(last edited on September 20, 2014 at 2:30 pm)
The following is a second guest post by Al Briggs, who I’m working with so that we can produce and dispatch Emergent Task Planner pads from within the EU. It’s been great to hear about how he’s shaping his fulfillment process! Here is the latest update since the events of his last post.
UPDATE: You can now purchase these directly at Al’s online Amazon UK store. It’s also available on Amazon Germany.
Firstly I want to announce that the first A4 Emergent Task Planner pads have been dispatched from Germany.
We received the first print run last week and have so far dispatched 13 orders, and we are now getting a system together to make sure that we can get orders invoiced and dispatched as quickly as possible.
If you signed up on our pre-order form you should have now received an email with the details that are needed to send you out an electronic invoice. If not then please check your spam folders or contact me directly at al [at] albriggs [dot] com.
We have decided to use Paypal for the invoicing as this gives us a convenient method to track the invoices, print shipping notes and provide status updates to users. We also choose the paypal service because you can pay with just a credit card and not have to be a full Paypal member.
Everything has worked out mostly as we’d planned so far except that the shipping costs have not been as simple as we planned. It turns out that we have to add VAT to the cost of shipping even though we don’t ourselves have to pay VAT on the postage, which is a but frustrating. For those that we had quoted a total cost to before we understood this VAT rule we are keeping to the original quote, but for the future the shipping rates will have to be revised. There has been good news though as we have discovered that there is a cheaper way to send the triple packs which has helped pay for our VAT mistake.
One great thing we have discovered is that the post man in Germany will come and pick up letters and parcels from our front door so that we don’t need to visit a post office to dispatch orders especially as we can print the stamps using an online service.
The shipping costs for new orders including VAT are now:
- Germany: Single – €1.73 and Triple €2.70
- International: Single – €4.10 and Triple €8.33
Therefore the total costs for single and triple packs by destination are:
- Germany: Single – €11.72 & Triple €24.69
- International: Single – €14.09 & Triple €30.32
We will soon have an ordering site in place but for the moment please use the updated order form at google
I’ll be back with some more news once we have a proper ordering site in place…
We are now on Shopify.
As ever any questions please email me directly: al [at] albriggs [dot] com.
16 Comments
Al has done an awesome job with organizing this and answering my questions. Looking forward to receiving my order and trying out the pads!
Yep: ordered, paid, looking forward to delivery :)
Rachel: Al is quite a conscientious person, so my heart is warmed hearing that your experience dealing with him was positive!
Hi! I got my pads the other day and I’m very happy. Payment and delivery was perfect! The only suggestion is to use a stiffier card board back the next time. I do not like the wobbly backside because I carry the pad around in a backpack.
@Rachel – thanks for the feedback – please tell me once your order turns up.
@Stefan – hope you pads have turned up by now!
@Dave – thanks ;-)
@Phillipp – feedback noted – harder back would also make packing a little easier – we will change this for the second print run – just need to get people to take all the existing stock first ;-) This is all a learning curve for us.
@Al – Got my pads this morning. Fast delivery, good packaging. Thank you so much! I’m looking forward to starting my new super-productive life, hand-in-hand with a career change! :-) @Dave – I like Stefan’s idea of the instruction sheet as a cover for the pads for those who don’t know it exists on pdf on your site.
I should add that we have now shipped 17 packages – but there are quite a few people who placed pre-orders who have not placed a ‘real’ order – I do hope that my emails are getting through and there is no problem for people to be able to contact me.
I hope soon to have a better ordering site in place than the Google Form – but everything takes time!
Al
stiffer card back – I’ve been trying to get really thick stiff cardboard for the US versions for a while, but they are super-expensive here and not cost effective. However, it might be possible to make some kind of micro-binder for them…that would be cool!
order rate – In my first go-around in fulfilling, I found that there was about a 50% pre-order to real-order rate of followthrough. Maybe one thing that helped with orders was showing pictures of the production process…going to the printer, talking about paper quality, etc. Trying to make the process and sense of quality tangible!
@Al: I got it today, compliments for handling, packing and shipping. Just like a pro :)
I agree to Philipp concerning the cardboard back: harder would be nice. Another suggestion might be to use the ETP Instruction Sheet as cover page instead of the boring orange sheet.
@Stefan – Good idea with the PDF I think we will include one of those in each pack we send out from now forward.
I love the idea of your pad and I’m thinking of getting one is there any chance/way these will be made as a bound book? I don’t want to write things in a calendar and then again make a list separately — pages will end up tearing out of a glued pad. Thanks