NoFearMan.com

First off let me apologize if the following post sounds like one of those late night infomercials.  I’ve seen way too many of them and know how corny they sound…especially that one with Mr. T.  I just have to explain how genuinely happy I am with this product.  It ACTUALLY does what it says it does, and when that’s the case I’ll shout it from the rooftops.

You see….Serendipity Deals sells several types of products.  One of the lines we carry is Kitchen Stir.  We recently received one of these products the Chef’s Stir Pan: Stir Cooker (Model # KS1000)

I wanted this product because my wife is an INCREDIBLE cook and I thought this would make her life easier.  Especially when she makes Alfredo sauce, which requires constant stirring for about 30 minutes.  This product is supposed to continually stir while it cooks your food.  I figured “Hey…this would be great for that”.

Here’s what it looks like.

Now, we opened this up and looked over the recipes that come with it (I also have several recipes available in my email if anyone needs them).  My wife decided that she wanted to make the Cashew Chicken dinner.  Wow!  My favorite dinner at the Chinese Restaurant but made in my house!  I looked over the directions, simple step by step instructions were included with this product.  It said, turn on the stir cooker and let it preheat for 30 seconds to get to the required temperature.  30 seconds?  Are you kidding?  Apparently not….that puppy got hot…and it got hot fast!

Now….my wife never follows directions to the line.  She decides that she really wants to test this product out.  After all, we sell it…let’s make sure we can really trust it when our customers buy it.  She decides to make DOUBLE the recipe…and add a few more ingredients!  I’m a little nervous here…it’s chicken that’s she’s cooking….that NEEDS to be cooked thoroughly!  Well, she doubles that up anyways, then she also uses snow peas and sliced mushrooms, and of course the cashews.   Now…let me be clear, this was not filled to the brim with heavy chunks of food, but the recipe itself was doubled.  She had that cooker going, and you can see the sauce bubbling (she used low sodium soy sauce, chicken broth mixed with corn starch to make it thicker, and fish sauce) and my house smelled like a Chinese Restaurant.  I stood there watching as the chicken (which was at the bottom to start) was mixed with the rest of the ingredients WHILE being cooked….and eventually it was just one pot of great smelling ingredients all mixed together nicely.  When I say eventually…I’m talking 10 minutes or less.  Yea….it was that fast.

So, anyway, she separately made brown rice on the stove top to go with it.  After the rice was done (which took three times longer than the main course) she put the rice on our plates and we scooped up some chicken and cashews.  I took one bite and told my wife that we no longer need to order out for me to get my favorite meal (although I’ll still need to get my Dim Sum).

Later Friday night I looked through the recipe book at a few things….it was written so simply that I actually feel like I could get the ingredients and make almost any dish in there.  I’m going to start with a dessert I think…they had Caramel Almonds listed in there…I think I’ll make that and add some cinnamon and nutmeg.

Oh…one other neat thing….there are actually recipes for granola bars and such!  Yes!  I can make my own snacks, and snacks for my son for school!!!

I have to say, my favorite answer when someone asks me if I can cook used to be “I burn cold cereal”…..but now…I can say “I can stir cook!”.

Look….you read this far into my story….I’ll give you an exclusive gift for getting here.  If you like what you read and you want one yourself I’ll save you some money on it.  I have an exclusive coupon code for my readers that only works on the two Kitchen Stir products listed at Serendipity Deals.   Just go there with one of the links I provided…add the product to your cart….Log In or Register if you haven’t yet….when you get to Step 2 add the coupon code “NFMBLOG” (without the quotes) into the section for the coupon code.  That will give you $20 off the sale price!  You can then check out from there with any major credit/debit card (processed through PayPal) or with Paypal itself.

For those of you that like to cook….or that want something healthier than a microwave but just as easy…I can tell you with 100% certainty that I stand behind this product and would not recommend it if I thought it wasn’t one of the best products on Serendipity Deals.  In fact, if I had any doubts about it at all it wouldn’t even be on the store!  Why would I sell something I don’t believe in?

~NFM

Wow….what a crazy month the last month has been.

