Sn....oooooooh......no.....

Soooo....more snow. Good thing I sell snow shovels! We had something around 2 feet this past weekend and I guess another 12 inches of so is expected overnight and into tomorrow. The average snowfall for the DC area is around 21 inches each year, so we will get more than 150% of our annual expected snowfall in less than one week!

Wonderful.

Looking out of my dungeon/office window at the snow, I am reminded of the snow globes we did for a local church. They were looking for ways to raise money for a building project and we suggested the globes. We took a series of photos of the current building....

...sent them off to the manufacturer and got a pre-production proof back in about a month. After the appropriate approvals, we produced and delivered 500 of them (the minimum order) in about 3 months. Voila...

They can work from artists' drawings as well, so we can produce the domes with replicas of a building not yet built. Actually, any 3-Dimensional object, real OR imagined would be suitable. If you are interested in selling snow globes as a way of raising funds for your organization this year, now would be a good time to start - especially if a committee is involved. That way we can get them in time for the Holiday selling season.

Remember, now, there are only 318 shopping days left until Christmas! I wonder if I sell snow blowers...hmmm.

Steve
www.raggo.com

Save The Last Dance For Me

I need a break from shoveling snow! (Snow Totals) I haven't been this sore for a very long time.

One of my favorite customers forwarded me an email recently. The original email was from one of our online competitors (Yes, some of them are STILL in business!) and it offered the environmentally friendly, recycled cardboard ink pen with bamboo clip shown on the right at special pricing - $0.59 each plus set up and shipping for 200 or more pens.

It is a pretty good price. List for 200 is $0.66 ea, so it is a 10% discount.

Her 7 word message to me:

"Hi, Steve. Check this out. We're interested..."

She understands.

Her company has been doing business with us for almost as long as we have been open for business - 13 years this August. They know us. They know that our job - our only job - is to get them the right product at the right price and deliver it on time. I looked at the pen then looked through our sale sheets and sent her the following email.

"Thank you for thinking of us. We do have them...but they are less expensive. Here is the info

We can increase the pricing if you need us to. $0.59 each is fine with me ;^)

Let us know if you want us to proceed at $0.44 with no set up.

Steve"

By asking us, she saved 33% instead of 10%!

The concept that she and many of our long-time customers understand is that we are a full-line distributor. We are not bound by a certain set of manufacturers or by franchise or corporate agreements. When our suppliers - there are thousands of them - offer us sale pricing, we pass it along. We have multiple suppliers for most of the products we offer (9 different suppliers of the pen above) which means that they are competing for my attention and business while I am competing for yours. Since we have thousands of manufacturers with thousands of products on special at any one time, we cannot possibly list them all. Our Specials pages contain many of the sale items from our 'go-to' manufacturers, but it doesn't list all of them.

So, if you see something you want somewhere else, let us know. We understand...it's OK to look. Just be sure to contact us before you buy. Chances are very good that if one of our competitors has it on sale, we do too. But we will give you ALL of the discount instead of only part of it.

Steve
www.raggo.com