When Hollywood Calls - Part II

Or

"Lessons Learned"

In our last article, "When Hollywood Calls", Noreen and I attempted to give a somewhat humorous, and mostly factual, account of a rush order we received for 150 custom candles for the promotion of the Warner Bros. movie, "House of Wax".

I am happy to report that the order was successfully delivered and the customer "LOVED" the product. They liked them so much that they ordered an additional 50 for use at the "Premiere Party" and an additional 5 for their personal use.

It was an interesting experience and we learned a few lessons that you might be able to benefit from:

1) Leave room to change the price during the manufacturing process, but be careful not to "surprise" the customer. Next time we will give a price range to the customer to allow for some wiggle room if incorrect estimates for what the job would require are made. Here are few issues we had:

a. We ended up making 10 master molds instead of the 3 we initially estimated

b. The candles were almost twice as heavy than we estimated

2) Push back on unrealistic request dates. We were able to get an additional two days added to the schedule. It turns out that the customer had artificially built those days into the shipping estimate.

3) Don't trust an "overnight" carrier to make a Saturday delivery. Our Urgent/Priority/Saturday delivery of the prototype ended up in Tennessee on Saturday instead of California. We were able to convince them to make a special deliver on Sunday to the customer's house.

4) Always get a "Secondary" contact at the customer's location. Due to a personal issue, our customer went missing at a critical decision making point. We were able to find another person who could help, but it would have been better to have the information up front.

5) Use the Internet to your advantage! This is how we (and our customer) used it:

a. The customer found us through a GOOGLE search that took them to our link on the IGCA Guild web site

b. We used email to workout the details and finalize the agreement

c. Payment was all handled through the Internet payment gateways

d. We posted pictures of the prototype and, later, the production candle and packaging to a custom web page for the customer to view and approve

e. We found pictures of our candles taken, with the movie cast members, during the "Premiere Party" on a web site that trades in celebrity photos Click Here To Visit

Even with all of the issues above, it was a fun and profitable exercise. The customer has hinted at more custom orders in the future, to which Noreen replied, "Great, just give us more than a weeks notice next time."

Carl Hill
Gatehouse Candles
www.gatehousecandles.com

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