Friday, December 11, 2009

Shew - what a day!

Spot met Headliner yesterday and all went well. Hopefully, right this very moment, she is cooking up little goat-lets and in 5 mos. we'll have new life on the farm.

Rex, my invaluable horse trainer, called and the regular Thursday barn cleaner injured herself... could I clean stalls? Yes. I could and I did.

The printer called and our label "fix" was ready to be picked up at the same time Spot had her date... lucky Furry Husband got out of accompanying me on a goat date. He went to pick up labels instead...

When it rains, it pours eh?


Label fix?

My first preservative contained the dreaded "parabens". Parabens. Mmf. A lab rat somewhere got cancer... parabens were associated with this event. There is no proof or scientific documentation that the parabens caused said cancer. You can read more about parabens here and here .

However, once a cat like that is out of the bag, you can never really put it back in. That cat is wiley and has sharp claws.... mee-owch!

When I first developed my formula, there weren't paraben free preservatives. When I had my labels printed, there wasn't a paraben free preservative. Due to consumer demand, there are paraben free preservatives now.

I met with my printer last week to develop a fix... it's easy for me to make a paraben free lotion, however, the labels I printed earlier list parabens.

I would be shooting myself in the foot to take a product to market and automatically alienate or scare a segment of my market. Once they are scared off they won't come back... some might but others will forever be lost.

I needed to get the parabens out of there. Yes, there was a cost to fix my label and yes, that sucks because it eats into profit, but in the long run, I haven't scared any prospective clients away.

The customer is always right.... doesn't matter if your personal thoughts don't match. Doesn't matter if there is no scientific backing or proof, you simply gots to listen to what your customers want.

Happy FRIDAY everyone!



5 comments:

DebH said...

parabens and pheromones..girl you're going in all sorts of directions!! Spot hopefully settles nicely and GOOD Luck on the
lotion business! I am tickled pink for you!! :)

Yousef said...

Sounds like pharmaceutical company scare tactics if you ask me. Sorry to hear the man is sticking it to you.

Shanster said...

DebH - thanks!

Yousef - eh - I'm not so sure about scare tactics. I think media, and a tendancy toward "the sky is falling" fear response in us crazy humans. :)

Yousef said...

Who's pocket do you think media is in?

Shanster said...

I dunno, could be anyone's pocket.

I think reporters' personal bias plays a role as well - someone who believes in all natural, all green is going to sway toward the "no preservatives" camp and people who are really technical may go the polar opposite way.

If people stay informed and think vs. react, it may be a less scary world.