The latest delivery update, and other news too. - Part 1, and now Part 2 as well! - The big one - including plans for the rest of 2023 and early 2024.
Me (James), at Salty Revolution
The latest delivery update, and other news too.
A bit behind plan.
Hi everyone,
Sorry this month’s delivery update is a bit behind plan. I normally try to get one of these out around the last weekend of each month, but, I’m about 2 weeks behind with it. Partly this is because I was doing a massive overhaul of the back of house of the website, and our paperwork system (more on this below), and also because I wanted to get the first week of bulk deliveries going out completed so I had a better idea of how the new systems work and iron out any teething problems.
There’s been quite a lot of changes over the last 9 weeks, so I’m going to split this update into two parts.
Part 1
This is going to be a brief summary of where we are at so that everyone can know what’s going on with deliveries etc, without needing to wade through lots of text. Part 1 was originally published 9th July. Part 2 (down below part 1) is the new bit!
Part 2
Now including Part 2, far more interesting stuff! The gossip, the drama, sweat, tears, etc (below Part 1).
Part 1 - Deliveries, and other news.
A brief summary of where we are at.
June deliveries - We got out quite a few June deliveries last week, there are more going out this coming week too, although they haven’t all been booked yet. I’m currently about 2 weeks behind the original plan, but, at least 75%+ of all June delivery orders will be out by next weekend. If you chose June delivery, but, haven’t had a delivery date booked yet please bear with me I’m working through it as quickly as I can. There shouldn’t be many June deliveries left by next weekend, and any that are left I’ll contact you individually. There is more detailed information on this in part 2 below for those wanting to know more.
July deliveries - A small number of July deliveries went out last week, a few more are going out this week. We should be on track for 90%+ of all items currently on order for July delivery to be delivered by the end of July.
Booking deliveries out - Around February time we switched from a system of booking out deliveries 3-7 days in advance to booking out all the deliveries for the following 3 weeks in big 3 week blocks (I’ll go into more detail in Part 2), but, essentially that created problems so we’re now going to a hybrid system of booking deliveries out only 3-10 days ahead.
Add to my order - Following a trial of the new system this is now back. How this now works is if you have a current order you can place a new order with a minimum order value of £20 (before any credit notes etc are applied).
Free delivery - We do free delivery on all orders of £59 or more (this might change later this week). The system isn’t smart enough to tell if you have an existing order or not, so it is possible to place an order for £20 to £58 even if you have no other orders. But, it then won’t trigger a delivery being arranged until the orders total £59 or more (this amount might change this week). I try to spot anyone that drops into this and let them know. You can then either order more to bring it up to £59, or if you didn’t want to spend £59 I can refund it. This only applies to new customers, so if you had a part delivery and still have some things remaining then you will still get them delivered even if they total less than £59. hopefully that makes sense.
Part deliveries - For those not familiar with our system your order(s) may arrive split into two (or more) deliveries. We do this to avoid delays on 1 or more items holding up your whole order, and also so that we don’t have loads of stuff here that we have to keep track of being for orders. If 50%+ of your stuff is here it’s less work for us to send you the things that are here, than to keep track of who has what. This also means you get at least some of your stuff faster rather than having to wait until it is all here (sometimes the other items are here just not ready to go yet I’ll cover this more in part 2). Generally we try to only book out a delivery if 50%+ of your items are ready to go (either value or number of items).
Aftercare emails - Once your box has been packed and I know exactly what was in it I’ll email you a list of what we sent and what is to follow. I try to do this after the box has left the building, and before the box arrives with you, but, sometimes the box arrives before the email does. Don’t worry if this happens, the email will come shortly afterwards.
Refund glitches - A few week’s ago I discovered some errors with some card transactions. They took a lot of tracking down, but, I discovered 29 glitched card transactions out of the 4,000 plus card transactions since 1st December 2022 (we’ve now changed card merchant from Stripe to PayPal because of these problems). I thought I had caught all of them, but, today found 6 more. If you have cancelled your order, and, it is 28 days or more since we confirmed the refund, but, it’s not in your account yet please email me at jamesgoodchild@live.com if possible including your order numbers, and the date we confirmed your cancellation. The vast majority do complete within 28 days, so if it’s less than 28 days please wait until 28 days since we confirmed the cancellation.
