Lets face it: we SUCKED at merchandise.
Like, really, REALLY sucked.
Late orders. Wrong orders. Misplaced orders. You name it and we probably found a way to royally mess up shipping fulfillment. We looked incompetent. We looked like scam artists just taking people’s money. We looked like absolute losers.
It boiled down to the following:
1.) Our merchandise sold really well. So well, in fact, that we couldn’t keep up with the demand. This should be a ‘good problem’, but to us it just became a problem! Pre-orders fell behind, then further behind, and it snowballed into an absolute mess that had us scratching our heads like dopey Looney Tunes characters.
2.) Complete and total inefficiency. If there was a longhand, longform, or longwinded way to fulfill orders, that’s how we did it because, well, we aren’t Amazon.com, Inc. More like the alley behind Amazon.com, Inc.’s headquarters.
3.) Too many items. The amount of money spent on numerous items, most of which didn’t sell very well at all, increased our overhead by an astronomical amount and became a huge burden.
4.) Too much on our plate. 37 events across North America last year, overcoming the loss of family members and friends, having to move and uproot what organization we did have with merchandise, etc., etc. We should have simply shut down the online store for a bit while we pulled our lives together, but sometimes our overly stubborn refusal to quit anything simply backfires. This was one of those instances.
So, has anything really changed?
Yes, actually. A lot, in fact.
Failing forces you to change. We have had other businesses that forced us to learn from our failures and we did quite successfully.
First off, we have abandoned the model of pre-orders entirely and will begin with a large inventory to work with.
Secondly, we will only sell our four bestselling shirts for now: Our “I Don’t Babysit, I Parent” gray T-shirt, the V-neck “You Do You Boo” cream unicorn T-shirt, The “Team No Sleep” raglan shirt, and our classic “Birth Without Fear” black logo T-shirt. Also a fantastic rainbow unicorn “You Do You Boo” lanyard. That’s it.
Third, we have researched, planned, and implemented a streamlined method of order fulfillment that will eliminate a number of highly inefficient steps. This will reduce our fulfillment time greatly and make the entire process essentially painless.
What can you expect?
Well, for one, your shirt(s)! This sounds tongue in cheek, but it’s not. You pay us money for an item and you deserve to have it shipped to you in a timely manner. That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less.
If you ordered an item from us in the past and it got to you really late or not at all and we were required to refund your money, we apologize. We sucked and we screwed up. It’s as simple as that.
Our number one goal and mission with the Self Love Generation store is to provide you with an awesome product that you will love and wear all the time, and provide it to you in as timely a manner as you would expect from anywhere else.
Thanks for sticking with us.
Much Love,
January & Brandon
