wool quality?10) Can we order samples? If so, what would the cost be for 10-20 sample pairs?I believe that's everything for now.Please provide us with a quotation and let me know if you’re available next month for us to visit and inspect the factory should we decide to do business together. We are flexible on dates but do require a factory if possible.I look forward to hearing back from you. Thank you!Almost immediately the responses started to come back. Some within a couple hours. We waited a few days and started to read through them. And we put aside those that responded with the best English (after all, we need to be able to communicate effectively), those who seemed the most honest, the most eager and of course - those who were very welcoming to have us visit. It’s very important for me to meet people i do business with, and to see the environments in which our products are made. The eagerness to host us in China meant something to us. Even though we weren’t really sure if we ever really would meet these people, we needed to know that the door was open to their offices and factories.Out of 80ish questionnaires sent, we liked around 10 of the suppliers that responded (a bunch were the same manufacturer with multiple profiles). So the conversation with those 10 continued. We got on skype calls, explained what we were looking to make (telling them we were self funded and this was a new business). And started to ask questions about costs to produce samples. A few refused to make samples without a deposit. And around 5 of them we continued to be impressed by, were willing to make samples to our exact specs. Once we confirmed that they would make our prototypes we asked them to send samples of their clothing (not made to our spec) but made with the exact wool that they would be able to provide us. Of course a lot of these styles were pretty ugly and weird fitting - but we needed to test the quality of the material itself. All 5 provided samples and we started to try them out and see if the material could be pushed to the limits. We set up an exhaustive testing period where we ended up nixing a couple of manufacturers due to unsatisfactory fabric performance and ended up choosing 2 manufacturers who just hit the bullseye on all marks.We began to work with both of the manufacturers we loved to develop prototypes, which included a self funded visit to China to go over the design and to meet in person. Meeting in person makes the world of difference. I believe you should know your manufacturers to observe their facility, to assure that they run an ethical operation, and to know where to find them if they screw you! That may sound cryptic, but it helps me sleep at night! If we were to be successful in crowdfunding, we would have many many people counting on us to deliver a high quality product. Having an in person relationship changes the level of accountability in my mind.I’m not going to elaborate more on the design and prototyping process because it’s only relevant to clothing and will change drastically if doing a product made of metal or plastic or something. But for clarity's sake the whole process I just described above seems pretty straight forward, and it is. But from the time we first sent out messages on Alibaba to the day we launched our campaign was over a year. Prototyping (and sending samples overseas back and forth) and relationship building is not a quick process. It takes time, patience and commitment. We are proud to say that we have been back to visit our manufacturers 3 times and have a truly great, trusting and meaningful relationship with them. You can’t create a bond this strong in a month. We’ve earned each other's trust and respect and understand each other's goals. Put the time in. It’s important and it’s rewarding. It also doesn’t hurt that we’ve now purchased hundred’s of thousands of dollars of inventory from our suppliers in less than a year. That helps cement a relationship that started on nothing but our good word and bit of trust / hope.Fast forward past our prototyping stage to having our own product in our possession (only a few pieces of each SKU) - we were ready to move ahead and try to bring the product to market. We knew we had an amazing product on our hands, but that’s only half the battle. We had to convince a bunch of strangers that we had something special.Kickstarter vs Indiegogo:This is a question we get asked very often. Why did we pick Indiegogo over Kickstarter if Kickstarter is bigger and more well known? Truth be told - the only reason we did choose Indiegogo is because we had our good friend help mentor and guide us in our early stages of the campaign and he just outright said “you’re doing this on Indiegogo. I know people there and it’s going to be better if you have people on your side”. OK… Whatever. I couldn’t find a compelling reason to reject that so we went with Indiegogo. That’s the only reason we chose them over Kickstarter. But that ended up really working in our favor.Working with Indiegogo was an absolute pleasure. Perhaps because they are smaller than Kickstarter. It’s often the case that those in 2nd place have to work harder, and Indiegogo definitely works hard for their campaigners. They took my phone calls, they provide insights, they visited us in Toronto (they were