Over the years I have had some pretty good ideas and unfortunately a few bad ones!
Good Ideas:
**Branding – A few years ago I decided to actually get branded with our very own company logo. Everything we do now reflects our company colors and theme from our products down to our correspondence.
**Best Scents – I hate to even rate specific fragrances because scent is so subjective from person to person depending on their frame of mind, mood and general well-being.
Some of my favorites:
Patchouli (straight-up) (not on website yet) – Made with aged patchouli essential oil.
Satsuma Guava – A mouth-watering blend of orange, lemon, guava, sweet jasmine and neroli with just a hint of musk (synthetic) and sandalwood. A tropical fruit paradise with green fruity notes!
Asiatic Lily & Cantaloupe – Exotic lily blended with fresh, juicy cantaloupe makes this a mouth-watering scent in a tri-colored soap!
Crystal Blue – (we have since revamped this soap into colorful layers-bottom is blue while top is white, new pictures will be up soon) A clean, sporty scent laced with citrus, muguet, ‘musk’ and orris. A unique unisex fragrance!
Ginger Lime – This one is always a favorite no matter what my mood! A complex and exciting blend – not only does it contain ginger and lime but it also has hints of lemon, lily, grapefruit with a slight pinch of spice!
**Gift Boxes – We are currently working on new gift boxes. Each gift box will include three soap (of the same collection) along with a free soap sample and discount coupon. I hope to have these available by mid-April.
Bad Ideas:
**Auto Responders – I have never been 100% comfortable sending emails as I’m never sure they get through. If I don’t get a response does that mean my email (for whatever reason) didn’t get through or does it mean you are ignoring me??
To keep our customers wondering the very same thing I brilliantly decided to set up autoresponders on all of our email addresses!
The only thing that accomplished was giving me 100 times more emails to delete! I was getting auto responses from other people’s auto-reponders which them kept bouncing back and forth. After about 6 months of that (ok…so I’m a little slow letting go of a ‘good’ idea) I went in and deleted all of the auto responders!
So now, good rule of thumb with me, if you don’t get a response from me within 24 hours assume that your email never reached my in box!
**Packaging – With the rebranding of our company we (graphic designer and I) had the bright idea of wrapping our soap in handmade green paper then packaging the soap in their specific box.
While this kept with the company theme (green paper with brown flower/tub sticker) it didn’t quite work out the way we thought it would. You see, when you unwrapped that nice handmade green paper off of the soap it left little green fibers….that resembled….hair! Needless to say that idea was scrapped….pronto!
**Scents – I have, over the many years, used many different fragrances. There are literally hundreds out there to try that it is really hard to rein yourself in and keep to a specific scent line.
Two of the worst scents that come to mind are a fireplace/smoke type of scent and a chestnut scent (yes this was for the holidays!). The chestnut scent was a little more tolerable and the fireplace scent but tell me….why would anyone want to smell like a nasty fireplace!
I’m sure there will be many more good ideas and hopefully I can keep the bad ones at bay!
Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco Friendly Shea Butter Spa Products
www.countrymeadowltd.com
