Cost Cutting

With my supplier's prices up 25-30% on this summer due to the falling value of the pound I've had to find as many ways to economise as possible to keep prices competitive. I've not yet put up any prices and if the pound starts to recover I shouldn't have to.
One of the first things I've cut down on is packaging. Any customers reading will have noticed the size of packaging has shrunk. I typically send small numbers of SMDs in envelopes now. My rational is that they're packaged in a protective plastic casing anyway and padded between the invoice and envelope. It then means I can send them as a letter rather than a large letter saving 16p which is a massive amount on small value purchases. Otherwise we just use smaller Jiffy bags.
Another thing is we're using less colour in our printing, colour printing just costs too much in these hard times.
Other cost cutting measures are reusing tea bags, bathing less and of course using energy efficient, long lifetime, reasonably priced LEDs from my own stocks on eBay and phenoptix.co.uk

Customer Service

I messed up a few times this week I have to admit, I don't mind compensating, even over compensating when I mess up. I even compensate when the postal service mess up.

5 years on...

So 5 years ago I opened this account for blogging. Seems I didn't get around to it!
Well in the last 5 years a lot has changed, but writing about it all would no doubt take a fair bit of time. So lets concentrate on the now.
The part time pocket money project started at Exeter University is now a full time business. After some neglect our ebay store is back fighting fit and the feedback is clocking up nicely. The website is the next project. Our prices need a little adjustment and we've got loads of new stuff to list.
It's a very exciting time for me, a nervous one too considering the state of the world economy, but I'm expecting big things from phenoptix in 2009.