Buff, White, Noir: Oh My!
What an incredible and busy week at Northwest Willow. Our first massive order of White, Buff, and Noir willow from Musgrove Willows arrived and sales opened with a very positive response from weavers. It has been fantastic! That said, the duck’s feet are paddling like crazy under that smooth water: here are some of the behind the scenes details:
Jack Musgrove and I have been working on the idea for this for over 6 months. (Check out the previous blog post on my trip to England and you’ll see the birth of the idea) Mountains of paperwork, shipping brokers, forklifts, ships, trucks, etc… all took their parts in the journey. The work and waiting culminated in an unexpected delivery date from a truck that couldn’t off load their wares. Desperation is the mother of invention and we ended up unloading more than 2,000 pounds of willow right off the truck. The important part: It arrived safely and we all got our workouts in.
As quickly as I could (so many weavers were asking) I got everything online and opened up sales. Wow. So many people were chopping at the bit for this willow. We knew it would be popular, but over 75 orders in 3 days was a bit overwhelming. We are working through orders as I write this and hope to get the bulk shipped or ready for pickup by the end of next week. (Hopefully sooner) This gave some shipping frustration however. Orders of 1 or 2 bundles calculated shipping spot on… but bulk buying ended in major shipping over charging. Apparently it’s hard to get a computer to understand putting butts to tips allows significantly more in a box than you’d think. It’s all working out and I have been firing off refunds to those customers who were grossly overcharged. I’m looking into how to prevent this moving forward, but at the moment it’s the best we can do.
Order pickups are going well and it’s wonderful to talk about willow with weavers who love this stuff. Not often do I get to have a 30 minute chat all about sticks. It’s lovely.
The fearless team of myself, momma, and 9 year old Teddy are going to keep working our (willow) butts off getting orders ready and out the door. In the meantime, we are already brainstorming ways to make things smoother, more affordable, and more convenient for customers when our own willow goes on sale again this summer.
I wish I could share more, but I’ve got to get back to the willow shop and get more orders out the door. Happy Weaving!