New Main menu button - See lower down this page.
VIP mailing list - Something special coming later this week. If you haven’t already signed up to our VIP mailing list it’s worth doing so now so you don’t miss out (button below).
Delivery update and other news Part 2.
The gossip, the drama, sweat, tears, etc!
It’s taken a little bit longer to get Part 2 finished than I thought as we’ve been really busy posting out and hand delivering orders, and answering a lot of emails.
The monthly “please only email if necessary rant”.
Please only email if neccessary. I know you’ve heard me ask this many times, but, if we got 50% less emails then we could post out roughly 50% more orders each week, and then you wouldn’t need to email to ask when your delivery was coming because you’d have already had it. I know it doesn’t seem like it would take long to answer an email, and you’re right answering one email doesn’t take long, but, answering usually 50-200 emails and messages per day eats a lot of time. Most of the time the information is already published in these updates anyway.
Most people are incredibly patient, and I really do appreciate that, especially while we are battling to catch up, and 50% of all emails are from just 2% of customers. It would be unfair to let 2% of people slow up the orders for the other 98% of you, so to avoid that happening if anyone enters the 2% bracket I cancel and refund all their orders. It’s a bit heavy handed, and they rarely take it well tbh, but, it’s the only way to be fair to everyone else.
Also spending 1-2 hours a day repeating information already published in these updates is not a fun way to spend 1-2 hours of my time each day, and achieves essentially nothing other than cause more delays. Ok that’s my monthly rant about unneccesary emails out of the way, on to more interesting stuff.
Rant ends.
EDIT: Completely forgot this bit!
Changes to our delivery charges.
Over the last few weeks since we started doing free delivery on all orders over £59 and bringing back “add to my order” we’ve seen lots more people adding to their orders, this is a good thing. We’ve also seen a big surge in the number of new customers, especially at the £59 to £65 range. You’d think lots of new customers would be a good thing, but, that’s not always the case.
I don’t mind new customers, most of them normally are from recommendations, but, recently we’ve started seeing an ever increasing number of new customers, and this growth seems to be increasing week on week. Now most of you remember the chaos at Christmas of 4,000+ orders in just a few weeks and I’m not going through all of that again, so I’m going to be making some major changes to delivery charges this week.
I’ll explain it in more detail later in the week. I came up with a rough plan that allows our core customers to order easily and add to their orders easily, whilst having a different delivery charge system and timescales for deliuvery for new customers. That way we can adjust the charges and timescales for new customers to throttle back the amount of new customers to manageable levels so it doesn’t get out of hand with suddenly tons of new people flooding the place with hundreds of small orders.
I’d much rather ensure we have a good reliable system that rewards our long term regular customers, and we try to gain small controllable numbers of new regular customers, rather than 1,000 people that mostly spend £60 once and just cause absolute chaos for everyone else.
Essentially there will be one delivery charge and delivery time for our regulars, and a more expensive and slower delivery service for new customers. I can then adjust the price and timescale for new customers to bring in a few more, or limit it down to almost nil.
I’m also looking at making the sale offer pages of the website password protected so only regular customers can purchase from those pages, and probably putting all new fish, inverts, corals, etc on the password protected areas first, so our loyal regular customers get first pick of new arrivals and they only go on general sale to the public after you’ve picked what you’re having.
Of all the problems I’ve faced over 30+ years of having my own businesses, the worst problem I’ve ever had to deal with is having too many customers to cope with. Lessons have been learnt from Christmas, and we won’t be letting that happen again.
The ongoing arm saga
Ok so not such great news on my arm, but, it is what it is. I was due to have an operation to free the nerve which was trapped between the two bones earlier this month. Unfortunately whilst I can take Tik Tok (my assistance dog) pretty much everywhere for most things, I couldn’t do so for surgery, because if I had to stay in, or was unconscious a long time etc, they have a dog to look after. Unfortunately no one was available to assist me with him so the operation had to be cancelled.
Some good news
The good news is I managed to mostly free the nerve myself by doing about 30-60 minutes physio on it a day. I basically wiggle my hand backwards and forwards for 2-3 minutes until it hurts too much to continue many times a day, mostly whilst at traffic lights, watching Netflix, or anything else where it’s not doing anything useful. This means I can now do most things such as drive, type for up to about 8 hours straight at a time, pack parcels up to about 4 hours at a time, etc. Most days I don’t even have to take any painkillers which is good.
