In this episode, we had the honor of podcasting LIVE at Sub Summit 2024 in Dallas, TX. Yes, that means we had actual people in the audience while we chatted. SO fun! We decided to take a different approach with our topic, focusing on when things go wrong! As entrepreneurs, we must be resourceful, figure it out and have Plan B, C, and D ready to roll.
Listen in as our friend (and Subscription Box Bootcamp graduate) Katie Richardson from Year Cheer, tells her stories of bouncing back from the inevitable issues we face as subscription box entrepreneurs...things like product delays, product mistakes and packaging errors. Laugh with us and share our misery, but also learn how to right the ship!
In this episode, we had the honor of podcasting LIVE at Sub Summit 2024 in Dallas, TX. Yes, that means we had actual people in the audience while we chatted. SO fun! We decided to take a different approach with our topic, focusing on when things go wrong! As entrepreneurs, we must be resourceful, figure it out and have Plan B, C, and D ready to roll.
Listen in as our friend (and Subscription Box Bootcamp graduate) Katie Richardson from Year Cheer, tells her stories of bouncing back from the inevitable issues we face as subscription box entrepreneurs...things like product delays, product mistakes and packaging errors. Laugh with us and share our misery, but also learn how to right the ship!
Hey, guys. Welcome to Subscription Box Basics, the podcast. We are broadcasting live from the Sub Summit Studio stage sponsored by Bold Commerce. I'm Julie Ball, head coach at Subscription Box Basics, and this is Renee Gonzalez. Hi, everyone. And we have a guest with us. This is Katie Richardson from Year Chair. We're going to start out with some introductions, and then we are going to talk about when things go wrong. I know the topic of this entire summit this year is creating a frictionless experience for your customers. But what about us? What about the box owners? We need frictionless experiences as well, but that's not the reality. Sometimes things go wrong. And so a little bit of background about me. I am Julie Ball. I launched a box in 2016. Sparkle Hustle Grow was a subscription box for female entrepreneurs. I sold it in 2022 and have been coaching since with Renee as my podcast co host and you want to do a quick introduction to you?
Renae:Yeah, like Julie said, my name is Renee. I joined Julie in the subscription box world in 2017. I was her first my first hire. Yeah, her first hire and then has have been on this journey with her ever since. Before that I owned a brick and mortar boutique but now has transitioned into the subscription box world and absolutely loving it. So I help small business owners with their marketing and that is part of the reason how I became co host and we're here today with Katie. Katie, you want to introduce yourself?
Katie:I'm Katie Richardson, and I am the owner and founder of Year Cheer. We're a holiday subscription box that helps busy families decorate, connect, and celebrate holidays throughout the year. And I launched in 2019 with the help of Subscription Box Boot Camp, which is what is Julie's and Renee's business. So they really helped me get started, and I'm so excited to be here.
