Fantastic Oils + Easy Shopping = New SMB Marketplace!

Whoo hoo!

The new Sirius Mind and Body Marketplace is open!
I'm so excited for you to visit it and enjoy the improvements I've made for you:

• Descriptions and Catagories. There are so many ways to describe and categorize smells! I thought about all of the good times we had at our brick and mortar shop, watching and listening to reactions as customers sampled fragrances, and I used those experiences as a starting point. I think it's a good start, and I welcome your suggestions.

Golden Meditation fragrance oil

• Images. How do you translate smells into pictures?  Research! I spent a lot of time searching through image sources to find photos to describe how each fragrance oil smells. M and L took some pics too, and I thank them for pitching in. It was a fun process, and I hope you enjoy the images I've chosen.

Raspberry Fantasy fragrance oil

• Search. I know how frustrating it can be to try to find your favorite fragrance oil among the hundred plus scents Sirius Mind and Body carries. The new search function makes finding your fave so much easier.

Somali Rose is one of our four rose oils

• Shipping. As I've said before, shipping fragrance oils has become challenging, but SMB has risen to meet it, with the help of this new marketplace. I also mentioned in that post that I'd create a special way to rise to the shipping challenge. shipping...shipping... we all hate this necessary bit of shopping, so how can I make it a little sweeter for my customers? Free oils!

Buy three Fragrance oils, Get 1 Free!

• Yet another improvement to the marketplace is the discount feature which gives me more options to offer more specials and integrate them seamlessly with PayPal. Give it a try and enjoy free fragrance oils - yay!!

Yes, there is more work to be done - incense will be available soon.

Right now, the marketplace is a standalone shopping cart on the Tictail platform, so you can go directly to http://siriusmindbody.tictail.com to access it. When I integrate it into the Sirius Mind and Body website to replace the old shopping center, I'll send you another notice.

Speaking if notices, I've updated the email / newsletter form so we can keep in better touch. Click the link to receive the Sirius Mind and Body newsletter or update your info here http://mad.ly/signups/22046/join

I hope you have a great week and enjoy the new Sirius Mind and Body shopping experience!

~ Amy

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

Yep, I'm finally blogging for SMB

Welcome to my blog!

Although Sirius Mind and Body has been around for a long long time - 18 years, to be exact - I've never had an SMB blog. Go figure.

Yes, I'll still post the latest SMB happenings on Facebook and Twitter, but I see this blog as the spot where we can go deeper on all things Sirius Mind and Body - especially our alcohol-free fragrance oils and hand-rolled incense sticks!

Remember the fragrance case at our brick & mortar shop?

I hope you will visit this space frequently and share with your friends.

~ Amy Cousin