Some not so good news
Unfortunately though my hand is only in my wrist joint on one of the 4 corners. This makes it quite floppy, and I can’t lift more than a couple of kg’s with it. Also unless it is kept strapped my hand flops around all over the place and rapidly gets quite sore.
Most of the time it’s not so bad except certain arm movements. Opening the windows on the car involves bending to some weird angles. Using a fork is oddly nigh on impossible. Some mouse movements such as drawing inverse curves are extremely difficult to do. I can mostly do most things, mostly pain free though.
On the downside my hand is at about a 30 degree angle to my arm (it sort of hangs off one side of my arm), I have a lump of bone (part of my radius) sticking out about 4/5th’s of a inch out of the side of my arm (which looks pretty funky and hurts like hell when I accidently clip it on anything like door handles), I’ve lost about 80% of all sensation in my right hand, and my right forearm is about half the width of my left so a bit like a Fiddler crab.
Even Bob can’t fix this
The hand specialist at Addenbrookes has said they can try operating, but, if the op went well it would be unlikely to make much difference, that it’s more likely to go badly and make things worse, and if it went wrong I could lose my hand entirely. So I’m more or less permanently partly crippled for life now. It actually doesn’t bother me that much, I have the attitude that if you can’t do anything about something, then don’t bother worrying about it.
Despite many many requests to publicly name the person that did this to me, I have refrained from doing so, because as much as I’m not a big fan of him (not unsurprisingly), I wouldn’t want anyone deciding to even things up, and someone else to also have this happen, even him.
Luckily the entire incident was recorded on CCTV at 1080p video, in colour, in daylight, with sound. It’s now with the Crown Prosecution Service and sentencing guidelines are 4-7 years staying as a guest at His Majesty’s pleasure. In addition there will be a damages claim for personal injury, being unable to work properly for 8 weeks plus, permanent disfigurement, etc, likely to be 20k to 40k at a guess. I doubt he’s got a spare 20k-40k tbh, but, with damages claims you can’t go bankrupt to clear them so he’ll have to pay it off in bits each month for a long time. Whilst he’ll probably think this is very unfair, in most of the world the penalty could be much more severe, so really he should consider himself fortunate.
On a much more cheerful note!
Thank you very much to the 1,000+ people that messaged sending me well wishes. I really did want to reply to each of you individually, but, with both arms incapicitated it wasn’t possible to do so. I did read every single message though, and it really made a huge difference to me, and encouraged me to battle through this.
There were many many times over the last 2 months were I came very close to giving up the daily battle against at times incredible amounts of pain, with even simple tasks like opening a can of coke being impossible for the first few weeks, and then when I could finally manage it, it being a 20 minute battle using a spoon held between my teeth. That kind of thing can really grind you down, and I certainly wouldn’t still have a shop, or worse, had it not been for the enormous amount of encouragement from such huge numbers of people from more than 40 countries. Really truly thank you everyone
New graphics for The Sump.
Web stuff: Changes to The Sump
For those of you not overly familiar with the website at the bottom of each main page when you scroll all the way down is The Sump (the footer technically). This small section is the same on each page, essentially a little page on it’s own. I’ve given it some new graphics, trimmed away less useful stuff, and added some useful buttons etc to it, so it’s a bit more useful for navigating you around the huge website (in total 3,500+ pages with over 13,000 images).
Web stuff: Main menu
Hopefully a better way to navigate the vast website. So the Main menu button takes you to a page with just a couple of our most important announcements, and then buttons to all the main pages.
From that menu you can then click “Other pages” to get to more obscure pages, out of date content etc. I have had a bit of a prune and deleted about 500 pages and a few thousand old images, but, most of the old content is still available. Hopefully this will make it easier to navigate around.