Julie:Okay, real quick. Tell them why you started your box. Because I think that's a really funny story. We're all moms, and there's a lot of pressure sometimes to really show up for your kids to make holidays really awesome. You can take it from here. Yeah, so
Katie:I'm a mom of four kids. Prior to starting my subscription box, I worked in the corporate world, corporate retail. So, worked long hours, traveled a lot. A lot of things on my to do list and with a boss often calling me at all hours of the day, so You know, it would become time for Valentine's Day and my daughter would be like, Mom, you know We're talking February 13th here and she would be like, Mom, what are we doing for Valentine's Day? Sophia's mom is making heart shaped pancakes and has the house all decorated in red and pink and I'm like Oh, gosh, I just got back from my business meeting. I'm like, yeah, we're going to do something. We're going to do something fun. And I would run to the basement and, like, find anything red I could. One, one year I was re wrapping books I'd just given them for Christmas, but in red paper. And the younger kids didn't realize, but she realized it. She was like, Mom, you're really good at Christmas and our birthdays, but you sort of stink at these other holidays. And, Occasionally my sister, my older sister, would send me a box and one year she sent me a box of like green things for St. Patrick's Day. And it totally saved the day. Like, I just opened her box, I put everything out, I was like a hero on St. Patrick's Day. And then my mom sent me some stuff for Easter. So it was like this idea of having like a, I call it like a fairy godmother to help me out as a busy mom that I wanted to bring to other moms. So now we celebrate nine holidays throughout the year and really help deliver that experience of family connections and feeling like that Pinterest mom and having fun without the hassle of planning it. So,
Julie:so you can imagine she has very, very seasonal products. So just quick. Raise of hands. Who has a perfect business that has no problems with products, with shipping, with logistics? Anyone? Okay, good. No, you're in the right place. Yeah, you're in the right place. No hands. So we're going to talk about, Katie's going to share three stories about some really, like, oh crap moments and how she pushed through those. And so, the idea here is to encourage you to be resourceful. To figure it out to be solutions oriented. And of course, sometimes scrappy. We are entrepreneurs, so we get scrappy. So let's talk about the first one, Katie, we're going to talk about product delivery delays, but no one here has had that problem, right? Yeah. Right. Never. Okay. So tell us what happened, Katie. Yeah. So
Katie:this was in probably 2021 and we had worked with a new vendor to source this really adorable product of Shrinky Dink. Letters to Santa. So it was like this cute thing and the kids were gonna do it. It's gonna shrink up. Well We get to the middle of November and all of my other product has arrived But the shrinky dinks have not yet arrived and I'm starting to be like I'm contacting this new vendor I was working with and he was like, sorry, I can't tell you where it is. And I'm like, what do you mean? What do you mean tell it is I'm like the time is ticking like, you know The holidays Christmas is coming like that. We need to change that date doesn't change exactly so This product like still wasn't arriving at me. I had no visibility to when it was going to come, but I knew that my boxes needed to go out. So I had to really start coming up with a contingency plan. So the first thing that we did is we packed all of the boxes except for this item and just sort of like stacked them up, you know, without the tissue paper clothes, just waiting for this item to stop. Ready. So you can slap ready to go. Then the second thing is because I didn't know if this item was going to arrive or not. I had to come up with a contingency plan. So I figured out a way that you could actually buy, like, shrink eating paper on Amazon. And I figured out a way that it needed an inkjet printer to print it. So I went to Walmart and bought six inkjet printers. And, and, you know, bought, because I had to make over a thousand inkjet printers. And so I found a way to like print it myself and I didn't start the mass printing. I started, I sort of had started it. I was prepared. I figured out a solution. I knew what I was going to do. I'd done new instructions. Like I figured out how I was going to package it. And then my husband and I were supposed to go out on a date night one night. My husband's in the audience. Yes, who's actually right here. He reminded me of this part of the story. And then the UPS driver who like is on speed dial in my phone, Joshua, calls me and he's like, They've arrived. You can come get them. So I literally like, I was like, date night is off. We're going to UPS. We're picking up the products and we're like brought a bunch of friends in to help me like a Christmas miracle, pack the boxes and get them out the next day. But the reason why I bring that up is like, I did have a solution. I was able to return all the inkjet printers, except for one. I have kept that one. But it's just an example of how can I learn from that? One is to make sure that like, it was a good example of being solution oriented. I didn't panic, I just went into how are we going to fix this? Where there's a will, there's a way. Yes, I'm like, there's gotta be a way we can do this. And then the second thing is, I really had to take a good look at myself and say, Are you leaving enough time when you're working with new vendors? So I really took a look at my product development calendar and moved everything back at least a month, month and a half so that I could give myself more cushion if things were to happen again. Just
Julie:extended that buffer.
Katie:Yeah.
Julie:I mean, anything can happen. We had a product that was a very time sensitive product. It was a planner. I mean, you can't use a planner late. And it was in California, where Renee lives, And I packed the boxes in the Carolinas. There was a wildfire. Trucks physically could not leave the state. So it's not like, that wasn't something that I did wrong, but I had to react to it. And so you just never know. Worldwide pandemics can impact delays. You know, that, you just never know. So I love that you had your contingency plan ready, like queued up. A. I. out. Luckily, he didn't need it, but it was there.
