Taking a cue from the west-coast technology companies, I opened Saguaro’s as a company subsidized restaurant shortly after moving into our new location in May. Providing low-cost food such as subs, pizza, gourmet burgers, soups, salads and soft-serv ice cream and shakes, Saguaro’s has been a hit with the staff since it opened.

Being a chef-at-heart, I’m responsible for menu item creation, ingredient sourcing and supervising the staff which consists of chief cook Marina and assistant cook and cashier Sue. Boot Camp attendees this October will get the opportunity to experience Saguaro’s during lunch breaks. If you’re visiting our campus in the near future, be sure to stay for lunch!

Chief Cook Marina takes a home-made Old Forge Style Pizza out of the oven, hot and fresh and ready to eat!

Hi from Debbie at As Was! We know that with the holiday season coming, many eBay sellers have lots of concerns… concerns about eBay’s changes, holiday season selling, your profitability, or competing in the current eBay marketplace.

Our RocketPlace conference is coming in just two weeks (Sept 10-12, 2008) at The Rio in Las Vegas, which makes us the safest bet in Vegas. How much would your sales have to improve for that to have been worth it? A Spring Rocketplace attendee saved $500 month from what he learned from just ONE of our speakers. RocketPlace quickly pays for itself.

Our event is aimed at giving PowerSellers the newest and best techniques, strategies, and tools to compete, grow, and work with eBay’s changes. Newer eBay sellers will learn the roadmap to success. Everybody gets to write off a trip to Vegas!

Highlights of RocketPlace: Fall 2008 include:

• Separate Beginner and Advanced/PowerSeller educational track. Our average PowerSeller attendee is gold, nearly Platinum. Yes, even bigger PowerSellers can learn something new!
• Star speakers including Todd Lutwak, Senior Director of Seller Development at eBay; Marsha Collier, author of eBay For Dummies; Jane Judd, Senior Manager of Customer Loyalty at Zappos.com; and Jay Berkowitz of Ten Golden Rules.
• Meet ProPay, the PayPal alternative that combines the best of a merchant account with the best of online payments.
• Affordable! The Rio has dropped hotel rates for our upcoming RocketPlace conference to $90/night plus tax, and JetBlue gave us a discount code that’ll get you 5% off your JetBlue airfares.
• nTAG wireless interactive “badges” for easier and more fun networking.
• Speakers are scam-free experts! No hard sells or pushing you into a “system.”

Whether you’re a seller, consigner, educator, past client, current client, or future client, we know that RocketPlace is a fun event where every seller will learn and grow. Come learn what you need to know to boost and improve your sales, work more efficiently, and navigate eBay’s ever-flowing changes. RocketPlace is right around the corner! Learn more at http://www.rocketplace.com.

Thanks!

Debbie Levitt, CEO of As Was

Construction on the final two former classrooms at the Solid Cactus Technology Center in Shavertown, PA has begun. Classrooms? Yes. We moved into a former elementary school in April 2008 and turned it into our new corporate headquarters. The building was completely gutted with only the facade and the gym being the last remaining indicators that this was formerly a house of education.

The area that is currently under construction is going to be a flex-space training/conference area where we will be holding our Boot Camps, company training and evening computer/Internet classes which we will be opening up to the local community. The flex-space will be separated into two rooms that could be opened up into one large area for a total capacity of 75.

Completion is scheduled for mid-September with its first use at Boot Camp scheduled for October 8 - 10, 2008. Here are some photos of what is currently going on:

Yesterday, August 25, 2008 at 5pm we launched the new Solid Cactus website. It’s the first complete overhaul in three years and was long overdue. Our Corporate Marketing team, under the direction of Greg Davis, has spent the past several months (and I mean several) working on layout, design, programming and content to bring our new look online. It certainly has been a labor of love and congratulations goes out to all who worked on the project including Kurt Illian, John Dawe, Seth Hicks, Jake Swartwood and Ashley Motter.

Just as a bottle of champagne is smashed against a ships bow as it sets sail on it’s maiden voyage, I took the liberty of “christening” our own John Dawe with some “champagne” while our new site was publishing…..

And with a dose of water, our new site is launched!

One of the biggest attractions is their ability to recognize and take care of good customers - those who come back week after week and whip out the Amex. When I place my order, I almost immediately get an email from one of their CSRs telling me that they have upgraded my shipping to Next Day Air at no charge! Whoa Baby, you’ve got me for life now.

With the holiday’s right around the corner, ask yourself “What do I do for my customers?” Make a list, check it twice and get ready to “wow” those shoppers when they come to your store to do their gift buying. You only get one shot at making a good impression, don’t mess it up.

I was recently approached by a local charitable foundation - The Luzerne Foundation, which also happens to administer our own fund - Solid Cactus Cares, to star in a commercial to promote a benefit Texas Hold-em tournament. Being the wallflower that I am, I took them up on the offer. Why? Because of my supporting cast. I was going to be “playing poker” with a bunch of dogs.

The day of the shoot came and the dogs were all ready, some big, some little, some all hyped-up, some who couldn’t care less. I was quite surprised at how well they behaved during take after take. I was sweating like a rusty pipe from the heat of the lights, which is why if you watch the video, the dogs really “loved” my face.

Working with dogs is quite stressful. I remember when we would do product shoots for ferret products, we would spend the day in a studio with a bunch of ferrets who wanted nothing to do with a photographer and by the time the day was over, you didn’t want to see a ferret ever again! The dogs were a lot better, but there were some things that you will see in the “blooper reel.”

Some things you won’t see…. Me getting peed on by the small dog that I’m holding on my lap. Me having chicken fat rubbed on my face so the dogs would “kiss me.” Suzanne underneath the table “begging” the dogs to sit still. But hey, it’s for a worthy cause and I needed a bath anyway.

