Newsletters!
The Moment of Truth
Seasoned Greetings!
Before I get into the typical what's-up-with-TableFare news, I need to cover a bit of boring newsletter administrative stuff. I know, every single creative writing class you ever took in high school told you to start off with a bang, but this this time I really have to go against the grain. Oh yeah, at TableFare we're breakin' all the rules.
If you are looking at this wondering how you got on this list, then these first paragraphs are for you. Until a couple weeks ago, our site was hosted at GoDaddy. We also used their newsletter tool to craft and distribute these enchanting missives. When you signed up for the newsletter, you had to confirm your subscription by clicking a link in an email that was sent to you. Most people completed these steps, but there were always about a dozen or so who never clicked that link and thus their subscriptions were in a constant "Pending" state.
A few weeks ago, we moved our site to a new hosting company (1&1) and are now using their newsletter tool. I was able to export all the subscriber data from GoDaddy and import it into 1&1, but I found that the new tool did not pay any attention to whether subscriptions were Confirmed or Pending... as far as it was concerned, everyone was Confirmed. What that means is that for some of you, this is the very first TableFare newsletter you are receiving, and well, you may not want to be receiving them. If that is the case, you can simply use the Unsubscribe link at the bottom of this email and be done with us!
OK, now that that's out of the way, let's talk about some more interesting TableFare happenings!
From Day One, we've known that we would reach a point where we would have to make a Go or No Go decision, and yes, we are now at that point. We have received our first bid from a manufacturer, so we finally have that all-important "How much is this going to cost us to make?" number. Additionally, our marketing company has provided us a breakdown of all the costs associated with, well, marketing for the first year.
After we evaluated all the numbers, we decided to move forward! We are still expecting to receive one or two more manufacturing bids, but we expect to decide on a company within a couple weeks. At that time we'll authorize them to begin making the molds and tools, which will take two to three months. Actual production will commence shortly thereafter.
This is certainly very good news for us, but because the bids took longer to get than we anticipated, it means we are not going to have product in time to display at the Gourmet Housewares Show in May as we had originally planned. This is slightly disappointing, but we also have a bit of relief knowing that now have a bit more breathing room. We're going to target a couple small tradeshows over the summer, though we haven't decided which ones yet.
We recently learned that we have been granted a trademark on the name TableFare, which gives us one less thing to worry about. There's still one final bit of paperwork to take care of and then we can start throwing those (tm) and (R) things all over the place. And here's a little teaser for you: we have settled on a name for our first spice storage product, but we're not quite ready to release it into the wild yet. Ha!
Dedicated readers have been following Carol's exploits as she has taken on internships first at Mrs. Cooks kitchen store, and then at World Spice. If you have been meaning to bump into Carol while she's on these not-so-top-secret missions, you'd better work fast! She will be doing her final two shifts at World Spice (below Pike Place Market on Western Ave. in Seattle) this Thursday and Friday, March 6th and 7th. Stop by, say hi, buy some spices.
Best regards,
Carol and David Peterman