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| Time to reformulate, rename and discontinue some flavors. |
Everyone needs a new lease on life now and then, Lemon Lollipop included! I've been wanting to reformulate, rename and discontinue some lip balms and summer is the perfect time to do it. I recently took an online course about improving my personal routine and discovered for myself the lost art (to me!) of goal setting. Under the family business category, I listed three things:
1-evaluate the lip balm flavors
2-solve the label problem
3-get ready for the holiday season by Sept 15th
I'm happy to say, with a little encouragement from my husband, we've pushed through with some decision-making about goals 1 & 2. Hooray! I'd like to tell you all about it.
REFORMULATE
We have a few flavors, though good sellers, that are
too weak in my opinion and I always cringe when they get ordered. So there are three flavors going under the reformulation knife in hopes we can find a supplier with stronger flavor oils soon:
-Chocolate Mint
-Morning Coffee
-Rich Chocolate
RENAME
This is almost comical, but for a range of completely crazy reasons, we are planning on renaming two lip balms. Both these flavor names have been hotly debated over the kitchen table by all team members for quite some time. But after nearly a year in the line-up, we are seeing things more clearly and thus, the name change (back).
-Sugared Lemondrop will be named Lemon Lollipop as it should be
-Grape Lollipop will return to the title Grape Soda
A note about the lip balm flavor Lemon Lollipop...we also have a perfume called Lemon Lollipop, which is why we've gone back and forth about the name of the lip balm (which doesn't exactly match the fragrance). I thought we would launch (relaunch) the fragrance Lemon Lollipop in the spring, but we didn't do it. I don't know if it will be done in the next year, either. So I'm okay with the lip balm brandishing the name it rightly deserves...until I change my mind again!
DISCONTINUE
Some flavors I don't find worth reformulating for various reasons and these will be
discontinued soon. I will post sale prices soon. The sale prices will only be good on Etsy as I can better control the inventory there and won't oversell these flavors. These flavors will be removed from the website soon. Some of them
MAY return at a later date, for example, the Chocolate flavors, depending on if our new Chocolate flavor oil is strong enough.
-Chocolate Caramel
-Chocolate Coffee
-Chocolate Lavender
-Chocolate Mint
-Hot Vanilla Chai
-Lavender Rose
-Root Beer Float
-Moonberry
-Morning Coffee
-Rich Chocolate
EVALUATE
Another issue we've had is the labels peeling off the tubes. I did not have this problem in 2009, but we have it now for some reason. After trying to unsuccessfully find a resolution ourselves, we've decided to pursue having someone else print our labels. We're waiting for samples and look forward to introducing our new labels as we replenish batches. We hope customer experience will improve with this change!
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