Serendipity Deals was selling RC Cars pretty well when suddenly the supplier just “disappeared”.  That caused some of our customers to get angry.  We did the best we could to help them but the last time I heard anything from our supplier was June 24th.  I’m currently awaiting approval from a new supplier of RC products, with a LARGE supply of different types and brands.  I’m looking forward to opening that account.

However not all has been lost….

On July 11th my wife and I adopted our new Pekingese Sasha.  You can follow her ongoing tales at SavingSasha.com and see what a great dog she is.

Since we adopted a new dog I decided to look into more pet products for the store.  I just recently opened a new account with a great supplier….expect to see some awesome new products show up at Serendipity Deals in the Pet Supplies section!

Here’s to another busy month!

~NFM

Well, summer is pretty much here.  (Come on we all count Memorial Day weekend as the real start of Summer).  For most people that means relaxing at the beach, grilling and pretty much just getting a tan after a day at the office.

Not me….

See, I do get to relax.  Every weekend I go to Kymer’s Camping Resort in Branchville, NJ.  I’ve been up there for 20 seasons, every weekend from April 1st till November 1st.  It’s nice to have a place up in the woods.  It’s very relaxing.

However when you own an online store you really don’t get time to “relax”.  I may be away from the computer and the internet when I’m up there but I still get all my sales sent to my cell phone so I can make sure I’m keeping up with my customers and making sure that they get what they need in a timely manner.

Now, on top of that we have Castle No Fear.  A gaming community that wants more games.  I have “plenty” of new games to add, problem is, I don’t have the time to add them since I’m still working on getting as many products added to the store as possible before the Holiday shopping season starts in September.

September?

Oh yea….that’s the start of the Holiday shopping season when you own an online store.   Crazy huh?

Anyways, between going away on weekends, adding products, processing orders, adding games, managing an internet radio station, attempting to blog on this site, and being a husband and father…..I need a clone.

Even without one though, I couldn’t be happier.

~NFM

Serendipity Deals Joins the “Race” to End Malaria

The weather is getting warmer here in the United States. You know what that brings in most locations? Mosquitoes.

However in the United States the most you have to worry about is being itchy and having a few bumps. Consider yourself lucky. 40% of the world suffers from malaria caused by mosquito bites. Worldwide, malaria causes around 350 to 500 million illnesses and more than one million deaths annually. Malaria is particularly devastating in Africa, where it kills an African child every 30 seconds. Many children who survive an episode of severe malaria may suffer from learning impairments or brain damage. Pregnant women and their unborn children are also particularly vulnerable to malaria, which, during pregnancy, is a major cause of mortality, low birth weight and maternal anemia.

However there is hope.

Long-lasting insecticide-treated mosquito nets (LLINs) work by creating a protective barrier against mosquitoes at night, when the vast majority of transmissions occur. The African malaria mosquitoes generally bite late at night or early morning, between 10pm and 4am. Most mosquito nets can accommodate more than one person – a mother and an infant or a few siblings – for up to three to five years. A net treated with special insecticides offers about twice the protection of an untreated net, and through its repellency, can even protect other people in the room outside the net. When enough people (about 70 percent) sleep under LLINs, entire communities, even houses without an LLIN, can be made safer.

We at Serendipity Deals have decided to step in as a small company and try and help fight this disease and stop it from killing innocent children and families. We’ve decided to join the “race” with one of our best selling product lines. With each purchase of an “Ultra Series” RC Car from today April 22nd 2009 until August 31st 2009 we will donate a mosquito net to help with this cause. We’ve spent the last few days adding in all the highest end remote control cars that are available to us from the manufacturer, and then giving them a $70.00 discount as a special way of saying “Thank You” to our customers. Now with each purchase you can know that not only are you getting a great car, but you’re helping to save a life.

For more info or to make a donation yourself please visit http://www.malarianomore.org

Every donation helps

Help me out here.

I know this will more than likely be one of my shorter posts but…for the life of me I can’t figure this out.  I’ve even tried to do it myself and it didn’t work.

As a business owner I need to know how people are finding my sites.  Of course out of those I pay the closest attention to Serendipity Deals.  So….imagine my surprise when I look and see that in the passed 30 days a total of 124 people have found the store by searching Google for the word “cookie”.

