Last week I wrote about our experience with BuyWithMe and about another small business who wrote about their experience with Groupon. Just the other day the Boston Globe ran a story about Groupon and similar companies in regards to Boston area restaurants. Its an interesting read.
Joanne Chang of Myers + Chang and Flour fame had this to say: “These companies are making money off of restaurants that are nervous or low on cash and presenting it in a way that makes it sound like such an amazing deal for everyone,’’ Chang says. “In fact, restaurants are getting a fraction of what they need to actually make any money. And then these companies walk away with a nice check.’’
Another chef had a different take on it: “If you look at it like ‘I’m giving my product away at 25 percent,’ it’s not a viable thing to do,’’ says Andy Husbands, chef-owner of Tremont 647 in the South End, who has worked with Groupon. “If you look at it as marketing, you’re getting people to come see your restaurant. I would say most of them are not regular customers. I believe in my product. I put it out there, and hopefully you’re going to tell people and you’re going to return.’’
There's a lot of varying opinions on group buying sites. What's yours?
Monday, April 11, 2011
Web Mentions
Beyond review based websites we have been mentioned on a couple of blogs. There are two people (that we know of) who have moved with us and been kind enough to take the time to write about their experiences on their own blogs.
Rebecca Rivera and her husband moved with us a few years ago. She writes briefly about the importance of being organized for your move, which cannot be overstated. The more prepared and organized you are the faster your move will happen and the lower your costs will be.
Another blogger, uvajdmba2013, mentions us at the end of her post about moving to VA. We loaded a truck for her to move herself down there. Check out the post for some first person, moving yourself details about out of state moving.
One of our customers also made up a nice YouTube video. We've worked with the Deutsch's on multiple moves and we really appreciate that they took the time to make the video.
Rebecca Rivera and her husband moved with us a few years ago. She writes briefly about the importance of being organized for your move, which cannot be overstated. The more prepared and organized you are the faster your move will happen and the lower your costs will be.
Another blogger, uvajdmba2013, mentions us at the end of her post about moving to VA. We loaded a truck for her to move herself down there. Check out the post for some first person, moving yourself details about out of state moving.
One of our customers also made up a nice YouTube video. We've worked with the Deutsch's on multiple moves and we really appreciate that they took the time to make the video.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Groupon and similar companies
I read a very interesting blog post about a small business that used Groupon and the results of that decision. This post from Posie's Bakery's owner has become quite the sensation since it was posted in September 2010, appearing on sites like The Drudge Report and MSN. I highly recommend it if you also own a small business as the owner, Jessie, makes some interesting points about how to spend advertising dollars. Skip the comments, though, as they quickly get nasty and are frequently off topic.
Anyway, reading Jessie's post got me thinking about our own attempt at Groupon. We originally heard about Groupon through a friend of ours that uses the site often. We contacted the company a few times but never received a response. As I'm sure you know by now, Groupon has spawned quite a few similar sites. One of those, BuyWithMe, was interested in talking to us about a possible deal. Ultimately, we decided against offering a deal through BuyWithMe or any other similar site because the math just didn't make sense to us.
At first the deal sounded fantastic. Wow, we get paid to advertise through you? That's awesome. Of course, that was the first thing we heard from the sales rep and things started to go down hill from there. We were told that customers much preferred deals that were 50% off or over, which was our first red flag. That not only wipes out our profit margin but also means we're losing money. Still, we thought, it might be worth it. We had a new service we were offering and we thought it would be a good way to drive in some business during our really slow winter months. The sales rep was enthusiastic about the idea. We talked about how many coupons per person to limit the offer to and how many coupons one customer could use at one time. We talked about price and profit margin and how to make the deal attractive to BuyWithMe consumers. Things seemed to be progressing nicely.
What worried me was that I couldn't figure out how BuyWithMe made money on this whole deal. This is not a charitable organization just looking to help businesses in a bad economy, its a business itself. I tried asking the questions a few different ways but didn't get a satisfactory response. Finally, after several phone calls and e-mails back and worth over the course of a week or two I got the answer. BuyWithMe was going to take 50% of the money paid for each coupon purchased. So, we were going to offer a steep discount and then BuyWithMe was going to take another 50% of that from us. For instance, our offer was going to be half off. We were going to provide two workers for two hours for $100 and hour. It was an hour free. Take another 50% off that and we were only going to be pulling in 25% of our normal rate. That's a lot of money to lose. Plus, our sales rep wanted us to agree to travel up to 20 miles away from our warehouse for any coupon. This would produce some very unhappy customers as travel time to 20 miles away would eat up almost half their coupon.
