New Cliente - Carrefour (ingles / castellano)

It took a while, but we are finally in Carrefour. They have too many locations to count, but we are not going to be in all of them, just 40 stores to start. I get bored with the idea of listing out all 40 stores so here is just a sample of some of the bigger ones:

Tardamos un poco pero finalmente estamos en Carrefour. Tienen demasiado locales para contar, pero no vamos a estar en todos, solamente en 40 para empezar. Yo me aburro con la idea de dejar la lista completa de los locales en donde vamos a estar, pero les puedo dejar una lista mas corta:

Pilar
San Fernando
San Isidro
Moreno
San Martin
Vicente Lopez
Velez Sarsfield
San Lorenzo
Warnes
Salguero
Avellaneda
Quilmes
Adrogue
La PLata
Norcenter
Beruti
Monroe & Montañeses
Cabildo 2400
Devoto
Scalabrini Ortiz 3100
Martinez (3 locations Edison, Italia, and Libertador)
Acasusso
etc.

As well as locations in the interior of the country like Cordoba, Mendoza, Rosario, Salta, Chaco, and Corrientes.

También vamos a estar en el interior del país como en Cordoba, Mendoza, Rosario, Salta, Chaco, y Corrientes.

If you go to your favorite Carrefour and you don´t see the Sugar & Spice brand of baked goodies, you can always tell them that you would like to have them there. Customer coments are not ignored.

Si van a su local de Carrefour mas cercano y no ven los productos de Sugar & Spice, pueden avisar al gerente que les gustaría comprar sus favoritas galletitas. Crean me que los comentarios de los consumidores no son ignorados.

Top 50 Best of Buenos Aires

I just found out that Time Out Buenos Aires included Sugar & Spice in their Top 50 Best of Buenos Aires. My scanner sucks so I can´t really scan the article, but it is very flattering.

This came out in January of 2009, but it´s even better than finding a $20 in your pocket that has gone through the wash, alone and forgotten.

Sorry Time Out, I will pay more attention from now on.

Problems of Jumbo Proportions

From Estuches

I know,every time someone asks me how business is going I often say "Great!" or "Good", and it is really; but, I also have the occasional problem that keeps me up at night.

Jumbo is one of our biggest clients. They are a supermarket chain, and recently, they have been the source of my biggest headaches.

It all started great. They carried most of our products. They were so happy with those that they asked us to do their private label cookies for them and we did. After a while, I also talked them into carrying our budines (pound cakes).

They were squeamish at first; and rightly so, since our budines would retail for way more than their highest costing budin at that time. I told them to just try it and if they could not sell them I would take them back. They turned out to be our biggest movers. They sold more budines than anyone else in Argentina. I knew they would sell really well, but they sold even more than what I thought they would.

Jackpot, right?

Well, everything was going peaches until Jumbo switched their ordering system to Disco´s ordering system. Disco is owned by Jumbo and it was a pretty good merger for these two. Jumbo was more the very big box style of supermarket and Disco had many more locations, but they were way smaller.

Anyway, the system change hosed everything up. The budine orders have dried up and they are a trickle of what they used to be. The few that get to the supermarket shelves get snatched up right away. The stores can´t order directly anymore, it all has to be done automatically.

There are two Jumbo locations that got so fed up with this that they ordered directly from us (Palermo and Unicenter) even though they are expecting to get spanked for it from the powers above, and I don´t mean celestial powers either.

So if you are reading this and you are a consumer of our budines from Jumbo, you should be able to find them very soon again at either Palermo or Unicenter.

If you shop at Disco or any other Jumbo store, you can complain about the lack of budines at your local shop. They do pay attention to customer complaints, suggestions, etc.

Meanwhile, I have to keep visiting the stores; keep talking to the store managers; keep waiting at the buyer´s office (because she doesn´t answer my phone calls), and call her from her lobby in the hopes that they would like to sell, once again, one of their best selling products in its segment.

Pulling teeth has got to be easier than this.