The Shipping News - website refined

As my refining of the Sirius Mind and Body marketplace gets closer to re-launch (yay!), I've uncovered elements that could stand a little more attention. For instance, today a customer contacted me about shipping options. Specifically, she wanted to know what is the best choice for shipping her order?

Here's a bit of how I explained it, and I hope it helps:

The United States Postal Service has really tightened its restrictions on shipping liquids like oils: they've classified all fragrances as perfumes which means they assume all fragrances have a flammable alcohol content. And that means I can only ship one bottle of fragrance oil per package via USPS. They are not budging on this with me, even though I've provided them with documentation of the (lack of) alcohol content in my oils. grrrr!

All that to say, if you're ordering more than one bottle of oil, I have to ship it to you though FedEx, which has a slightly higher rate. Don't worry - I have something planned to make that slightly higher rate disappear! The upside of shipping via FedEx is that they seem to get packages in your hands safer and faster. No disrespect to the postal service, but I'm all about making my customers happy.

More on my shipping happiness plan soon...

~ Amy Cousin

Do you smell what I smell? Revisiting old friends and great scents

The website refining continues.
This weekend I'm writing new descriptions for all of our fragrance oils. Every. Single. One. 

I've been opening bottles and sniffing fragrances to come up with better definitions as I redesign the marketplace section of the website. The sniffing scents part is a lot of fun - I always enjoyed standing at the fragrance case in our brick & mortar shop and letting customers explore our vast selection. Two people trying on the same scent would often feel completely different about the scent. Describing a fragrance can get tricky because not only do individuals pick up on different fragrance notes, but our reactions to those notes are deeply personal. The memories that flood ones senses after a sniff are unique.

A few years ago, our fragrance house created an entirely new blend for us. It was absolutely delicious and quite complex: every time one of us would sniff it, we'd discover a new layer of every imaginable berry or melon. As if defining it wasn't challenging enough, we just couldn't come up with a suitable name for the new scent. Finally, we decided to let the customers name it. For two weeks, we asked everyone who came to the shop sample the oil and add a name suggestion to the box. We got some great suggestions, and eventually had to draw a name from the narrowed-down choices. What really struck me again was just how unique the associations are that we connect to scents.

With that in mind, I hope you appreciate the descriptions I've written. I've also drawn on my years and years of experiencing customer reactions as well. I welcome hearing your own descriptions as you re-visit time tested fragrance friends, and meet new ones.

~ Amy Cousin