What?

We don’t sell cookies, and right now I don’t have any cooking supplies that have to do with cookies.

The only remote way I was able to get the store up in the first page was to type in cookie + Serendipity Deals.  By doing that it brought up a link to the Privacy Policy for Serendipity Deals which mentions that we use cookies to save your shopping cart so that you don’t have to re-add your products every time you go back to the store if you don’t purchase them the first time you add them.

So…color me at a loss for words here….but apparently there are a lot of hungry people out there.  That…or Cookie Monster will be my next customer….

~NFM

Yea, I was pretty much useless yesterday.

I spoke with a supplier on Sunday and I did something I never do.  I told him that I would make sure to have at least 40 products up from his company by Tuesday morning.

Doesn’t sound like a big deal does it?

I get minimal info on the products, and the biggest worry for me is always shipping.  See, I like to make sure shipping is included with the price you see at the site.  It saves people from having to worry about a “suprise” in the shopping cart.  So, I have to make an educated guess on how much the shipping is going to cost.  If I guess under…well then I usually get stuck having to pay the difference and losing money on the sale.  That’s not good when your company is only in its second year.

So…I had to go through, add all of these products, look up an estimated shipping cost, add the product to the site as well as the OpenOffice Calc sheet that I use to keep track of how much I should be charging to keep my margin low but make a small profit.

It quite literally took me all day staring at the computer screen with minimal breaks.  At the end of the night I had to go out somewhere and I ended up at 37 products.  Just to keep a promise…the next morning I added a few more.  I didn’t make the full 40 since I was hurting so bad yesterday I was only able to add a couple products and then had to lay down since I was sick to my stomach.  I took some medicine and made it through dinner….after that I was out of it for the rest of the night.

Today I get to add more…..

Here’s to a new headache!

~NFM

Yes….that title is correct.

Through my email at Serendipity Deals I received a response from Doba about my recent blog post about them.

It wasn’t some customer service rep, it wasn’t some PR guy that wanted to talk to me about it….no.  It was Doba CEO Blaine Nielsen.

I quite literally just got off the phone with him.

Why did he call?  It wasn’t to try and get me back, it wasn’t to argue with me.  It was to discuss what Doba could do better to improve.  I am honored to say that he wanted my input.  To that extent I give Doba credit and Mr. Nielsen my respect for wanting to be sure they can provide the service and vision that he had in mind when he opened his company.

I gave him my recommendations, mostly about notifications to the retailers about stock.  See, Doba has a “Watch List” that you can add products to when you add them to your store.  That watch list will keep track of inventory levels for you.  However…it still doesn’t make keeping track of inventory much easier.  Why?  Simply because you would still have to sort through the products you have on the watch list to see what is out of stock.  I told him that those watch lists should email their creators with out of stock notifications or back in stock notifications of the products listed.  THAT would make the retailers lives 10 times easier.

The same should go for when they remove suppliers from their list of products.  Don’t just drop them and hope that the retailer notices…we’re busy people.  If you’re going to drop them let us know, we can remove the products before they become unavailable through Doba.

That was most of my conversation with him.  No arguing, no threats, a very polite conversation with Mr. Nielsen.

So…where does this leave me with Doba?  Well…until they fix the issues I still won’t add products from them to Serendipity Deals.  My account with them expires on June 7th….and I have no intention of renewing without a good reason to.

However I do thank him and the company for his email and proceeding phone conversation.

~NFM

February 1st 2008 was the opening of Serendipity Deals my long dream of running my own store so I can make the rules and treat customers the way they deserve to be treated.

Holidays 2008 I had about 1,000 products listed at the store and quite a few sales and customers coming to the store.  My daily visits doubled during the Holiday season and it’s actually stayed pretty steady.  So now I have a new goal….

I’m at a little over 1,400 products listed at the site now.  I want to more than double that by this Holiday season.  I want to have a MINIMUM of 3,000 products listed at the site.  I know I have the products to do it….it’s just finding the time and the right ones to put up.

