"The Show Must Go On!"

How is your summer? How about your holidays? How about when your co-workers take holidays? How does your company deal with short staff? Especially in this economy, there usually is not much overlap in staffing. Ok, so what happens when people are on holidays and someone gets sick… and someone gets injured… AND someone has a family emergency, all on the same day? (We usually have 5 order pickers on shift, and 3 could not come.) You call in everyone to help!

So here I am today, picking orders from 4pm till 9pm, twenty feet up in the warehouse on one of our order picker machines. Oh, did I say it's 33 degrees in the warehouse? Thanks to Sandy for also basically saving the day by coordinating labor and motivating other staff to jump in. Everyone in our company really pitched in to get the job done. We even had a young fella help out that was walking door to door looking for work and dropping off his resume. Can you imagine - "Hey, I'm in the neighborhood looking for work, do you have any?" YEAH, START RIGHT NOW! His name is Paul, and he did such a great job, we will keep him for a few more days and see if we can hire him on.

Also, sorry to my day warehouse manager for dropping a case of Coke Zero cans from 20 feet up. It was an accident. I know that 24 cans of exploded pop makes a real sticky mess :-)

Cheers,
Calvin

Helijet's New Website!

Check out Helijet's new website. Thanks Jay from Helijet for the plug!

Single Source Suppliers

Whenever possible Helijet aims to work with like-minded Carbon Neutral Companies.

One way to meet this goal has been to partner with Costless Express for our coffee counter and office supplies. Everything from Apples and Ballpoints to Trail Mix and Wastebins. CEO Calvin Johnson and his terrific team help us make sure we are getting the best value for our dollar and the evironment. When possible we also make sure that the products we are buying are local or follow a similar environmental policy, like Ethical Bean Coffee and Ecotainer cups and bowls.

Single source suppliers help by reducing the number of warehouses being shipped to and then the number delivery trucks on the road bringing items to the office. Even better in this case, Costless Express is also a Carbon Neutral company!

Have Some Cake!

My new Business Development Manager, Kristi, is incredible at getting to the decision maker when she calls prospects. She is working on a list right now of "Fortune 500" companies in Vancouver and promoting our Office Coffee Service.
She is a real pro and doesn't give up 'til she gets me an appointment. Well, recently she came across a company who foiled her attempts at every angle. She just could not get past the gate keeper or phone system. Nobody would give her the contact name of the purchaser for their breakroom supplies. But… in her many attempts calling, she did find out the company was in the midst of reviewing their current supplier, so she knew time was of the essence and this called for something special.

Here is her solution to get the attention of the mystery person in charge of making the decisions: A cake with the inscription "You can have your cake and eat it too! Let Costless Express save you dough!"

I personally took down the cake, and the receptionist was blown away, saying nobody has ever done something like that, and she hopes we win the account because we were just so original and determined.
I can say we did make contact with the Executive Assistant to the President. Seems all the right people had some cake today!
Having fun, one customer at a time!
Calvin

Printing

Did you know Costless Express does PRINTING? Well, if your answer is no, you may be hearing more about our service soon, since we purchased equipment to print some of our jobs in-house. Today we can offer just about any printing under the sun, but relied on large commercial print shops, like most of our competitors. Now with our new purchase we can cut costs and speed up delivery times on the hot commodity printing items like flyers, cards and envelopes.

I'm most excited about using the equipment for our own marketing material, like post cards, door hangers and booklets. We are working on some new TOP SECRET technology (coming soon!) that requires us to make custom mini catalogues for individual customers so this equipment will be perfect for the job.

If you would like a quote on your printing, please contact us. Darren, our print sales rep, has over 25 years experience and will offer you not only a great price, but ideas on how to save money and make your print job the best it can be.

Cheers,
Calvin

More on Jen & Jeff's Wedding

I was anxiously awaiting for the wedding photos and blog update from Jen and Jeff's wedding on the weekend. I knew they were flying out to Victoria after the reception on Helijet. For those of you that follow my blog, you have seen me post about Helijet a few times.

Jeff took some great video and pics and wrote a piece. Click and see his July 8th entry.

Thanks Jay from Helijet for taking care of the happy couple!

Calvin

The Twedding!

If you Twitter at a wedding, you're at a Twedding!

Today Sandy and I attended a lovely afternoon wedding at the Tea House in Stanley Park for our good friends Jen and Jeff.

Jeff you may know from Virgin Radio, a.k.a. Buzz Bishop. His blog is quite entertaining, so add it to your favorites for some good local perspective on pop and tech culture. Look for his July 5th entry.

If you read the blog entry on his wedding day you'll see where he calls it a "Twedding". You see, Jen was stuck in a Limo that took a wrong turn, and she was 45 minutes behind schedule while guests and groom stood on the grass outside overlooking English Bay. What is a radio personallity groom to do while waiting? Tweet on his Blackberry of course!

Congratulations Jen and Jeff!
Calvin

Boys And Their Toys!

I'm super excited about my new TOY. Can you guess? Not a boat… Not a motor cycle… Not a camera, video game, laptop or giant BBQ.
No, my new toy is SOFTWARE.
SMART SCRAPER I call it. And what it does is take an Excel file of item numbers from products we sell and tells me what my competitors price is and item number off their web site. Very cool!! I have worked with the company, who developed software & technology for about 10 years on other reporting tools they have custom made for me. When I saw this technology being used by another of their customers, I knew I wanted it for Costless.
Today, I ran a report of the top 4000 Office Supply items we sold last quarter, and loaded it into our new SMART SCRAPER. Then, I pointed the software at Staples.ca website to see who had the best pricing on each item. The results were amazing!
We had the lowest prices on about 82% of the items, some were significantly lower. On the remaining 18%, we were now able to adjust our sell price to beat Staples. The SMART SCRAPER will also monitor when Staples changes a price and give me a list of the changes, with date and new price. Also, the SMART SCRAPER will make more matches over time, as we clean the data on items that did not have a match: items where the pack size was different, or there was no direct item number match. With ongoing data management, we plan to have 8,000 matches to Staples (about the number of items they sell), and then work on Office Depot and Grand and Toy.
Imagine, in your business, if you could push a button and see how your prices compare to your competition?
Cheers
Calvin