in town but made a pitstop to say hello and shake hands) and most importantly they cut a deal with us that if we got a certain amount of backing, they committed to feature us in their marketing email. This may not seem like much, but at the end of the campaign, their promotion was easily worth over $100,000 to us. Their email list is big and it’s full of people who are into crowdfunding campaigns. To this date they’ve featured us 4 times and it’s made a dramatic impact. I sometimes wonder if we decided to go on Kickstarter, would we even be a blip on their radar? Maybe… Maybe it would have been twice as big of an outcome. But I don’t even care at all. Indiegogo gave us the attention and support we needed and a marketing boost we couldn’t have ever known was coming our way. I’m very grateful to them for all they’ve done for us and no - they have no idea I’m writing this. I’m not paid to write this. But I genuinely think that there is a serious advantage to working with Indiegogo if you want to be supported by a company that cares.Forget Stretch GoalsJust a quick word on stretch goals. For those who don’t know what stretch goals are, they are perks that effectively get ‘unlocked’ when certain campaign goals are hit. For example, you may have 5 perks available in your campaign, but if you hit $100,000 you unlock the 6th perk. Some campaigns have many stretch goals that get unlocked as the campaign reaches many milestones. We had many people tell us we should create stretch goals like little tchotchkes that travellers may like. Like a travel clothing hanger or a laundry bag (someone actually suggested this to us which is likely the worst idea for a campaign centered around not having to do laundry). People also suggested simply adding new colour t-shirts as stretch goals beyond our 2 colours available in the campaign.This is just my opinion, so take it with a grain of salt. But I have no clue why anyone would ever have a stretch goal. If a backer backed your campaign because they want the product available to them at the time they backed - why do they need a stretch goal? And if you think people will share your campaign and force their friends to buy so that the campaign can ‘unlock’ a stretch goal - you’re kidding yourself.Again, assuming you’re selling a physical product -adding more SKU’s as a stretch goal just adds costs, chops up your bottom line, adds complexity to your initial inventory order and pretty much makes no business sense whatsoever. I am yet to hear a good reason why anyone would have a stretch goal. The reason I’m mentioning this is 1) to hopefully stop someone from thinking they should have a stretch goal, because they don’t need them. And 2) because I’m curious if anyone out there can give me a good reason why stretch goals are even a thing. Makes no sense to me.Having a fake campaign goalIn our campaign we said we needed to raise $30,000 to launch the business and get to manufacturing. The reality is, if we raised less than $75,000 it would be near impossible for us to launch. And if all we made was $75,000 we would likely just squeeze by and not be set up well to transition into a real business after the campaign.But we made our campaign goal much smaller for a reason. And that is because Indiegogo gives preferential treatment to those campaigns who can raise 30% of their campaign goal within the first few days of their campaign. We wanted that treatment, and the easiest way to do that was to make 30% of our goal a lot smaller, and therefore easier to achieve. If you are using Indiegogo, talk to people from Indiegogo about what it takes to become a trending campaign and what it takes to get featured in their newsletter. I’m not the only person they cut a deal with saying 30% raised will get you a newsletter feature. I believe it’s a deal (or reward) commonly given to campaigns who have quick growth. In our case, we knew $10,000 as FAST AS POSSIBLE was the goal. After that, we would have a bit more support from the platform, and we focused all our energy on that step. Another reason we wanted to lower our funding goal from our true goal of $75k was for the optics of being close to or fully funded. When we got to $30k, we were now a ‘funded’ campaign. This made us look successful and success breeds success. All of a sudden we became newsworthy to various travel and business blogs, even though we were actually still short of what we needed to even be able to place an order with our manufacturers. We were featured on TV, in magazines, blogs, etc. All of this just helped us blow past our real (but secret) goal and then some. We ended the campaign having raised almost 1000% of our funding goal. In reality it was around 400%... But still an amazing achievement. We do strongly believe pretending to be successful earlier on helped us really end successfully.The First $10,000 should be the easiestAs I mentioned above, we were doing whatever we could to appear like our campaign was killing it right from the get go. And to lock in our newsletter feature with Indiegogo we needed to get $10k in the coffers as fast as possible.We had no idea if people browsing Indiegogo would care enough to back our campaign, so we made sure that we could raise $10k without relying on Indiegogo’s regular web traffic. We had to get our own traffic