Getting to this point - Part Three

With my supplier competing against me some things are starting to make sense. When the business first started out there were (as with most new businesses) some issues with quality and consistency with the custom drinks. If a customer were to order a 50/50 combination of green/white tea there would be some tea bags that were significantly stronger with the green tea (more than 50%).

Working through the various issues (some of the individual tea bags would arrive open and not sealed) I designed a new tea bag, limited the number of teas that could be combined and the incremental percentages of the teas (for example you couldn’t have a less than 5% of any ingredient) these issues were slowly resolved. Quality went way up and returns went way down.

With any business you’ll always have some percentage of people who return product, same with mine. However starting in November (before I know about my manufacturer competing against me) my return rate started to creep up. Nothing significant, but higher. I just thought it was part of doing business. December and January were busy months. The business was featured on a national TV program and I was mentioned in a large circulation magazine in the US.

As you can guess by now, my manufacturer was responsible for the increase in “problems.” There is no reason for him to keep up my quality when he’s competing against me. My business is a leader in this small area of the market, so the best way to get my business is to take it!

All during this time my supplier kept on insisting that there was nothing wrong with quality and that it must be an increase in the number of people who didn’t like the product. (Well of course there was an increase in the number of people who didn’t like the product, he was making it crappier!)

It was sometime in March that my supplier’s deception was found and all of a sudden everything started to make sense with the returns and unhappy customers. By the time April came around returns were in the neighbourhood of 50%. I dropped my supplier as soon as all this happened.

It took me many months of searching to find this one supplier. I lucked out as he was environmentally friendly, but I guess he was morally bankrupt! I’ve been searching for a new supplier ever since and have put the entire business on hold.

Next post...past work experiences.

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