Katie:Yes, it was going to be a lot of long hours of a very slow inkjet printer. Can you
Renae:imagine? And then your next story is also one, I think, as business owners, something we can all relate from and something that has probably happened to us, but you have a story for us. Let's talk when things arrived damaged and you have to do quantity control.
Katie:Yes. I mean, every month it feels like there's something, you know, there's something unexpected that goes wrong. So if you're dealing with this, no, you're not alone. And these things happen to all of us. So, you know, we've had a couple of things happen where either packaging got crushed on, you know, in shipping for us or, something, just the quality wasn't what we expected when we ordered our sample from the vendor. So we have had to do things like Do repacking. Print a new insert. our goal is always to not let the customer see. what is happening to still provide the customer with the best experience possible. I said, you want to be like a duck, but we're on the water. Everything looks smooth and everything's going right. But underneath you're like, Oh no, we gotta, we gotta really figure this out. We're going to have to see that packaging that has a spelling mistake on it. Rip it all out of that, throw that away. And like, we're going to figure it out. So I think it's all about just like sometimes, especially when you're a smaller startup business, which you know, we still are, but it's. Sometimes you just have to grind through it and make it happen and, and figure it out so that you don't disappoint your customers. Because I've found when I have sent something out that I don't feel great about. My anxiety level is so high that it's almost not worth it. I'd rather do the work to fix it than send it out and worry about like, have I ruined, what have I ruined? Right, you're
Julie:just bracing for impact. Because if someone doesn't like something, they're much more likely to tell people about it on social media or reviews or whatever. So, I can relate to that. Let's talk a little bit about how you remedied some of those things. So, I'll tell a quick story. I I had bought about a thousand books that were white covers. And these white covers got dirty as they were in transit from warehouse to warehouse to my house. And so, I couldn't send dirty books. Like, they just looked really bad. And so, myself, my husband, and a couple of friends, we got those white art erasers, and we just cleaned them. Like, we just erased all the dirt right off of it. Not one complaint came in because they didn't know that at one point, they were dirty, dusty covers. That's the type of thing that can really make a difference. Because if I had sent those out, it I know that I would have gotten more cancellations. We would have, customer service inbox would have been blowing up. I don't, I'd rather put in that extra grunt work to get scrappy and clean them up myself. Now you can do that, if you're in a warehouse, like if you have a third party fulfillment center, that can be handled through special projects. So maybe they have a staff that would do that for you and you just have to budget for it. But, It's it's well worth the time. So tell us some stories about how you might have remedied some things. I think you mentioned some stickers
Katie:This one is a little embarrassing. I'm gonna tell this story. We have we make leprechaun traps. Okay, and What's a leprechaun trap? A leprechaun trap is, if you don't know, a leprechaun trap is something that you set up the night before St. Patrick's Day so that you can catch the leprechaun when it comes to your house. Often times he might make a mess and torn your toilet water cream. Just in case, you know, you don't have a leprechaun in your house, that's what he does. And so, we had a leprechaun trap stickers come in and there was a spelling mistake. And I was like, Oh my gosh, how did I, it was my fault. I missed it in the proof from the vendor. But I was like, what are we going to do? Like, I can't send these out with a spelling mistake. And it was
Julie:borderline inappropriate. So it could not be sent.
Katie:It was borderline. Ask us after the recording. And so we had to go and buy just like shamrock stickers to sticker over the sticker. Because it was like another one of these things where it's like, it's not worth sending out something that you In your mind, you're like, is somebody going to take this as like a double and, you know, like a, you know, something inappropriate. So that was an example of like where we just had to get scrappy and make it happen.
Julie:Yeah. And so packaging too. You had mentioned sometimes packaging might arrive. Damaged, ripped, whatever. And so, have you in the past had to repackage things?
