FlagKit.co.za

Last week we received payment for an order that was placed in September 2006 for 3 x 6m ground mounted flag poles. Since then we have decided to not sell flag poles because they’re not the most convenient things to package and deliver, but we had to honour this quote because back then we also didn’t specifiy that quotes were valid for 30 days! Poles are particularly tricky if they’re headed for the middle of the Transkei (which we did last year).

We’re still undecided about whether to put poles back on the site. There is a demand, and customers often want a pole and flags at the same time. If we only offer flags they might go somewhere else for the whole order. We need to decide whether to stay absolutely focused (”country flags to your door in a hurry”), or to keep our range wider and appeal to a bigger market. A wider range will mean modifying the ordering system to allow for different delivery times and charges for different products, which is not ideal.

Today I received a call from a client who was wondering why the invoice that he received with his flags was less than what we had originally quoted and what he paid (His accounts department alerted him to the discrepancy). Our conversation went something like this:

"Uum, sir, could you please tell me what name is on the top of the invoice?", I asked

"Oh, it says XXXXXXXX", the client responded.

"Oh dear!…..that's our suppliers invoice", I ashamedly responded. 

Very embarrassing I know, but there is a reason why this happened. The courier company would pick us the order from the supplier and then send it to the client without anyone from Flag Kit being involved. Great in principle, but not very realistic. We learned the hard way and have since had all flags from the supplier sent to us, allowing us to do a quick quality check and package each order the Flag Kit way.

Recently I was battling to log in to BusinessWarriors.co.za and I noticed a link to "Click here for live help". I clicked on the icon and was greeted by a friendly (real) person who helped me through the process of logging in. I had seen this type of chat on other sites, but never before had it helped me so effectively and quickly. The alternative would have been to fill out a form or an e-mail, and probably wait a day for a response (if at all!).

The service on Business Warriors is provided by LivePerson.com. I poked around a bit on their site and they seem to be quite comprehensive, although a bit pricey at $99/month. A bit of Googling uncovered another option in ProvideSupport.com who seem to offer something very similar, but starting at $15/month.

I have set up the 10 day trial of ProvideSuuport.com on 2 of our e-commerce sites (www.flagkit.co.za and www.bugzapper.co.za) to see if our visitors/potential clients would make use of it. 24 hours later nobody has requested a chat, so perhaps the South African market is not educated enough on what live support would entail? Perhaps we can lay blame on the usual "slow internet" culprit and guess that the average SA surfer doesn't have time and bandwidth to click on links that look too fancy? Or maybe our sites are simple enough to not require help! ;-)

If you are interested to test out the service please feel free to visit on of the sites mentioned above and click on the link. An operator should be on-hand to take your call (ie, me!). I am really excited about this type of service and what it could do to improve the web experience for everyone. I can think of a ton of sites that I use and wish I could chat to someone about.

[PS - you might be reading this post some time in the future, and we might not be using this service on our sites anymore. If that's the case then clearly we decided it isn't worth it!]

We had a successful meeting with a new potential flag supplier yesterday. We currently buy flags from 3 other local suppliers. Some are cheaper than others, but we have to shop around because the cheaper guys don't stock all of the 200+ country flags (in 2 different sizes each).

The company we met yesterday seemed to be the first to "get" what we are trying to do - be an online retailer for their manufacturing capabilities. All the others give us a miserly 10% discount, which we means we have to be the most expensive in the industry in order to survive. These guys understand that we're not competitors, but a complimentary business. Even though they also sell directly to the public they suggested linking from their own website to our's, crediting us as a source for buying flags online. They understand that marketing is usually the hard bit in business, so if they can get us to do it for them it's worth giving a healthy discount.

It was a good meeting in amongst a difficult day of dealing with customer complaints (see Shane's previous post). Selling physical stuff seems a lot harder than our experiences of making websites for clients.

We had a nice bunch of orders to get out today - you can see we didn’t quite get the knack of crease free stickers first time round, but hey, we’re new at this.

Also, we always liked the white nylon stuff that was wrapped around all our Kalahari.net deliveries; it sends a message that the goods are securely packaged. Does anyone know what this stuff is called? We didn’t and after quite a bit of calling around we managed to get to the bottom of it. You heard it here first - its called Strapping and it comes in 2 kilometer rolls. You don’t need any fancy machines (they are available, but at a cost); just a bag of buckles. Its takes a bit of working out, but once you’ve got it you should be on your way.

.

We had known for sometime that our packaging for Flag Kit needed some serious attention. Up until now, flags were delivered to our customers packaged in very unexciting clear plastic bags. Not that remarkable! We wanted to WOW the client with a clever packaging idea; something fun and non flag related that has word-of-mouth potential. So off to the drawing board we went.

Flag Kit is about quality flags delivered to your door - we came up with the idea of flags packaged in pizza boxes delivered to your door on time and piping hot! We had some labels printed with a 100% Fresh concept. This is our first freshly packaged flag, ready to go.