Web stuff: Shop menu
So at the bottom of each shop page (or halfway down in some cases), there used to be a button to go to the next shop page. Scrolling through all the shop pages on a desktop pc takes a while, but, isn’t too bad. However, on some mobile phones doing that is over 4,000 phone screens of products/species/etc. So instead at the bottom of each shop page there is now a Shop menu, which is like the Main menu, but, only has shopping related buttons. Below that is the new Main menu button so you can get out of the shop bit again. I am working (slowly) on moving all the shop pages (but, not the main website) over to Shopify which will be a much better shopping experience, but, it is many hundreds of hours of work to fit in to do this. I’ll start trialling it in a limited way in a month or two ish.
Web stuff: New arrivals carousels
These are little revolving carousels of images at the top of the homepage where you can see the newest things added to the website. See below.
Systems & Paperwork changes
This is very very complicated, but, essentially a new and far better system for allocating stock to orders, finding paperwork, making amendments etc. It took about 60 hours to reorganise the 700 odd orders, and create and populate the 20,000 cells of the XL spreadsheet that let’s me manage everything better. It was many many hours of data entry to do this, about the same amount of typing as copying out two entire BT phonebooks by reading and then typing it all in. It took a long while, it seemed even longer whilst doing it. The good news is as well as being a much better system, it also now saves me 5-10 hours a week of time on admin going forward.
The lease on the shop
After over 2 years of legal battles, and 9 court dates so far it would seem that we might finally be somewhere close to resolving the issues around the new lease. It’s been far more work than it should have been, as in reality with my previous landlords at other business properties this kind of thing is normally pretty much wrapped up in an afternoon. It looks like we are nearly there, and we might even (he said hopefully) have future security in our current building finally secured (maybe) next week.
New things in July (ish)
New ECOSYSTEM coral packs coming in. Two of the new ones are live now, but, I’m not 100% on them yet, so there might be some more changes before we roll out all 40 or so new coral packs. The Seashells page and Seashells packs are getting a complete overhaul including new WYSIWYG shell collections. A vast new range of refugium packs, and much larger Refugium shop. A new and vastly larger WYSIWYG shop for corals, including lots of individually made coral gardens, rock structures, WYSIWYG inverts, and more.
MAN BUY is coming back!
For those that don’t know what MAN BUY is click the button above and take a look. Please note before you choose to be offended by this that it is only suitable for people with a sense of irony, or at the very least some kind of basic understanding of what “comedic effect” means.
#If you don’t understand either of those concepts it’s probably not for you, and just keep scrolling and pretend you didn’t see this. It’s far more preferable (to me at least) if you do that rather than sending me some kind of barely understandable rant, which explains in great depth why you are so opposed to something you didn’t understand, or read. I know you might not think so, but, trust me on this one when I say you’re really not the target demographic for this kind of material. Maybe stick to eating Play-doh or whatever.
I haven’t updated MAN BUY for a while so currently it doesn’t show all products etc, but, I’m going to patch it up and bring it back.
WTF is MANBUY?
So the basic idea of MAN BUY (glossing over the ridiculous bits) is actually something I’m very proud of, and is actually truly quite groundbreaking in terms of online retailing, because as far as I’m aware none of the other big retailers have thought of this yet. I don’t just mean fish shops, I mean why haven’t companies like Amazon and eBay doing this? Genuinely, why not!
The technical explanation.
So the technical explanation is it is a different user interface and navigation system that pulls data and products from the same data fields as the main website, but, presented in a completely different way.
The normal people explanation.
I’m not great at being “normal” so bear with me. the simplest way to explain it is with an example, this being me this will obviously be a ridiculous example, but, you’ll get the basic idea.
Ok so let’s take a website you’d mostly all be fairly familiar with, let’s pick say Amazon.
So at the moment Amazon have pretty much one website design. So whether you’re a 12 year old girl, or a Grandpa, everyone uses the same Amazon website. My view is this is essentially a terrible idea.
So with a website the vast bulk of it is the bit you don’t really notice, the photo of each book, the description of each movie, etc. Then a tiny part of the actual coding is the interface, the bit you see as a customer. That is the bit that decides where the buttons are, what the font is, etc.
The front bit that you see is basically like big empty squares on the screen. Ok so you search for books on cooking say, and the back bit of the website has all the info on all the cooking books. The interface then fills those squares with pictures of the books, information on them, prices etc, from the huge database behind the scenes.
