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CEO Daily Updates 5.14.2020

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Safety Supplies Landing Page: https://www.cablesandkits.com/c/safety-supplies

Happy Thursday!

Roses are red, violets are blue, you’re asleep and I wish I was too. It’s 4:10am and I just finished working on this email. I’ve got to go to bed! So, I tried to keep this one short (and I think I failed).

I had a big day. I touched a lot of projects today. This doesn’t even begin to be half of it, just what I quickly remember

  • Nitrile gloves will be here in about a week (we have a FEW on the site now but at the end of next week or the beginning of the following we should have some. We have Vinyl in stock and more coming if those will work for you in the meantime.
  • I talked to a vendor about copper infused fabric washable face masks. Interesting. More to come.
  • We got our 1L bottles of gel hand sanitizer in today. This was a one time buy and when they are gone they are gone so get them fast!
  • I approved and ordered our desktop sanitizer dispenser yesterday! We should have that on the site soon for pre-order. I did a video about it too! Looking forward to getting that out.
  • I got dispenser pumps on order for our gallon and half gallon liquid sanitizer. I hope they will be here early week after next. I will make an announcement. Someone ordered 500,000 from me before I could even get them launched. That’s nice.
  • OH! I ALMOST FORGOT!! We got the Face Shields in today!! Plenty in stock and ready to ship!
  • I stayed up till 6am Tuesday night (Wed morning) working on getting thermometers on a plane from the factory. 800 thermometers … picked up by UPS CRITICAL, taken to the airport for next flight out, and it only cost a cool $10,000. What a bargain! 😲. I had a customer that needed 400 that I found out cancelled today. Sometimes you fall off the horse …. And sometimes it kicks you in the head. The good news is that when they land we will finally have stock (the rest of what we have ordered is still taking 50 forevers) and can ship plenty of orders! You can pre-order if you’d like to get in line for some of these.
  • I went to the warehouse today and while there someone jokingly said “remember when we used to sell networking products?” lol. We very much still do, but WOW have we been buried in safety products for several weeks now! It’s fun though.
  • I have gotten SO many emails from people thanking me for what we are doing and complimenting me on this email. What an honor! Before I started doing this email I was terrified to do such a thing. Now it’s natural and I am loving it. THANK you for reading the email and buying the products!
  • I talked to someone on the phone today that ordered a LARGE amount of Hand Sanitizer. I asked if he was on my daily email and he said that someone that worked there had forwarded him the email and that’s what led him to buy from us. Wow!! Thank you for forwarding my email to people you think might be interested! If they would like to be on the daily email they can sign up at the bottom of the safety supplies page.
  • Someone that serves at a food bank emailed to ask if I could use my manufacturing capabilities to help them get some reusable grocery bags made. Sounds awesome and I’m on it! I loooooove sourcing and manufacturing!
  • I am working on isolation gowns. Do you need them?
  • Don’t forget to go follow us on Facebook here: CK Facebook Page. We will be posting some videos and such there soon!
[Read more…] about CEO Daily Updates 5.14.2020

CEO Daily Update 5.13.2020

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Sales Opportunity | Alcohol Wipes | Face Masks Update | COVID-19 Updates

Safety Supplies Landing Page: https://www.cablesandkits.com/c/safety-supplies

Happy Wednesday!

Why is Wednesday spelled like that? Wed Nes Day? Winsday. I googled it just now. I NEVER thought about why the days are named the way they are. Quite interesting. Disclaimer: I clicked on a grand total of one link and read enough to be satisfied. Do your own research if you plan on using the knowledge for a game show. https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Wednesday-spelled-incorrectly

A quick notice / apology: If you have emailed me I promise you that I will reply, however my inbox runneth over at the moment. Máni’s days and Tīw’s days (That is a test to see if you’re clicking my links!) are full blown meeting days for me and I got to single digit quantities of emails today. To be honest, there were some weeks old emails in there already. Anyway, if you have emailed me or if you DO email me, I promise I will reply!

Also, due to the overwhelming response to the safety supplies as well as the radio ad that we are running, the phones are ringing off the hook and our customer service / sales folks are having a hard time keeping up. If you know what you need I encourage you to order on the web. If you need help, certainly try calling but if you don’t get through please try live chat or send an email to [email protected] and someone will get back with you. They are digging out of a hole too! In fact they have been reaching out to pull in former staff members part time to assist!

Speaking of part time staff members, we are talking about building a distributed sales force to help with drumming up leads and taking orders for the safety supplies we are offering. Ponder the ponderables – would you or someone you know be interested in a full incentive (soft word we use in place of commission) “work for yourself” / “make up your own hours” role calling potential leads and selling the products we are offering? We will do some basic training on the products (which isn’t that hard), the systems (entering orders), and get you a list of companies to call. You can and should also work your own contacts. If you’d be interested, let me know. We don’t have anything in place yet but we are trying to get it setup quickly so it won’t be long!

We made a few more videos last night and the night before. Hopefully we will get those out pretty soon! Don’t forget to go follow us on Facebook here: CK Facebook Page

Saxsquatch Video. Someone showed this to me today. It’s ….. hard not to watch!

[Read more…] about CEO Daily Update 5.13.2020

CEO Daily Update 5.12.2020

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Alcohol Wipes | Facebook Videos | Safety Products | COVID-19 News

Safety Supplies Landing Page:
https://www.cablesandkits.com/c/safety-supplies

Happy Tuesday!