In the end, working with BuyWithMe just didn't make sense for us. They wanted too much from us that we just couldn't afford to give. There's no way we were going to ask our guys to take a pay cut or work for free half the time to make this offer financially viable. I know the point of sites like this (they claim) is to drive in new business and that those new customers will hopefully become repeat customers. We love repeat customers and we get a lot of them already. That's based on our good work and reputation. We love new customers, too, and we'd like to meet as many of them as possible. Honestly, though, we were worried that trying to get new customers through this BuyWithMe deal would seriously harm our business financially to the point that we might not have been around to see repeat customers.
We're glad we didn't end up taking the "deal." Our sales rep had a hard time letting go, but I suppose that makes a good sales rep. It is clear that BuyWithMe and similar sites appeal to certain businesses and it works our very well for a lot of companies. It just wasn't going to work well for us.
Anyway, reading Jessie's post got me thinking about our own attempt at Groupon. We originally heard about Groupon through a friend of ours that uses the site often. We contacted the company a few times but never received a response. As I'm sure you know by now, Groupon has spawned quite a few similar sites. One of those, BuyWithMe, was interested in talking to us about a possible deal. Ultimately, we decided against offering a deal through BuyWithMe or any other similar site because the math just didn't make sense to us.
At first the deal sounded fantastic. Wow, we get paid to advertise through you? That's awesome. Of course, that was the first thing we heard from the sales rep and things started to go down hill from there. We were told that customers much preferred deals that were 50% off or over, which was our first red flag. That not only wipes out our profit margin but also means we're losing money. Still, we thought, it might be worth it. We had a new service we were offering and we thought it would be a good way to drive in some business during our really slow winter months. The sales rep was enthusiastic about the idea. We talked about how many coupons per person to limit the offer to and how many coupons one customer could use at one time. We talked about price and profit margin and how to make the deal attractive to BuyWithMe consumers. Things seemed to be progressing nicely.
What worried me was that I couldn't figure out how BuyWithMe made money on this whole deal. This is not a charitable organization just looking to help businesses in a bad economy, its a business itself. I tried asking the questions a few different ways but didn't get a satisfactory response. Finally, after several phone calls and e-mails back and worth over the course of a week or two I got the answer. BuyWithMe was going to take 50% of the money paid for each coupon purchased. So, we were going to offer a steep discount and then BuyWithMe was going to take another 50% of that from us. For instance, our offer was going to be half off. We were going to provide two workers for two hours for $100 and hour. It was an hour free. Take another 50% off that and we were only going to be pulling in 25% of our normal rate. That's a lot of money to lose. Plus, our sales rep wanted us to agree to travel up to 20 miles away from our warehouse for any coupon. This would produce some very unhappy customers as travel time to 20 miles away would eat up almost half their coupon.
In the end, working with BuyWithMe just didn't make sense for us. They wanted too much from us that we just couldn't afford to give. There's no way we were going to ask our guys to take a pay cut or work for free half the time to make this offer financially viable. I know the point of sites like this (they claim) is to drive in new business and that those new customers will hopefully become repeat customers. We love repeat customers and we get a lot of them already. That's based on our good work and reputation. We love new customers, too, and we'd like to meet as many of them as possible. Honestly, though, we were worried that trying to get new customers through this BuyWithMe deal would seriously harm our business financially to the point that we might not have been around to see repeat customers.
We're glad we didn't end up taking the "deal." Our sales rep had a hard time letting go, but I suppose that makes a good sales rep. It is clear that BuyWithMe and similar sites appeal to certain businesses and it works our very well for a lot of companies. It just wasn't going to work well for us.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Goodbye Ford
Yesterday we dropped off our first ever moving truck at the junkyard. It was sad to see it go, but the truck was in rough shape. It was a 1994 Ford 350 box truck. We did a lot of jobs with this truck and it served us well.
When it was purchased it needed a lot of work. It turned out that a lot of that work as a total pain in the butt. But, it got done, it got spruced up with some rad looking vinyl and went on the road. After years of faithful service and a lot of maintenance and replaced parts it just became too expensive to keep up, so we had to get rid of it.
