As we believe in transparency and open communication about how we work inside of the Baum-kuchen, I would love to take a moment to share few updates with you.
1. New beautiful artifacts...
We have been working pretty hard to update our website with all the new goodies we recently stocked in our shop. We are always very careful about adding items to our collection because we want to make sure that they are right fit for us. So this past few weeks of receiving amazing products from all over the world felt pretty exciting. Frido and I have had lengthy discussion about each one of these products before we placed an order from the makers and producers around the world. So far I have updated Roterfaden Notebook and few items from the Superior Labor including Leather Carrier (which already sold out but we are now taking pre-order). There will be more updates coming soon so please stay tuned:)
We recently reduced our shipping rate after I stared at Quickbook and financial reports from past few months for a long time and figuring it out if we could continue to sustain our business with lowered shipping/handling fee. Maybe it might make your next order $1 or $2 less... and maybe it's not a huge deal... but it marks an important milestone to me as a shop owner.
The change was made possible by our implementation of ShipStation and making some parts of our fulfillment process to be automated such as printing labels and letting the system figure out the tracking number, etc. ShipStation definitely offers much better USPS postage price even though we pay a monthly fee to them. I will test the current shipping/handling fee for a few months, see how we float and let you know if there might be additional changes.
I am not sure if we will ever get to the point where we can offer free shipping/handling fee (and that's not perhaps a purpose of what we do) but we will continue to work on making the products we curate more accessible to everyone who might be interested while keeping our part of the process meaningful (we love making pretty packages to share with our customers:) and bringing happy surprises and smiles to our customers' unwrapping moments.
3. Brick and mortar opening hours
We have always had odd opening hours at our brick and mortar space in Glassell Park and it was simply to make sure that we don't open for the sake of opening the shop but only open when we are able to work around our family's schedule. We are going to stay true to the philosophy because we want Baum-kuchen to be emotionally sustainable for us and be there when our family is much older... and there is no rush in growing so quickly. We decided to close most of the our opening days at 4pm for now instead of 5pm. If you have little children, you might already know this but 4-7pm is such a critical transitional time for kids from active day, through dinner, bath, to a quiet bet time. Usually our girls are in bed by 7-7:30pm and if I stayed at the shop every opening days until 5-5:30pm and get home by 6pm..., I miss the big opportunity to help them through the evening.
underline: we are aiming for less toddler tantrum and early and happy bedtime!
In exchange of going home early, I will be able to work extra few hours at home after girls go to sleep focused (instead of exhausted and scattered...) and that is a win win for everyone:)
Satchi starts her kindergarten next year and maybe we will change our hours again when we get there and who knows... we might have few more special someone helping us at the shop. For now closing at 4pm feels good to us and we are going with the flow.
If you need to stop by after 4pm due to your work/life schedule, send me an email so that we can arrange the opening hours for you. (wakako@baum-kuchen.net) We also open at least one of the weekend afternoon (mostly Saturday afternoon for now) to accommodate our customers' schedule.
4. More frequent shipping schedule
With Nerine's help, we are able to ship more days of the week now! Shipping our order promptly is one of my highest priority of the shop because I know how much each item from the shop means to the person who orders it... so I am super thrilled about this! Usually we ship throughout the week except Wednesday and Sunday. Our fulfillment closes around 1pm for the day's shipment so if your order comes in at 2pm on Monday, your package will most likely ship on Tuesday. International orders are usually shipped only during the week because we need to physically go to the post office counter.
5. A BIG THANK YOU!
I just want to say THANK YOU for taking a part of our humble adventure. I am still the one and only one who corresponds to our sweet customers (I seriously think we have THE BEST customers in the whole world) and it's so important to me. I am sure that there will be one day when I would have to share this responsibility in some way... (not sure how yet) but for now I like to hold on to this very personal process close to my heart.
Every email, Facebook comments, Instagram feedback, blog comments... or simply browsing our Glassell Park studio/shop space in person means a lot to me and Baum-kuchen... and I want the whole world to know that Baum-kuchen simply does not exist without such an amazing, creative and inspiring community. THANK YOU:)
xoxo
-wakako