I hope your Monday was one for the record books! Ours was. Our radio ad launched today and the phones and website melted. In fact, I heard that we had over 100 people go to voicemail when they called. Not good! I suppose it should have been expected but we were all so focused on the WEBSITE that we didn’t really think about what would happen with the phones. That is what happens when you have never done a radio ad before. So we are digging out of that!

I am making progress on 75% alcohol wipes. Let me know if that is of interest to you and what qty’s you would want/need. There are singles (one wipe per package), 10 per package, and a barrel/tub of 50 or 60 as options. There are other options out there but I decided to start there. Let me know your thoughts.

We stuck an impromptu video I did in my basement out on Facebook last week. It inspired me to do more, so I recorded a few with the help of Chad, our warehouse manager tonight. We will get those out soon and I will let you know about them. One was funny … I hope no one tells me “You can’t post that!” haha .. maybe I will override them if so. If you don’t follow us on FaceBook you should, and that’s where you will see these videos. I am sure we will put them on YouTube too, but FB is easy. Go follow us here: CablesAndKits Facebook

[Read more…] about CEO Daily Update 5.12.2020

CEO Daily Update 5.11.2020

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Mask Prices Reduced Again | New Hand Sanitizer Sizes | Our First Radio Ad |Manic Mondays | COVID Stats & News Update

It’s Monday!

This is the first thing I thought of when writing “Monday” … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsmVgoXDq2w.

I really do love 80’s music. They don’t make it like they used to!

I don’t see Monday’s the same as was talked about in this song. The truth is, I LOVE Mondays. I LOVE working and am always excited to see what the week holds. In fact, since I do a lot of sourcing overseas I start my work week Sunday night around 9pm (which is Monday morning 9am China time). In the “old days” (Pre-COVID-19) I would work till 11 or 12 and go to bed. Now, I work until at LEAST 2am, many nights till 3am, and some nights (like Sat night) till 6am. I slept 1 hour and was back up at 7 when my girls were pouncing on me saying “It’s Mother’s Day!”. Who needs sleep anyway. I guess I can sleep when I’m dead. But I digress …

On the upside, after trading sleep for opportunity, it seems like we are really headed into the health & safety supplies business. Costs, and therefore prices, are nuts right now, but demand is high and supply is low, so that’s creating a lot of business for us. The trick will be getting prices down as costs go down and supply and demand normalize, and through that, maintain customers long term. In fact, that is exactly how CablesAndKits was started. We launched at a time when pre-owned Cisco was in high supply and high demand after the dot com crash. That created the need for the accessories to go along with the hardware. I was in the right place at the right time and took advantage of the demand and created the supply. Then, over time as costs came down and competitors crept in, we were able to lower prices to stay relevant. We had our missteps but that’s another story you’ll hear about here and there. Have you found any opportunities in the midst of all the change we are in the middle of?

[Read more…] about CEO Daily Update 5.11.2020

CEO Daily Update 5.8.2020

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Happy Friday!

Last night was another doozy. I worked till 4am. Not only are we adding new safety products rapidly, we are trying to prepare for a local radio station ad that will start airing Monday to advertise our masks, hand sanitizer, and other safety products. We have been working on product page content as well as a revamp of our primary landing page, which is located at the link below. I am really excited about the page and the content! I/we don’t do a good enough job telling our story in general so this is a great start. Check it out. Give me feedback!

https://www.cablesandkits.com/c/safety-supplies

Not only are we running a radio ad starting Monday, but we are also looking for any and every way to get the word out about our safety supplies. We have worked SO hard on this and want to get this out as wide as possible. While we are still facing import challenges, we have huge amounts of inventory and more coming in all the time so we want to really get this party started big time. We are looking for ways to sponsor mentions in other companies’ email marketing campaigns, doing a postcard mailing, and more. If you have ideas (or opportunities to link to / promote us) I would love to hear / discuss them!

Speaking of promoting our line of safety products, I am having conversations with people interested in reselling our products, putting them into their retail stores, etc. If you would like to discuss a resale opportunity, please reach out to me.

Additionally, since we inventory MILLIONS of masks (and have access to unlimited amounts of sanitizer and other items we manufacture), we are able to offer discounts for large volume purchases. What is a large volume you might ask? Multiple cases, pallets, or truckloads, orders over $10,000, etc.

I hope you have a great Friday and a wonderful weekend!
-Craig

Today’s Highlights:

[Read more…] about CEO Daily Update 5.8.2020

CEO Daily Update 5.7.2020

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Happy Thursday!

Well, it looks like we are getting ever closer to crawling back toward “normal”. Me and my family ate dinner tonight at a BBQ restaurant and it was nice to eat somewhere other than my kitchen table. I used to eat out almost every meal and it’s been nice to grow content with eating at home – but a little taste of what used to be normal was welcomed.

I heard from a handful of you today in response to my question of what are you doing to return to normal. One thing is for sure, there is a LOT of preparation happening in companies across the country. I spoke with someone in procurement at a Casino organization today and heard their plans to re-open. They bought 100 thermometers to check guest temperatures as they come through the doors. The things you don’t think about! But, they are doing the doables and trying to get back up and going, as are tons of companies. We are blessed to have gotten into safety supplies when we did, and are honored to be a part of getting our great country going again.

-Craig

P.S. – I have been putting in some pretty extreme hours lately working on all this safety supply stuff. Not only do I work a full day, but after a short dinner break I typically go till about 2-3am working with vendors overseas and trying to beat my inbox back a little, plus working with my team on product content, advertising ideas and execution, etc. All that being said, these emails I send may be a little lighter some days. Today is one of those days. I am tired and going to bed!

Today’s Highlights:

[Read more…] about CEO Daily Update 5.7.2020