Sheesh…between this and the Gamerscore Rush I’m gonna be a pretty busy guy….lol

~NFM

It’s time for the rant.

Last year we opened our store Serendipity Deals.  We did it without a lot of money…but with a lot of knowledge.

See….I worked in retail for a good chunk of my life.  I spent a lot of time with customers…in fact that got me into a little bit of trouble at a few jobs really.  I was always told that I shouldn’t be friendly…I should just get them what they want and move on to the next customer.  I didn’t like that idea and was always repremanded about how long I would help a customer.  However, in the long run those customers refused to shop in the store unless I was there to help them.  Which again would get me into trouble because I’m very friendly and I want to be sure you get what you want and you get it at the price you want it at.  Again….it seemed as if the stores I worked at (most of them are big name stores too) were only interested in me spending 2 minutes at most with the customer….getting the sale and getting them out.  Their service sucked…..

I eventually worked for a distributor.  I’d sit at my desk and take orders for luggage (high end luggage).  We would have a few small online stores contact us and tell us that they just sold a piece of our luggage and they need it shipped to “so and so”.  That’s what is called “dropshipping”…it’s one of the largest “businesses” online today.  I would sit at my desk and process an order….for instance.

Luggage Store A sells a piece of luggage to customer A.  Customer A pays Luggage Store A $440 for this piece of luggage.  Luggage Store A sends us the order and we charge them $195 plus about $17 shipping for this piece of luggage.  $200 profit????  Why was I sitting behind the desk????

I had the computer knowledge, I’ve run web sites before…several of them.  I have the customer service abilities and the friendliness.  I should be on the other side of that order…I should open my own store.

But…with what money?  It was tight at the time….

Push came to shove and my boss (there are no words to describe him…trust me) caused me to leave that position.  I talked to my wife and her and I agreed…I have the abilities…I have the know how….let’s open a store!

Again….abilities and know how don’t get you products.  Money does….

I learn about “drop shipping”.  Which simply means that I don’t have to buy the product up front…a “reputable” supplier or the direct manufacturer will ship it straight to my customer for me for a small fee on top of the products price and shipping.  Not bad right?

So I thought….

I made one simple mistake right after I opened the store.  I found a company called Doba (I’m not going to link to them since I don’t want to see others get hurt, nor do I want to drive traffic to them).

Doba “claims” to be an easy dropship supplier for “millions” of products with “brand names” and such.  Okay…I can give them the “millions” of products and some “brand names”….but easy?  No…I can’t give that to them.

For $369 I signed up for 15 months of their “service”.  I went through their catalog and added A LOT (close to 500) of their products.  I have to do this one at a time since I’m picky about what I sell.  It took me a VERY long time to get products up there.  As I added products I started to slowly get sales….and things were looking up.  More and more people were coming to the store and buying things, all sorts of things.  Eventually though I got to know the underbelly of Doba….

See…while I was getting these sales and adding more products Doba was getting new “suppliers” and new products on their site.  However….during this time they would randomly “drop” suppliers.  Which would mean that any products that the supplier had on Doba’s site would be gone and no longer available.  Does Doba tell any of their customers?  Do they say…”Hey Serendipity Deals this week we’ve dropped supplier A, C, and G because they…”?   No….they don’t say a word, not even in their monthly newsletter about how great they are and about how they’ve added these other suppliers.  Suppliers which they hide the names of by the way….

Okay….so is that my only complaint?  Hell no….

Not only do they drop suppliers randomly causing me to have to tell customers that have already PAID for the product that I can’t get it for them and causing me to look REALLY bad in the process….but…they also randomly remove or discontinue products without any notice.  Yup…that’s helpful.

Now…I can understand it a product sells out.  Sure…I’ll have to let my customer know that the warehouse is out of them.  I give my customer an option, they can either get an immediate refund or if they want I can put it on back order and ship it when it comes in.  Most customers are understanding when that happens.  Here’s where Doba kills me again.  No notifications on when a product is coming back into stock.  I can send an email to the supplier through Doba….but don’t expect an answer for at least a few days.  My customers don’t want to wait that long, especially when I have their money.