In its place we now have a 2005 Isuzu box truck to match our other Isuzu. As we speak the old vinyl is coming off the box so Cy Sign and Banner can come by and put on our usual black and blue design. We're definitely excited to have a new (to us) truck that's in great shape and runs well but we will miss our old Ford a little bit, too.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Recycling
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| image courtesy of http://www.thehuntingtonlibrary.org/?p=234 |
The City of Cambridge has a phenomenal recycling program. At their drive in facility they have a cardboard compactor that we bring our un-reusable boxes and scrap cardboard to. They also allow us to recycle our stretch wrap. Not all cities allow this. In fact, its a rather hard service to find. Stretch wrap is an industrial strength saran wrap that we use on 99% of our moves. We wrap goods with it to protect from scratches, moisture and all other manner of possible undesirable effects. We also use it to adhere moving blankets to furniture. This all means that we go through a lot of the stuff. Luckily, we are able to bring it to the recycling center in Cambridge instead of stuffing landfills with it.
Another way in which we recycle is in our piano disposal. Whenever someone asks us to dispose of a piano for them we strip it for reusable parts which get sent to Wheeler and Sons Piano in Ipswich, MA. Whatever metal is left is sent to a scrap yard and the wood is sent for recycling at C.J. Mabardy in Cambridge.
Boxes are a big source of waste in the moving industry. If you are packing yourself a great way to avoid that problem is to call Benezra Boxes. He delivers high quality used boxes right to your door and will pick up whatever you don't use at no cost to you. The added benefit is that his used boxes are significantly less expensive than new boxes from places like U-Haul or Home Depot.
We're always looking for new ways to be greener, so if you have any suggestions we'd love to hear them!
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Going to New York
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| photo courtesy of http://ibethyap.wordpress.com |
Today (as I write even) one of our trucks is on the road to New York City for our first interstate job. Its pretty exciting, though probably less exciting when sitting in traffic, which is bound to happen. We packed up the truck yesterday and got together some last minute paperwork. Today is the drive to and from New York with the goods.
We've had quite a few calls for instersate since we received our license. In fact, we have an on site estimate tomorrow for a move to Connecticut and we just did one for Virginia as well. We're really proud to be offering this service to customers and also very excited to see the great response we've gotten so far.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Moving Tip #4: Packing Dishes
Packing dishes can be tricky. They are often some of the most fragile things you have in your home so you want to make sure they'll make the trip from one location to another without incident.
The first thing to do it pick out a box size. There are boxes called "dishpacks" which you would think would be great for dishes, but they're just too big for the task. Plates can be densely packed so its best to use a smaller box. Items that require more packing paper such as bowls or cake stands can go in larger boxes because they will be lighter.
Once you've chosen the appropriate sized box for your goods its time to pad the bottom of the box with paper. A good way to add a cushion of paper is to take sheets of paper and crush it into a ball. Fill the bottom of the box with as many balls of crushed paper as will fit then cover them with a couple of layers of flattened paper. This method will create a nice cushion for your fragile goods.
To pack plates, wrap each in a sheet of paper. Then, place them on their edge in the box. Plates should never be packed flat. They should always be packed like you would vinyl LPs because the edges are the strongest part of the plate.
Goods like bowls, glasses, etc, that require more packing paper get the same crushed paper cushion at the bottom of the box. Well wrapped bowls can be placed inside one another and smaller goods can fill in spaces within the box. If you don't have anything small enough to fit in an empty space just fill it with paper. It is very important that your boxes be full so that the goods inside can't move around during transport.
Once you've filled your box give it a slight shake, like you're testing a birthday present to guess what's inside. If you can hear anything besides the rustle of paper open the box and add more packing paper then test it again. When you can only hear paper when you shake the box then you're good to go.
The first thing to do it pick out a box size. There are boxes called "dishpacks" which you would think would be great for dishes, but they're just too big for the task. Plates can be densely packed so its best to use a smaller box. Items that require more packing paper such as bowls or cake stands can go in larger boxes because they will be lighter.
Once you've chosen the appropriate sized box for your goods its time to pad the bottom of the box with paper. A good way to add a cushion of paper is to take sheets of paper and crush it into a ball. Fill the bottom of the box with as many balls of crushed paper as will fit then cover them with a couple of layers of flattened paper. This method will create a nice cushion for your fragile goods.
To pack plates, wrap each in a sheet of paper. Then, place them on their edge in the box. Plates should never be packed flat. They should always be packed like you would vinyl LPs because the edges are the strongest part of the plate.
Goods like bowls, glasses, etc, that require more packing paper get the same crushed paper cushion at the bottom of the box. Well wrapped bowls can be placed inside one another and smaller goods can fill in spaces within the box. If you don't have anything small enough to fit in an empty space just fill it with paper. It is very important that your boxes be full so that the goods inside can't move around during transport.
Once you've filled your box give it a slight shake, like you're testing a birthday present to guess what's inside. If you can hear anything besides the rustle of paper open the box and add more packing paper then test it again. When you can only hear paper when you shake the box then you're good to go.
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