to the campaign, and it had to be people who we could count on to support us. And who better to lean on than friends and family? The answer is nobody!Now, getting your mom, siblings and best friends to back your campaign is easy, but that alone won’t get you $10,000. You need to be able to get friends and acquaintances to back you as well if you want to really get momentum. The challenge is that there is so much noise on social media, that posting about your campaign, or even individually messaging friends may just be drowned out by everything else going on on their newsfeeds and in their inboxes. What we did is we created around 200-300 videos where we individually asked our friends (each friend gets a video) to go check out our campaign and asked them to support us. The thinking here was that a Facebook or Twitter post can easily be ignored or missed. And that a mass message that is copied and pasted and sent to a bunch of friends can also easily be read and ignored. But there is something different about receiving a video that is custom made for you named YourName.mp4. And I don’t mean a complicated, edited video. I mean you turn your webcam on, hit record, one take, done. Export, upload to YouTube as an unlisted video and send to the person you made the video for. Here is an example of a video we made. Again, this is one of a few hundred that was made in the days leading up to and the first few days of the campaign:Click to watch video pitch I sent to a buddyIf you made it through the whole video, I’m sure you were bored. Looking back I was a little dull, but it was hard to do a lot of those. My partners and I ended up staying up all night drinking beer pumping these out which made it more fun, but those videos became a bit belligerent and will remain private haha. The key takeaway here, is people watched these. They’re hard to avoid. And people enjoyed seeing a video made for them. Especially ones with inside jokes, and some silliness. Our batting average was HUGE with this initiative. Most people who watched the video were happy to help us by backing the campaign.One last detail about the friends and family blitz we did in the first couple days. Don’t have a ‘thank you’ perk for $5 that gives people an opportunity to help support without them actually receiving product. It’s a really nice thing for people to do, but if you give people the opportunity to kick your campaign $5, many may do that instead of buying one of your actual perks. That won’t help you. Don’t offer that. Sell your actual product. Our cheapest perk was $50. If people didn’t want the product or didn’t want to spend $50 or more - no problem at all. A few people didn’t respond. A few people said they just don’t have the money to be spending on wool shirts… We had no expectations of anyone. But we decided we would rather ask, and have some people not contribute at all to the campaign, than have an easy $5 thank you option that potentially would take away from lots of $50, $100, $200 backers. We are very proud of the product and were happy to sell it to anyone (family included). The benefit to them is that we had all sorts of super early bird prices in our first days, and most of them actually just want to help out. And we made sure to express gratitude to each and every single one of our friends / family members individually for their generous support. We wouldn’t have gotten off the ground without them.For the record, we raised over $20,000 in the first 48 hours. This was 95% friends, family and acquaintances. After the first few days the orders started trickling in from all over the world because we were a fast growth, trending campaign.Advertising - turns out it’s worth it!At first we were reluctant to approach a crowdfunding advertising partner, but when all was said and done - I think it’s a really worthwhile investment. Throughout our campaign we spent $10,000 on ads which was around $9000 more than we initially budgeted. But once we got a taste for it, saw that it worked pretty well, we decided to pump more money into the campaign since we saw a clear and direct ROI.For those of you who don’t have $10,000 to put into ads, we didn’t really either. We ended up putting a couple thousand dollars of our own money in (around $3000 total) to start, then agreed to pay the other $7000 to our advertising partner and they were gracious enough to put a bit in trust in us since they saw the campaign was clearly making money. Not sure if that’s normal practice from them - but they were really cool and helpful. They also helped negotiate and early release of funds from Indiegogo (halfway through the campaign) so that we had the budget to put into more ads as needed. It was an easy decision to put more into ads because we had a weekly report on the ROI. The way our advertising partner worked is they took a $500 set-up fee, then they worked entirely on commission. They create the ads (with our photos / assets) and they spend our budget for us to try and get the most return for their spend. Since they are working entirely on commission - they obviously want to see us succeed. The best part about working with an ad partner is not just the help with creating and deploying ads (something we would have no clue how to do effectively) but more importantly, it’s the access to