ring sling with overlapping pleat shoulder

New ordering system is now in place. Please click the link and read before ordering!
Remaining points for in-stock slings:

New ordering system -- or -- keeping Jan sane

Why am I doing this? I do all my own sewing, shipping, computer work, etc. etc. etc. And while I appreciate my success, I was getting so many orders that I had, several times, contemplated just closing the store -- it was getting to be too much. Waiting lists make me feel like I have a 20-page term paper due the next day, every day. Very stressful, and not conducive to happy family living. It came down to a choice between closing, and possibly losing some customers but saving my sanity. I hope you'll understand that this was the right choice for me, though I do apologise for the inconveniences it's bound to create. [more]

How this is going to work:

1. The evening before a sewing day, I assess what's going on in my life, and figure out how many hours of sewing I can do without getting stressed.

2. I go into my shopping cart control panel and assign that days' worth of points to an option that will be attached to each time-consuming product or accessory (so the DVD will not have the option, since all I have to do is stuff it into an envelope, but slings and accessories will each have the option). The options for "Are you paying by..." are as follows:

1. PayPal adds the points to your order (and subtracts them from the available total). This is the one to use if you are paying by PayPal and are ordering an in-stock fabric sling (i.e. everything but custom slings, sling/wrap redos, backordered fabrics, like Solarveil, and slings with custom accents).
2. Check/Money Order bypasses the points system (since check or money orders will be sewn when payment arrives, not when the order is put through). I'll manually remove a point from those available when the payment arrives.
3. The third option, PayPal, but sending fabric/sling/wrap, is for people who are paying right away, but are sending fabric for a custom sling, or a sling or wrap to be redone, and whose order won't take up space in my sewing queue that day. This also applies to fabrics that are backordered, like beige Solarveil is right now.

3. Customers (hopefully not too frustrated by the change!) come to the site and add things to their cart. The more accessories that are added, the more points the order takes up (because more accessories equals more time spent sewing). You can check the number of points allotted per day (and the time at which I expect to refresh them) at the top of each page. This number does *not* change as people order -- it's static until I change it. I wish I had the web programming skills to be able to make it change, but alas, I don't.

4. Customers who order soon after the points have been added to the site (which will probably be in the morning, but may also be the evening before) will have the best chance of getting their order in that day.

5. Customers who order after all the points have been taken will receive an error message from the cart -- something along the lines of "I'm sorry, that particular option is currently out of stock." That means I've gotten all the orders I have time for that day; in that case, I'd recommend coming back a few hours later or the next day, or, if this is truly your only chance to order, send me an email and I will try to accomodate you.

6. Customers whose orders have gone through will have their orders sewn that day (or the next Monday, if the order is received on a weekend), and they will be sent out that day or the next. You can always check your order's status here.

7. Customers who order by check or money order will have their slings sewn and sent when payment is received.

If you still have any questions, please email me at info@sleepingbaby.net and I'll do my best to help. I hope this isn't too frustrating -- I just can't think of another way (besides the horrible waiting list) to fairly serve those who would like to order from me, while still maintaining a healthy, productive family life. I hope you'll understand :)

Why I am doing this:

While I try to maintain a professional appearance on the web and in my sewing, the truth is, there's only one of me. I do all the sewing, the web upkeep, the shipping, the accounting... in short, I am sleeping baby productions. This worked fine until about the beginning of this year, and then, for whatever reason, I got a lot more popular than I had been before! Word of mouth, positive reviews, and a lot of press on The BabyWearer all meant that more and more people were coming to SBP looking for a sling. That's great for business, and I was very happy to have the extra income (especially since I could donate a lot more to charity!) but at the same time, it was putting a lot of extra stress on me and my family.

Last year at this time, I had about 40 orders in a month. Now I'm up to 90-100 per month, and as it turns out, that's just too many. I found myself telling the kids far too many times, "No, I'm sorry, we can't go to the park today -- Mommy has too much work to do," and spending the evenings sewing and replying to emails instead of spending time reading to and playing with my children. My work-at-home job had turned into a work-24-hours-a-day job, and I'm not happy with that.

This is a pretty common phenomenon with WAHMs. Their product gets popular, and suddenly they're faced with a big decision: what takes precedence, the business or the family? And if the answer is 'the family' (as most of us would choose!), then what happens to the business? A lot of WAHMs, when they get to this point, start to hire help, whether it's someone to sew for them, someone to take on the millions of tiny tasks that add up to a lot of time (packaging, getting things printed, web stuff, etc), or someone to take care of the house and/or kids while they concentrate on the business. Of course, all of that costs money -- a lot of money, if you're paying your new employee a living wage -- and that money has to come from somewhere: the price of the product has to go up.

Now, in my particular niche (slings sewn to order), I don't really want to hand off the sewing to someone else; I like sewing (in moderation) and prefer to have 100% control over the finished product. I haven't priced my slings such that I can afford to hire extra help, either -- I'm guessing I'd have to raise prices at least 50% to cover that kind of help, and here's the kicker: I don't want to raise my prices. I like being able to provide a quality, comfortable sling to parents who would otherwise not be able to afford them. At the same time, I don't want to go to a presewn, in-stock system -- partially because there's no way to provide all the various combinations possible (6 lengths times goodness knows how many fabrics times two kinds of rings times five accessories equals... too many slings to keep in stock!) and besides, I can't see myself keeping up with demand by doing an in stock system anyway.

The only other alternative seems to me to be some kind of bottleneck for ordering. I thought about offering sort of a slot system, where each day I would offer some number of slots, but that didn't seem like it would be enough, since a sling with all the accessories takes me a lot longer to sew than a plain sling. I don't want to start a waiting list, because that's what May turned into, and the only way I got caught up was by closing the store -- I hate doing that, and I hate having 20 slings hanging over my head -- feels like homework I've left to the last minute, and I find that extremely stressful! So, this is what I'm going to do.

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