A Few Words about Trust

This morning (as I write this) over my bowl of Shredded Wheat, I was pondering the subject of trust. (Yes, sometimes I have deep thoughts! It’s usually when I’m mowing or packing a shipment, but this morning it was while eating cereal.)

Specifically, why would any buyer buy anything from any seller (specifically Carol and me) over the Internet? I decided two issues come into play: convenience and trust. To sit in air-conditioned comfort and place an order beats the heck out of driving all over town, burning up $4-a-gallon gas.

We grasp the convenience angle, so here’s where trust enters the mix. In the early days of on-line shopping, it seemed like many people feared to place orders. They were afraid their credit card information would fall into the wrong hands, and some bad guy would run up lots of charges on their card. For years now, virtually all on-line retailers use secure socket layer (SSL) technology to safeguard your sensitive credit information. But, enough of the IT mumbo-jumbo.

Returning to the subject of trust, eBay has a system of feedback that has morphed over the years. Imperfect, it’s still a good relative indicator of an on-line retailer’s overall performance. Over her nine years on eBay, my wife Carol has over 4200 positive feedbacks from different customers. On the other side of the scale are 7 negative or neutral feedbacks. What’s common in all seven of these transactions is that the disgruntled customer didn’t tell Carol there was a problem and didn’t give Carol a chance to correct the problem. Carol’s a great problem-solver.

Other than eBay, where can you, the buyer, find out about the reputation of a seller on the Internet? There aren’t many places to look.

Which leads us to: what really separates one retailer from another? We all proclaim we’re interested in customer service. (I’ve never heard any retailer say he wanted to treat customers badly.) We can come up with a laundry list of discriminators: free shipping over a certain purchase amount, good communications, accurate descriptions and clear images of what’s for sale, and so on.

Maybe the secret of life, the universe, and everything that pertains to on-line sales comes down to trust. And we can build trust by building a relationship. Now, this won’t appeal to all our friends and customers. Some people want to place their orders and get on with their hectic lives. That’s fine. We respect that. But you want more. That’s why you’re reading this.

So, that’s one of the reasons we’ve decided to share our thoughts with you. We want you to understand who we are, so the trust will come over time. You won’t agree with everything we say, and you can post comments to the contrary. But we’ll try to share our philosophies, stories, and thoughts with you. And please reciprocate. Nothing brings Carol up from the doldrums faster than a nice note from one of you. We really feel like many of you are our friends. We like hearing what’s going on in your lives.

So, in the spirit of openness, here’s a little about me. I started my first business when I was 12. I sold comic books via mail order way before the days of the Internet and personal computers. I ceased that when I went off to college to study math. I’ve been an information technology weenie for over thirty years. I’ve always had some little business on the side just to stay connected with the world.

Carol and I met twenty years ago and got married a year later. I wanted an anniversary date I could remember, so I suggested April 15th. She decided Valentine’s Day was more appropriate. I happily agreed when I figured I could probably get by with just one card for both occasions. (Here, honey, it’s your combined anniversary/Valentine’s Day gift!) We have a four-legged child, a Weimaraner named Echo.

I prefer tennis to golf, baseball to football. I’d rather be warm than cold. Eating is a passion, and all cuisines intrigue us. (Although I’m not real partial to Ethopian food or duck feet when I’m having dim sum.) Carol’s a great cook. Because of her years spent in south Louisiana, she makes the best crawfish etouffee on the planet, and her several varieties of gumbo (depending on her whim and the availability of ingredients) surpass the offerings of the most noted Cajun chefs. Hopefully, our new web site will automate some of her more mundane tasks, freeing her to cook and bake more in the future.

We like to travel, but we try to limit our travel to the off-season. Consequently, from January through June, we only ship twice a week to allow us to take weekend vacations around. My work-related travel comes in spurts and sometimes interferes with the busy season, but we try to post notices well in advance of any absences. Always, if you need something shipped quickly (because of a birthday or anniversary or some other reason), please let us know. We’ll do our best to accommodate you. (Of course, it never hurts to plan ahead.