their lists of people that they target with their ads. Their lists are ripe with people who truly love to back crowdfunding campaigns. Below is a look at what a weekly report looked like from our ad company. As you can see, most of the backers came from their ‘Master Custom List’ which is their exclusive list of people they’ve built over years of doing ads in the crowdfunding space. Another thing you’ll notice is the weekly metrics at the bottom of the spreadsheet. We specifically asked for these numbers so we could paint a picture of our true ROI. This is what we required of them which they happily provided:*Total revenue for the week: Obviously we had to compare the revenue generated to make sure it was more than our cost. *Total Costs: This wasn’t just for the cost of the ads, we had to pay the ad company a 10% commission for sales they directly drove to our campaign so we asked them to give us the true cost of our ad spend including their share. *Margin: Because I was too lazy to use a calculator myself, asked them to add it. *Average Customer Value: Self explanatory, the average revenue generated per backer that they drove. *Average Customer Value After Fees: That same average but factoring in the fees that will come from Indiegogo as well as bank/PayPal fees. *True Take Home Value: All things considered, this is what a transaction would net out to once everyone is paid. This is the number that I had to really dwell on, because the next number that mattered in the equation was the cost of goods sold. Something that I would have to consider importing fees on, duties, shipping, insurance, etc etc.All things considered, the money we were left with wasn’t insanely profitable, but week by week we got to decide if it was worth continuing. Week after week we decided that continuing with them was a ‘hell yes!’ because we still made a bit of profit at the end of the day, but also acquired a new customer who may be a customer for years. We are yet to determine what the lifetime value of these customers are, but we figured the more the merrier. The other sweet part of the deal was knowing that they were driving much more traffic to our campaign page than we would be able to alone. This helped us sustain our campaign in the ‘trending’ category which resulted in lots of other backers that they didn’t take commission on because we can’t know for sure if they directly caused the sale. They are fully aware of this, and were happy either way. Although impossible to measure, if you factor in the trending and the lifetime values of these backers - this was a no brainer decision. I highly recommend saving money to invest in advertising. This is not a paid endorsement and they don’t know I’m writing this. They did a good job and I would recommend them happily. If you want to know who we worked with DM me. Happy to make an intro.Ciick to see screenshot of weekly sales reportEarly Bird PricesEarly bird prices are another good way to keep momentum going at the early stage. In our case we used them to get a little bit closer to our (real) fundraising goal. Our ‘super early bird’ pricing was so cheap that the profit we made on these sales was negligible. The fact of the matter is we needed to reach a minimum order quantity to go into production, and having a one time, limited deal helped us get those impulse buys that got the money in so we could get moving on our manufacturing. Once we were past the minimum order quantity, we moved the campaign to our regular price. Use the early birds to get the money in, but then focus on profit. At one point we went from a pitch to a real business, and real businesses make profits. We didn’t have many flash sales (I think just 1) and we sold product at regular price for the large majority of the campaign.The Harsh Reality of FulfillmentThis is meant to be a cautionary tale.I wish I read what I’m about to write before starting our campaign.But if you’re launching a crowdfunding campaign (and obviously assuming / hoping it’s a huge success) - you’re going to have a lot of orders to fill. In our case we had over 2000 orders to send to almost 90 countries. We had our sleeves rolled way up and were ready to burn the midnight oil to make it happen. We knew it would be a monstrous workload - but really… We had no idea.Have you ever browsed through all the kickstarter and indiegogo campaigns that made many times their funding goal and looked at the comments from backers? It’s actually pretty amazing how many campaigns that were complete home runs have a long stretch of time where they’re having to deal with angry backers who have been waiting for their product and whose patience is running thin. We strategized on how to fulfill orders and had a bunch of solutions that we ended up scrapping last minute for various reasons. And when our inventory finally came in, we had a storage warehouse full of boxes, a packing table, 2 DYMO printers connected to our stamps.com account, 1 hired helper and a massive list orders to start sending out.The big mistake we made is we had no freaking idea how long it takes to package and ship a SINGLE order. And the main reason for that is because we didn’t have the ability to practice until we actually had our product to pick, pack, label and ship. Now our packaging is pretty nice and meticulous