Katie:Yes, we've definitely had to repackage things a few times. So, whether it was, you know, that it was damaged, or whether it was just not exactly what you expected. We've had a vendor, like, literally put the wrong packaging on. So, we've had these really cute, again, St. Patrick's Day seems to not be my lucky holiday. Seriously. We have these really cute rainbows and they came in with like a picture of a baby on them. This is not a baby toy. Ted calling my vendor, Jack, what is this? This is not at all what we discussed. How did he respond? He was like, Oh, well that's another story. But I was like, we cannot send this out. We'll be like a baby toy this is a St. Patrick's day celebration, magical rainbow, not a baby toy. And so we literally, my team and I, my team was busy like, Pulling them all out. Luckily they were packaged underneath, but. Sometimes
Julie:we've had to get a little scrappy. Can anyone relate? Has anyone had to do any of this type of stuff yet? I see a couple of yeses. Yeah,
Katie:but the good news is like having learned these lessons and having made some of these mistakes when we were at a smaller scale definitely taught me like You have to, of course you know this, but sometimes I learn things the hard way. Like, you have to always make sure you're double checking. You know, check for every spelling mistake. Double check the packaging. If you're at all worried, like, ask that question one more time. Make sure you, they send you the sample with final packaging. A
Julie:physical sample too. Not just a picture sample. And if you're ordering from overseas, You need to make sure you're speaking in the same size. Like, you might think that you ordered something that was like a 6x9x3 inch box, which is, you know, yoga block sized, but it might arrive in like centimeters or millimeters. Like, cause you have, you might have not communicated that. I've seen that happen. That didn't happen to me, but. Oh, gosh, it was so painful to see it happen.
Renae:Okay, the marketer and me is going off script a little bit. But hearing you talk and you tell your stories and thinking of how you can use this to your advantage from a marketing perspective and with your customers. Can you tell us? I know we were talking before a little bit of how you're turning this into an opportunity where you then come clean to your customers after it's all Resolved and you're paddling under the water, but it's smooth and how you come clean and let them know like hey this happened But here is something that Let letting them know that you're human
Katie:Well, I think a good example of that is that in that first example with the shrinky dinks like We weren't going to make, even if I had to make it myself, we weren't going to make our original shipping date. So I was really upfront and clear and proactive with my customers that said, you know what? You said we were going to ship on the 20th, but it's looking like it's going to be the 25th. And so I think just making sure that we're proactive in that communication is really important. So that's sort of a way that we turned, you know, depending on the situation, sometimes I'll, I'll let them in on things a little bit more. I think I have another story about that, but Other times it's, try to keep it pretty straightforward. Yeah.
Julie:Having some of that transparency and it shows that you're a human, that you're a small business owner, and I think that people really respond well to that. How did you communicate that? Is that emails, social media primarily?
Katie:Email. Yeah, primarily email.
Julie:Yeah.
Katie:And so there was another situation that we had that was sort of out of our control, And this was again, right around the pandemic time, not to use that as an example again. We have, you know, we ship New Year's Eve boxes and, you know, we'd ship them out and what we found is that like 20 percent of them were not moving. Like we were tracking everything and we're like, we're stuck. What is going on? Why we ship out of Maryland? Like what is going on with the Linthicum,,Maryland like hub? Like things are going there and staying. And so we were watching it. We were watching it. I was calling USPS. Somebody told me you could call a congressman. I even wrote him. Like, I was doing everything to try to figure out, like, what the, what I could do to help solve this problem. But the truth was, it was out of my hands. So what I really had to do was communicate honestly and transparently and openly to my customers. Now, what I didn't want to do was tell everyone that we were having a problem. I wanted to really, you know, download that report, upload that into my email server, like really focus on that percent that was having the issue and start communicating with them. So, you know, we were really proactive. We would give, like, you know, feedback. Weekly updates and you know, there was a few people who were very angry, but we did eventually win them over. I think because we were so proactive. Some people did not get their New Year's E Box till the end of January. And so, we did, you know, comp them another box, but one lady, one of our customers was so great. She was like, I knew this was going to happen. She goes, Luckily, my kids like five and they don't know what the date is. So we just celebrated New Year's on the 24th of January. So, you know, some people really made the best of it. And a lot of those customers that have that happened to many of them are still our customers today or because I think we were, you know, honest and clear in our communication.
