Joanne Musgrave

Not only are Dyson vacuum cleaners, fans and all other goodies just brilliant and top quality, their customer service is excellent too.

Last year I bought a new turbine head for my old style DC05 barrel vac. I have finally decided it’s time to plug it in and I realised it doesn’t fit. I didn’t realise at the time that I needed to also purchase a connector. Admittedly the website didn’t tell me I needed to, but I didn’t ask either.

I rang today to find out how to fix this, all ready to buy the adapter, and they offered to send it to me at no charge. It’s only a small piece, and I have spent a fair bit of money with them, but this small gesture has made me appreciate my dog hair sucking vacuum cleaner even more.

I have no idea how this happened, but when you go to Google and type in iPad covers, our little ole shop comes up #7. We only sell 3 Built NY iPad covers, I’ve never done any SEO work for the phrase and we sell bugger all of them, but we still rank ok. Go figure!

If you’re in need of a neoprene cover for your iPad, check them out, they’re pretty funky.

This week, Gerry Harvey announced that he didn’t expect to make any money from his Harvey Norman Big Buys, or if it did, very little. Do you want a little hint on why that is? You’re flogging cheap crap not associated with your brand and you’re trying to take on the #1 online retailer in Australia at their own game, but with inferior wares.

I actually had someone write to me this week asking if I could get a particular Lock & Lock product in stock – they’d seen it at Harvey Norman Big Buys, but wanted to shop with me instead.

I also get plenty of people wanting Thermos products that are discounted elsewhere, but our customer service is trusted and we’re a well respected brand who give to the community and are concerned about people’s health & wellbeing.

I must be doing something right ……. Gerry, do you want some pointers?

Read more ….

I will elaborate more, but I just found out about Strictly Organic, who do organic meat & poultry on the Central Coast. I’m going to check them out.

I picked the keys up yesterday for the new Shop Naturally warehouse and when I walked in the front door, I almost fell over. The previous occupants had hired a professional cleaning company to come in and clean up. Downstairs is a tiled floor that was pretty grubby and I shudder to think what they used to clean it. It’s either bleach or ammonia or something, but even after I had someone come in yesterday and used our natural floor cleaner on it and not the toxic junk that I can smell in there.

If I could have a do over, I would have told them to leave the place dirty, grabbed a pile of natural cleaning products and paid someone to come in and do it without killing themselves or me.

I was in need of a cheap microwave tonight. After seeing John Winning speak at an e-commerce conference recently, I decided to check his site out first, Appliances Online. I got a $119 Samsung for 33% off – with FREE delivery and I got to choose the delivery date, which is one month from now. It’s being delivered in one of their trucks too.

I’m not quite sure how he makes money off a sale like this (I’m guessing he doesn’t make much), but it’s good for the consumer anyway.

This week Newcastle launched a new logo. Read the article here to see the logo. http://www.theherald.com.au/news/local/news/general/city-unveils-newcastles-image-change/2183445.aspx

Apart from the fact that I think the colour balance is shit and it doesn’t really say the right thing for a city, I heard local advertising agency Peach were paid $88,000 to produce it. Even if it was a good job (which I don’t think it is), where does a council get the nerve to throw tax payers money around like that, and where do an advertising agency get off taking it?

I spent Wednesday this week at the Online Retailer Roadshow learning about all the new things happening in online retail. Apart from all the great tips I learnt to improve my shop (not sharing here guys, sorry), I found two great new websites to shop from and learnt the meaning of a new word, bespoke!

Shoes of Prey were one of the guests at the conference. It’s an Australian site for bespoke shoes. Bespoke is the ‘fancy’ word for ‘custom made’. Surprisingly, they start from $195 and go up to $350 for ankle boots. I think that’s pretty damn good for a pair of shoes you get to design yourself. Go check it out, you’ll have oodles of fun playing with the shoe maker, and if you’re at all worried, there’s a 365 day money back guarantee if they don’t fit or if you don’t like them.

The second shop was Appliances Online. Now, normally, 27 year old with a huge success story like this business would make me want to hate him, but John Winning was a guest speaker and he was just so down to earth and worked hard to get his success – starting off by doing customer service himself 24/7.  After taking a good look through his site, I can tell you, I’m not walking in to a Harvey Norman again to buy a toaster or a kettle or a fridge or any appliance. Great company, great worth ethic, great success story, great products, great prices. Why would you go anywhere else.

David Lawrence have just lauched an online store. Normally I take a trek in to Newcastle to their standalone store and walk out with $400+ in new goodies. Now it’s at my fingertips 24/7. God help my credit card!!!

I’ve been getting the emails from Scoopon every day, and up until now, haven’t really seen anything I was interested in. $149 worth of foot at The Orient at the rocks in Sydney for $49, which is dinner for 2, entree, main, dessert & a drink for less than 25 bucks each.

Bargain!