and maybe it’s a bit more elaborate than the average product shipment (we have a nice box, we assemble shirts, socks and underwear in the box, wrap in a paper and sticker shut… it’s nice and it takes a bit of time to put together) but nothing could prepare us for the reality of it taking 12-15 minutes to fully pack and ship a box. We’re faster now, but our n00b fingers couldn’t do it fast for the first couple weeks. Not to mention issues with stamps.com, wifi issues in our storage locker, not having phone numbers for certain international orders (which are required). As people were now starting to expect their orders - we just couldn’t get them out fast enough. There’s no good way to deal with angry, impatient backers. They spent good money on your product and already have waited a long time. They have every right to be upset - but there comes a point when you have to balance fulfilling orders and responding to backer queries. And it’s painful and brutal as all hell!Here’s what I will do differently in my next campaign.For starters - I will set completely different expectations for delivery. We anticipated getting our product in late August and said we would ship through September and October…. If I could do it again, I would say shipping would be between January - February. Perhaps we would lose some Christmas gift orders, but we weren’t able to ship a lot of them in time any way. Our shipping ran well past December. If we said Jan/Feb is the shipping timeframe (and asked for 4-6 weeks for international orders) and started shipping October, we would surprise people in the good way. Under promise / over deliver is not a new concept. It’s rarely executed in crowdfunding campaigns.Also, I would practice shipping orders until we were pro’s way before we had our product. Throw a few hundred bucks into a stamps.com account (if that’s what you’re using) and play pretend fulfilment. This is what I wish I did:*Got mock packaging that is similar to what our packaging we were ordering was like in a quantity of at least 20 and put it on shelves (the same ones I would use to stores the real packaging) *Got mock product (in our case took a pile of shirts, socks and underwear from my dresser) *Got our packing table set up. *Got stickers, label printers, all the software set up, poly mailers… Anything needed that would be exactly like our real shipment process. *Set a timer and packaged 20 orders wrapped, boxed, labelled and ready to send out to the post office. I would then take all the packaging drive it to the post office and when I got there, turn around and drive back. (or do whatever you need to do to exactly replicate shipping)I promise you’ll learn a lot about shipping. And you’ll be surprised at how involved this is. Once it’s all done, you can cancel and refund all the stamps.com labels to get your money back. But you need to really get a handle on what’s really involved.Fulfillment was hard. And it was a rude awakening for me (and apparently most other campaigns).take a mock package that is close to what your actual package will look like as well as mock product which is the same size and weight as your actual product will bePost Campaign Surveys / BackerkitSo one of the dumbest things about Indiegogo (and I think kickstarter) is that when someone backs a campaign, they can’t customize their order if the product they are getting has options. For example, if a backer pledged to get 1 T-Shirt from us, they didn’t get to choose whether it was black or grey, a crewneck or a v-neck or pick their size. They can just select and pay for a ‘t-shirt’. At the end of the campaign you can set up a service to process all the these surveys for you so you know what everyone wants for their order. Most campaigners use backerkit. Backerkit does a good job.It may sound stupid not to be able to customize your order when actual placing your order... It’s worse than you think. It’s beyond insanely frustrating.Mainly because Indiegogo won’t give your backers info to backerkit until the campaign is finished so surveys can’t go out until a week after the campaign finishes. And then you have to wait for people to fill them out. Let’s just imagine all backers filled the surveys out within 30 seconds just to paint a really unrealistic best case scenario. This means you don’t know what people are actually buying off you until around a week and 30 seconds AFTER your campaign is finished. And really - they take weeks to do the surveys.Now remember that you still need to get the product manufactured. In many cases, lead times can be 4 months to go from placing an order to production completion. So because our campaign ended in July, we didn’t know what our real order was until August. If we placed the order then, we likely wouldn’t see the good until January. And then we would probably be shipping into April. This is just one of the reasons why so many brands ship so far beyond their ‘estimated ship date’ You can’t know this stuff until you start to actually experience it.About 2 weeks into our campaign we took matters into our own hands and sent a survey that we created ourselves (in Google forms) to get a feel for what people wanted to order. We got a snapshot of what people wanted, and did some guessing on what 8 weeks of a campaign may look like. We placed an