Julie:Yeah. So having the honesty, that transparent and proactive communication can help with retention then because they feel like they're being taken care of even though their box is late. And man, that's so frustrating too when you just see the tracking stuck and there's nothing you can do. What I found is sometimes, you know, yeah, you might give them a call or whatever, but sometimes things are moving through the system so fast. No matter what. Postal service you're using sometimes they're moving through the system so fast that they don't get scanned and I'll look at the same tracking Two days later, and it's already across the country and delivered where I thought it was stuck somewhere. And so don't yeah But it's still good to have that proactive Kind of conversation when you do notice it. Yeah So what, let's recap some of the things that we've learned through learning the hard way.
Katie:I promise we have a lot of things that go right as well. This was a really topic about like just being transparent about things that go wrong. Because you're not a lot, sometimes I'm like, am I the only one this way? Like you can feel really alone when this is happening. You have to be really brave, I think, is a thing and really build up that resilience because I feel like as business owners, we're always trying to have that perfect experience for our customers and you know, make sure that they're unboxing and their experience in their box is really just top notch and you don't want to disappoint them. It's really hard to write that email of like, I'm sorry to let you know, like, this is what's happening. So, I think, the thing I've learned is it has gotten easier with time. Like, the first time that these things happen is always the worst. And when you're gonna panic and be the most scared. But, the more you practice it, the more you really try to stay solution oriented. You know, the better it's going to be.
Julie:I used to keep swipe files of like when something like that would happen. So I wouldn't get super emotional about like, Oh gosh, I'm really sorry. I already had this written. I would just copy and paste it and then give it a little personal. Touch to it. But that helped me manage my emotions because that's why I hired Renee for customer service because I get way too emotional in the inbox.
Renae:Yeah, I can deal with it and send it off when you're like, Because it was my business, baby. And that's another thing, if you're listening, it is, It's overwhelming. You are not alone. But also if you're proactive, like you said, you can have these solutions. So it is more transactional rather than emotional and you're able to deal with it and then bless it and release it and move on. Because as business owners, we do have these things thrown at us that if you're going to have to pivot, you're going to have to. Find solution B C D and just keep rolling with it and you're not alone and you can you can always come chat with us to we're here the people right next to you if you're here live are here for you. If you're listening, we're we're here for you. I feel like so many times. So many people talk about what's going right and you feel overwhelmed because it may not be going right for you. So we thought we would jump up here and let you know it doesn't always go right, but that doesn't mean you're not doing a good job, right? And I think the great thing about these
Katie:happening as you are growing your business is like learning some of these things early is actually an advantage because it's much, much easier problem to fix when something is small. And when it's a really big, really expensive, it might be expensive to you now, right? When I'm three times the size of some of these things happen like I need to be prepared and be thinking ahead and if some Of these things haven't happened. I Wouldn't even know the questions to ask me the things to look out for so when these things happen definitely like Make sure you learn from them and course correct
Renae:and train your brain to really just like have that always plan B and another thing since a lot of these boxes are product based, if you always have like that product on hand that in case something doesn't come in, you can throw into the box. Maybe product. There's all these things that you'll learn as you go on. But if you hear it first, then it's like you said, a little, a little easier to learn a little faster.
Julie:Exactly. We hope that you've enjoyed hearing some of our mistakes, our failures, the times we've fallen and gotten back up. If you guys have stories to share about this too, we would love to hear them. So after the podcast is over, Come see us. We're gonna be over here and would love to meet you and would love to hear about your screw ups too.
Renae:and thank you again for being here. Thank you, Katie for joining us and you can find us at subscription box Basics on Instagram and we will talk to you all soon. Thank you. Thanks for coming.