In terms of building a website changing the interface is actually quite quick and easy, all the work is in building the big database. So creating a second interface that lays everything out differently might only add 2% more work in total, and then you have 2 different websites, but, will all the same products, they both pull from the same stock etc. So why not put say 10% put more work in and instead of everyone having to use Amazon, there could be 6 different Amazons. But, why would you want to?
Ok imagine you also had say Old People Amazon. So this could be a version of Amazon more suited to Old People. Maybe make the fonts a bit bigger so it’s easier to read. Add a zoom option so it’s easier to see close up detail, make the buttons bigger and more seperated, a more say 1950’s style font and colour scheme etc.
But, you could also have Cool Amazon aimed more at people in their twenties, with a more complicated interface, a more mobile phone friendly format, snazzier graphics, a faster checkout option, maybe even different delivery options, etc.
Then you could have say Kids Amazon. This is maybe more cartoon based, looks more friendly and easy to use. Automatically filters out anything that’s age restricted products, and instead of having sections like books, films, etc. It could be divided differently into say; school stuff, things for me, presents for my friends, presents for my Nan and Grandad, things to do with my friends, etc.
Now you could go nuts and create a hundred versions, and why not. But even on a very basic level why doesn’t say Halfords have one website for everyone, one for people that are into cars and modifying them that want all sorts of fancy stuff to customise their cars, and one website for people that know nothing about cars that just want to know where their nearest Halfords is, and whether their staff will fit a new bulb to your car for you or not. Why isn’t everyone doing this?
By the way if anyone does do this and rips off my idea, I’m cool as long as you pay a very small and negiotiable royalty, and will definitely sue if you don’t (fish stuff is mostly these days my job rather than my hobby, my hobby is suing people, I love to sue lol).
So that was the idea (taken to ridiculous parody) with MAN BUY.
But, my idea didn’t stop at MAN BUY I just haven’t had much free time, but, now I’ve reorganised the huge database side of the website a lot. It’s now easier for me to create other interfaces. So coming soon (hopefully), will be; a new to marines version of the website for people that haven’t kept marines before, a kids section leaning more towards the animals that children like plus reef related games etc, an aquascaping version where you can pick the corals by colour or placement rather than type (so instead of choosing say Zoas or Mushrooms you can go to the page for blue corals, or high light area corals, much like garden centres have plants for acidic soil seperate etc.
I’m really pleased with this concept. This isn’t just something new and interesting for the fish world, this could theoretically affect the way everyone shops in future on all websites globally. Quite proud of this.
Made by Salty Revolution
We used to have 30 of our own products (plus Merch), but, we recently streamlined it to 8. In reality there are 4 big sellers.
1- Coral Food 99 - This stuff flies out so fast it’s a constant battle to make it fast enough. Sometimes I even see it for sale on eBay etc at up to triple the price we sell it for, because at times demand goes so crazy for it. Every now and again demand just goes mental and we have several times made a new batch of 100+ bottles and they’ve sold out in a day. It is truly different to every other coral food out there because it works in a completely different way. It took over 15 months to develop this and countless test tanks etc.
2- Coral Poppers - This sells very erratically. Sometimes we go 2-3 weeks without selling a single bottle, then it goes nuts again. This simple bottle makes all your corals more colourful.
3- Revolution - Always a solid seller. Live bacteria that you dose each day or week and it eats all your nitrates. You can have as many fish as you want and still run at 2ppm nitrates with no effort at all. It’s not hard to see why for some people this is just fantastic.
4- Carbon. Categorically the best marine carbon on the market. Understandably it’s more expensive than many other carbons, but, it’s the best one, it’s provably the best one, and because of how we choose and purchase it, it will always be the best one. Read the description and you’ll see why.
We also make some other stuff that sells a bit. However, the range is going to be extended massively. This was originally scheduled for UK launch with the first 100+ products in September. However, I’m probably going to hold off the UK launch a bit longer so it’s a bit closer to the US launch.
Up until now I’ve just been buying all the ingredients and then we mix it up in store, and bottle and label it here. Small scale production isn’t brilliantly efficient as we don’t have a labelling machine, production lines etc. However, because of products like Coral Food 99 we have attracted the attention of some of the larger manufacturers in the reef hobby. So instead of me (or preferably staff) mixing it with a big spoon and pouring it into bottles by hand, we are now close to a deal with some much larger manufacturers and distributors in the reef hobby. So I will still design the product, and the label, and all of that, but, they will manufacture it, market it, and distribute it, and in return I get a small royalty for each bottle sold.