order with our manufacture then and there based on a wild guess of what our inventory should be for the campaign and a bit beyond. In order to do this we needed to borrow $60,000 USD to make a deposit. We understand how lucky we are to have been in a position to have someone lend us that kind of money. But if it weren’t for that - we would need to wait for Indiegogo to release funds to us which happened 4 weeks later after we made our deposit. We paid our debt back right away, and focused on getting ourselves over to Shanghai to meet our manufacturers (more on this later).Not being able to get your inventory specs from your backers in real time may be one of the most nonsensical things about crowdfunding. It makes the lives of the campaigners way more difficult and it makes so many backers have to wait senselessly long for their order. It’s often not the campaigners faults. It’s a hard system to work with - and I hope someone at Indiegogo is reading this. For you future campaigners, remember this detail. If you can’t make a huge down payment yourself, factor in that you may not know what your manufacturing will look like until more than a month after your campaign ends.What if your manufacturer screws you over?I live in fear of this. It happens. You need to trust your manufacturer - but real trust comes with time. I have heard many horror stories of people getting screwed over in the manufacturing process. It happens. You should fear this.We found a few manufacturers we really like and did our initial order with one of them. We knew the prototypes we made with them were incredibly high quality. We had saved unworn samples for comparison purposes and we left nothing to chance. When production started, we boarded a plane to Shanghai. Got a hotel room for 2 weeks and moved our lives there to oversee production. This cost us a ton of money obviously, but we budgeted for it from our campaign earnings. Even if we made our bare minimum to meet our production minimum order quantities, we factored in extra money to fly to Shanghai and stay for 2 weeks. We told our manufacturer that we would be coming to inspect production well in advance. Our thinking was that they wouldn’t screw up our order if they knew we were there to see it being made in real time. I can’t know for sure if this made a difference, but maybe it did. All i know is that the quality of our mass production was on par (if not, better) than our prototypes. This insurance is priceless. I left China knowing our product was of the highest quality and on it’s way to Canada for fulfillment. We have since restocked our inventory a couple times and still make the trip to inspect every time. Until we have a trusted inspection team in China, we plan on visiting every time we do a production run. The cost is too high and the risk is too unsettling not to.Oh, and going to shanghai is fun as hell! The life experience of travelling to be with and eat with locals is the greatest bonus I could ever imagine.Now to answer the question ‘what if your manufacturer screws you over?’ … I have no clue. You may be screwed. Get on a plane and make sure it doesn’t happen.BudgetingMake a budget for the entire business for 6 months after the campaign ends. Bucket money for marketing (SEO / ads / etc), hiring help, taxes, duties, legal fees, influencers, contingency. Just start listing what 6 months of costs are for the business and allocate the money as it comes in. We did 6 months, it’s just our approach. But it’s a meaningful exercise that opens your eyes to how fast you can spread large sums of money. By doing it in advance you give yourself a really nice runway to focus after your campaign ends.Trademarking / IncorporatingWe waited to be funded before dishing out money and energy in this stuff. But I’ve been burned before and it’s not worth messing around. If your side project turns into a business because of crowdfunding - get all this boring stuff out of the way. In my sock business HItsu, we got a cease and desist for our previous brand name 1 year into running the business. After spending $10k on packaging. It was awful and nearly sunk the business. The company that sent us the cease and desist is a multi-billion dollar company and the name was hardly similar. Nothing we could do. Just not worth messing around. Take care of this shit when things get real. Immediately.THANK YOU!If you actually read all of this, thank you. I hope some stuff in here made a difference. If venturing into crowdfunding scares you - good. It should. It’s not easy. But it’s fun, exciting and incredibly rewarding.Work your hardest, put your all into it, and give it a go. The best part about crowdfunding is that the worst outcome possible is people don’t back your campaign. In previous era’s people would lose their homes trying to dive into a new business like this. You don’t need to anymore. For us, Indiegogo proved product / market fit without us having to dish out large sums of money. Our ideas and hard work were enough to give us our start. If I can help you in our journey - I would be thrilled. Happy to answer any questions if any of your reach out. All the best!!Dan Demsky Co-Founder Unbound MerinoTL;DR - well imagine how much time it took to write! Basically, I just wrote about a bunch of crowdfunding shit. Good stuff.