According to their website, the Web Analytics Connector for Google Analytics…

…enables Google Analytics to properly track Yahoo! Store e-commerce transactions. Our patent pending method allows you to see the search terms someone used in a search engine to find your site…

–Monitus.net

When technical support calls started coming in to Yahoo!, Solid Cactus and other developers such as 1ChoiceforYourStore, everyone knew this was a serious issue, but since some stores were functioning normally, it couldn’t be an issue on the Yahoo! end of things. Upon further investigation it was found that a piece of tracking code, provided by Monitus and entered into the backend and checkout pages of a Yahoo! Store, was the cause of pages not loading on stores.

Here are some quotes from the Yahoo! Merchant Solutions system status page:

8:48 AM (PDT) - Live Sites - Page Loading to White Screen

Some merchants are reporting page loading errors on their live site where the page is going to a white screen. We are aware of this issue and currently investigating. Additional updates will be provided as more information becomes available.

Update: 9:09 AM (PDT)
We have identified that the javascript for “Monitus Yahoo Store web analytics” is failing. Removal of this code has resolved the issue for reporting merchants.

Update: 10:13 AM (PDT)
When attempting to remove the above code, please remember to remove the code in the checkout pages (including confirmation page) as well. Removing code from the front-end, but leaving it in the checkout pages and/or confirmation page is causing checkout to fail for some reporting merchants.

Update: 11:22 AM (PDT)
This issue appears to have been resolved but will remain open for monitoring until an “All Clear” has been received from Monitus.

Update: 08/17/08 5:23 PM (PDT)
Monitus confirms that this issue was resolved.

Since no public statement from Monitus has been made, we can only speculate that the server the code was installed on either went down or there were problems with the script itself. Either case, it is very concerning, both as a developer and a store owner, that there was no redundancy in case an event such as this happened. Experiencing downtime on an e-commerce store can be killer! And looking at the amount of time that lapsed from initial report to final confirmation that the issue was fixed, nearly 8 hours of business could have been lost for some merchants.

The purpose of this post is not to discredit the product, as it has some very valuable features and a pretty large following based on the number of stores which had issues. The purpose is to call attention to the fact that whenever you install a 3rd party application in your store, you ask the provider a simple question, “What happens to my store if this goes down.” If they don’t know the answer or they say something along the lines of “well, it never happened before, so you shouldn’t have anything to worry about” - stay away! Any provider worth their salt will have a plan in place in the event something like this should happen. Redundant servers in case one should fail, immediate backup recovery of a script in case the running one gets corrupted, emergency backup power in case the lights go out, you get the picture.

At Solid Cactus, we are very aware that unforseen issues do crop up and we sympathize with Monitus, because I’m sure they’re taking a lot of heat for this right now. We’re also aware that communication with customers is key. If an issue develops with a product or service that may effect someone’s store, tell them about it and take quick, proactive steps to rectify the problem. Don’t hide, afraid to say something went wrong. Make a public statement, tell the truth and let your customers know what steps are being taken to discover what happened and is being done to prevent it from happening in the future.

Some of you may now be wondering, “what do I do now?” You may also be afraid to put this tracking code back on your site for fear it may go down again. My personal recommendation is this… Google Analytics is an awesome, free product that provides valuable data to the store owner. Unless you really, really want to dive deep into the data provided, you don’t need anything more than what Google already gives you for free.

Special thanks to Mike Lugo and his group of Solid Cactus “technical support geeks” Kim Good, Carlos San`es, Warren Gunderman and Isaac Boerner who worked with Yahoo! and a slew of clients to identify and assist them in resolving the problem. These are the folks who support our clients Monday - Friday from 9am - 7pm ET in addition to other staff members who are on call 24/7/365 to assist our customers when trouble strikes.

It happens that one of our previous suppliers was also a supplier for lawn and garden supplies and drop-shipped for many online retailers.  It was a no-brainer for us to move ahead and continue selling online, but with a much different business model.

We setup the store (http://www.neeps.com), loaded our products and started selling.  The only form of advertising we used to start out was listing our products in the comparison shopping engines (CSEs).  We used our FeedPerfect product to manage the items and watch profitibility.  We were astonished with the sales we generated without doing ANY pay-per-click advertising.  More than a year later, the majority of our ad spend is still directed to the CSEs.

There is a lesson to be learned here.  With the holidays coming, it is very important to start getting your products into the CSEs if they’re not there already.  But don’t waste your time if you’re prices are 3x higher than your closest competitor.  CSEs are for the bargain hunter and the price shoppers.  If you’re competitively priced, you’ll do well.  Using a product like FeedPerfect will very easily tell you where you’re making money and where you’re losing it.

Sales pitch for FeedPerfect, yeah.  Wallowing in CSE success, priceless.

To protect the innocent until proven guilty, I won’t reveal the person’s identity, bit I will say that yet another Cacti has been caught behaving badly! Seems as tho the local police department is getting to be quite familiar with the folks at Solid Cactus since our 150+ employees have moved to our new Technology Center in Shavertown this past April.

Our latest victim is accused of doing a California Stop at the stop sign down the road. The result? A ticket, and not one to the Fraternal Order of Police annual pig roast. At least three other Cacti have been collared for speeding in the country’s only 35 mile-per-hour four-lane divided highway/speed trap. I shamefully admit that several years ago I was nabbed for “keeping up with traffic” in that same 35 mph zone doing 60+.

Now, I certainly don’t advocate breaking the law, so fellow Cacti listen up…. We’re the new kids in the neighborhood and the cops are setting an example that that reckless driving will not be tolerated. So, when you see the maroon Crown Vic, the green Avenger or the fleet of black and whites, slow down and obey the traffic laws (like you should do everyday, anyway!) unless you want to be the next Cacti Behaving Badly!