So it will then be made to the same recipe on an industrial scale in automated plants, with proper labelling machines, and all of that stuff.
We also have a company that is a quite well known online retailer of reef products in the US that is willing to get behind it, stock it, and sell it in the US to their already established customer base.
I’m not doing this to make millions, the royalty per bottle is very small. I just want to see bottles on shelves in LFS all over the world with El Presidente on the side of them. We’ve got 2 manufacturers interested in this, and 1 distributor. I’m fairly happy with the way it’s going, so fingers crossed. Maybe Jan/Feb 2024, maybe.
New shop coral systems and invert systems.
I’m only at the design and testing stage so far, and I am keeping this very much under wraps. It’s quite out there in terms of design. The first test system could be up and running next month, if successful then we could see all the new systems in place by maybe November. If it works as planned this is going to be epic lol.
Coral farm news
Currently we farm about 100 or so of the types of corals online, mostly the rarest soft corals (high end mushrooms and Zoas etc). Pending the new coral systems this will be extended massively. If everything goes smoothly (it rarely does), then possibly as early as December this year we will have as many as 300+ types of soft corals on farm, and maybe not long after all soft corals online will be grown in store. I have no plans to farm LPS or SPS though, apart from maybe Blastos and Acans, because I like Blastos and Acans.
Weekly live videos coming back soon.
These were suspended back in May last year due to be honest mental health issues. Although they are great fun most of the time, it can also be quite demanding to get the shop prepped for filming, and also stage fright and anxiety to be honest.
I’ve been through the mill a bit these last 27 months, especially the last 14, and if you’ve ever had any problems like that you’ll understand why going live on Facebook at a scheduled time every week can become something you dread. Sometimes you’re busy, sometimes you’re ill, sometimes you’re just peed off with the world. Having to pull yourself together and do an often 1 hour live show, that will be seen by anywhere from 5,000 to as many as 250,000 people (I think our highest ever was around 270,000 (not including shares of shares or embeds), but, 100,000+ was pretty average at their height) regardless of how you feel that day is a challenge.
I think once I’ve done the first few I’ll soon get back into it. I was planning to start 3 weeks ago, but, I keep putting it off. Maybe this week. Or maybe next, we’ll see I’m nearly there. If it goes ok then we might switch to doing them live on YouTube a few months later. Mainly because YouTube will pay me and Facebook won’t. I figure if I’m doing them anyway, then why not get paid for it.
Other new shop things, for me the most exciting thing ahead.
I’ve made some rough plans, but, I’ve had to try not to get too excited until i know the lease issue is sorted, and we have enough years still in this building to make it viable. But, I’ve got a few rough plans for some new shop display tanks. I don’t want to go into details yet, but, I’m pretty excited. They’ll probably be the usual big reef tank, it’ll be a bit different to most others, but, fairly standard. I’m far more excited about the nano display tanks tbh, more on those later.
I know what you’re thinking. This sounds ok, but, it’s not very, well, James is it?
Don’t worry there is no shortage of crazy here. I’ve got a couple of ideas that I’m toying with that are properly out there. Some of these I’ve been working on and tweaking for a few years now. I’ve narrowed it down to about half a dozen choices, all of which are very very different to each other, but, I’ve probably got to pick just 2 or maybe 3 of them and it’s hard to decide. Once I know how many years we have left in this building I’ll make a call on it. Some of them require very little work and expense, and are easily moved. Some are not. One will require moving to a purpose built building. Let’s see what happens with the lease, and then I’ll flesh out the ideas a bit more, and maybe we’ll have a big vote and all of you pick one (or more) of them, because I really can’t decide lol.
One thing I am certain of though is that after 27 months of life chucking everything at me, I do genuinely feel more like me than ever before. I’m not back to where I was before 20th April 2021 yet, I took that day hard, but, I’m not far off being back to my old self again. Except this time I am more organised.*
* Please note that “more organised” is a comparative term, and being “more organised” than before is a very low bar to have to improve upon.
James. Salty Revolution.
