An Apple, or Three, a Day (or Every Other Week)

The latest edition of our 'Making the Logo' videos will be online about the same time this will be published.  We would love to have you see these clips here, but they are just a little too long to be part of the post.  We aren't really sure why.  So, you are going to have to check our Facebook page if you want to any of them.  But maybe not for much longer.  See, we are planning on starting a YouTube channel featuring not just those clips, but possibly other scenes of dry-erase marker art created by this author.  It would by under his (and by that I mean my) name.  It is just taking a bit longer than imagined to find the time to figure out how to upload everything and get things started.  We are just hoping that the upload times are better than there are for Facebook.  Each of the first two clips were around five minutes long, but they took over a half-and-hour to upload.  We aren't sure if it is our internet connection or if it is just the natural length of time.  Having a computer doing nothing but uploading for that long is not that helpful.  Still, it would get are messaging to a wider audience. We should have something up by our next regular update.  Check back then.

Where the Books Are, Seriously Where Are They

Last week, we received a very large special order.  The books weren't available from our primary distributor, so we had to go through our secondary one instead.  We have been using then since we opened, so we thought that there wouldn't be any problems with ordering through them.  The books were due this past Wednesday, but they never arrived.  We called the distributor to find to what the problem was.  It turned out there were quite a few.  Since it had been almost a year since our last order, they were slightly suspicious with our new order.  Admittedly, this had happened once before, but the problem was easily taken care of.  However, we had the further problem of going over our maximum order size.  Somewhere along the line, we were given a maximum daily order of about two hundred dollars.  This current order exceeded that, but a bit.  We had place an order that was above the limit before, but that may have been before the changeover.  Anyway, we didn't have that information in our records and the sales representative that took our order over the phone either didn't mention it or didn't know we had the limit.  The distributor had tried to call us.  Unfortunately, they were using the contact number we had set up before we had an actual storefront.  For some reason, they hadn't updated to the number we have been using for the last eighteen years.  This is the  number we used not only to call them for information, but the one we used to confirm our identity when using their recently discontinued  phone ordering system.  Why they weren't able to use this number is beyond us.  They finally emailed us, just before closing time the day before the books were scheduled to arrive.  The person in charge of our business email didn't get to read it until after we called to see what the problem was. (She had overlooked it because she didn't closely read the message header). They originally were going to have to look over our financial records, before they were going to release the shipment.  We didn't want that.  We also were unable to use a business credit/debit card to pay for the books upfront.  Finally, they released the books on our own account, but with the thinly veiled warning that a third party collection agency might have to be called in if we weren't able to pay. The customer had already paid us in full, so the money was available.  As of this writing, the books are in shipment and should be were soon.  We still use many services from this distributor, even though we may have problems in placing another order form them.  We will still use them for as long as we are in business.