If you've paid much attention to our website lately, you may have noticed some changes. For my toys, the muncher's delight toy went up to $4 and the fun chewies toy went up to $7. If you've ever helped me make either of those toys, you know those are two of the most labor intensive toys I have. While hay cubes aren't necessarily expensive, they take forever to drill (AND a good chunk of them split and then cannot be used for the toys), which means at least 1/3 of a 40 pound bag of hay cubes cannot be used for toys, and the rest that can takes forever and a day to drill. The fun chewies toys have those small circular cutouts that are used (3 per toy)... they require a power sander, some patience, and a good grip to sand those. The effort required for the toys has made the price raise, so that we're not making 10 cents per toy, without that including the effort required to make them.
The shelves have had an overhaul as well. Remember how we had custom shelves of all lengths, and you'd hear me talking about getting boxes from online to fit them and all that... well, that lasted a very short period of time, as I actually had in some good sized boxes to fit the larger shelves... and that worked great... except for everyone who wanted those larger shelves, also wanted like 3 houses, or a motorhome, or something else that wouldn't fit in the box, and they didn't want shipped separately. Oy. Well, the alternative was HUGE boxes, think 4' square, which cost a mortgage payment to ship cause they have to go balloon rate. So, the idea of custom boxes for the custom shelves was scrapped.
And then, even the custom shelves themselves have sort of gone by the wayside. I used to think, oh how nice, I can make any size shelf anyone wants. And that's great, in theory, but in reality, I schedule an appointment right before I'm set to leave to go somewhere, and they want custom shelves... I end up covered in sawdust and need a shower before I go... even though I was supposed to leave right then, not right then + shower. Yes, I realize, the solution to that is to require knowing what the shelves are ahead of time, but as many of my people show up the same day they contact me... that's not all that practical either. So, for the sake of my continued sanity, now we will have standard shelf sizes.
We will continue with our perch shelf, circular perch, and corner shelf, but will no longer have the small, medium, large, and x-large shelves, where the customer gets to pick the sizes they want. We now will have 6" shelves, 10" shelves, 12" shelves, 18" shelves, and 23" shelves. Larger custom shelves will be available to customers who are able to pick them up from the rescue in Hammond, IN.
You may not have noticed these changes, partially because the host of our website has the webstore only marginally working right now. Can't say I'm thrilled about that, because the less time the webstore works, the less you can all place orders, the less money the rescue can make. And obviously, the rescue needs to sell items to make money. But anyway, point being, since the webstore isn't working, I can't edit the items either. So if you happen to view it, when the page is working, but before the website gets a chance to update itself, you may still see all the original shelves up and such. The web host has said it should be officially fixed by tomorrow. Hopefully... I'm not holding my breathe, but we shall see....
And then final change that you may have noticed is that in the Chinchilla Sales Policy, now our hold period (with deposit) has gone down to 14 days. This has changed because of the fact that we had oh so many chinchillas here that would always be on hold, and we would be unable to actually wean our own babies or take in new ones, because we were holding so many for people. What partially caused this change, as well, was that it occurred to me -- I chin-sit chinchillas and other animals, and I would not chin-sit an animal for 30 days for nothing. Well, I suppose not for 2 weeks for nothing either, but 30 days with no additional gain would be excessive. Other than that, we get a lot of people who want to adopt once they get back from vacation or whatnot... and so they would pick out a chin prior to vacation and then want to pick up a month later. Which we were doing... but realistically, they could have just as easily picked out a chin when they got back. And so, we're down to 14 days now...
And I believe, for the time being, that is all...
