It's Saturday Morning and I am behind the counter again!

Hey it's Saturday morning and I am back behind the counter and using the wife's computer so you will have to endure more fashion blogging this morning.
This is our "paint brush" Melissa dress which seems to be very popular. It is in our classic Melissa body but with a kind of wild fabric with a lot of black and grey and blue and pink all splashed together. Somehow it does seem to work out and a lot of the girls are loving it as a work dress. We only cut 30 of them and half are gone after two weeks so it is already a success. We will put it on the Internet today and that should take care of the rest.

A lot of people think having an online business is a panacea but let me tell you it is a pain in the balls. You get returns and the garments are often not in great shape. If you suspect they were worn and then returned you get in a beef with the customer. I talk to a lot of other retailers and tell a lot of horror stories. I have been pretty lucky but the fuck-ups have been spectacular.

One sale we did over the phone. The person who called up begged and pleaded that we send out a coat over night because she wanted to wear it for her birthday so we did. But what we didn't know was that she used her grandmothers card without her permission. So when the grand ma refused the charges the credit card company refunded it to her and we were out the money. There was no insurance because it didn't go through the normal e-commerce site and we lost out big time even though we had a signed UPS slip where the grand daughter accepted the package. I tried to pursue it through the cops as a fraud case but they didn't give a shit. So we made a new rule, no two new rules.
Never take a phone order unless we have a signed credit card receipt. And never send anything to Newark, New Jersey.

Another sale was to this woman in Georgia. She called up and said that the UPS driver had left the dress on her porch and it had got soaked. She asked what she should do. I said to hang it up to dry and then try it on before she sent it back because she had to decided if she wanted to buy it before I send her a new one.
So of course she didn't want it and sent it back. But then we got in a hassle because she wanted to be refunded for the postage to mail it back. Now I think it would fair for me to pay for it if she wanted a new dress but if she just is returning it I shouldn't have to pay for postage since I don't pay for that on a normal return. I mean I can't pay for everyone to try on our clothes. If you order something and don't like it that's the chance you take if you don't want to order from a mega-retailer like QVC. I ain't QVC, I am just a little shop in Brooklyn. Anyway we went back and forth with emails and such and it is just a big pain in the ass. Not worth the time and trouble.

So don't think Internet sales are the be all and end all. It is a good revenue stream but you can't count on it unless you are LL Bean or something like that.