Want more?  Sure….here is one of the best ones yet.  The final straw that caused me to remove every single product I had listed from Doba….

Just before Christmas this passed year (2008) I had a customer that wanted an external hard drive.  However he wanted two of them at a certain price.  I checked Doba and found a really good one at a great price.  Now…I wouldn’t normally tell you my costs and such but let me give you an example on how much I actually make on most of the items at Serendipity Deals.  This customer wanted an external Hard Drive for no more than $80 a piece.  I checked Doba and found a 320GB External HDD for $67.95 plus shipping.  Shipping cost about $7.00 which would make the total “cost” for me $74.95.  I sold two of them to this customer for $79.95 each, my profit was $5.00 a piece.  $5.00 PROFIT A PIECE Yes….my mark up is very low…and I’m proud of that.  My customer was very very happy and paid me for two of them.  I immediately went to Doba and ordered the hard drives and even got a receipt for them…..

A week went by with no tracking at all from Doba…Christmas was getting closer and my customer was still waiting.  I typically keep in touch with my customers and tell them whatever I know so that they know I’m watching out for them….because I am.

Finally a little after a week later I get an email from Doba telling me that the order has been canceled and I’ve been refunded my money.  What?  Why?

Would have been nice to have been told why my order was canceled….but they don’t do that…great service right?  So…I figured….maybe they did their usual and dropped the supplier even DURING my order (they’ve done that twice)….or maybe they discontinued the product.  I went back to their site and looked it up….the product was still there and in stock.  So….why was it canceled and I was refunded?  Oh…that’s simple…they raised the price to $87.95 a piece plus shipping.  They canceled my order and told me that I can re-order it at the higher price instead.  WHAT???? I had to refund my customer and let them know what happened.

So…that’s Doba for you….greedy, uncaring, and absolutely NO SERVICE at all from them.

Let me give you the run down of what you get for your $369.00 a year…

• Products that can disappear at any moment
• Suppliers that can disappear at any moment
• Bait and switch tactics for pricing
• No answers for days to your emails
• No out of stock notifications
• No low stock notifications
• Plenty of sales calls from their marketing friends

What did I finally do?

Well…I found new suppliers….REAL suppliers.  Most of them are the manufacturers for the actual products…which means no middle man…and lower costs.  I removed the hundreds of products from the store and filled it back up with newer better stuff.  I get new suppliers on a weekly basis…and never ever will I go near Doba again.

That’s my rant…

Wow….I’ve been gone a while haven’t I?  Yea….I saw that coming a mile away.  I get so involved in so many different things that for some reason I never have time for me.  Yes….this site is supposed to be “me”.  The drivelings of my mind….well….here we go again.

Let’s start with why I disappeared…..again.  My last post was back in June of 2008.  The campground (Kymers Camping Resort) I have been going to for 20 years would be in “full swing” at that time.  That means I would be there every weekend.  In other words I had no “spare” time.

During this time though I did more work at the store Serendipity Deals adding more products and categories….and removing crap from a shitty supplier.  Speaking of….if anyone out there is planning on starting their own online store….STEER CLEAR OF DOBA.  I can’t stress that enough.  Wait…on second thought….you would then be competition wouldn’t you?  In that case….by all means….go get screwed!  However….my Doba rant is enough for another post all on its own.

How about the Castle?  Castle No Fear had one hell of a year last year getting tons of new users and we have over 1100 games for you to play for FREE.  I try and add about 6 new games a week now…typically on Fridays.  Stop by and have some fun.  We upgraded the gold system (which we refer to as Dole) as well as the arcade…and added an AWESOME casino to spend your not so hard earned dole on.

Let’s not forget that Fired Up Radio also celebrated it’s first birthday this passed February 1st!  Wooo!  Go drama free radio!

Oh….yea….my latest triumph?  After a stale, stagnent year with NFMDesigns.com I finally destroyed the “brick wall” page that I had that was difficult to read.  I dropped Joomla from the site and installed Drupal 6.1 and now it has new life!

So….expect to finally see some more activity at these sites as I’m on a full press (I know I left out “court” but I hate basketball) to bring my madness to the world!

(queue evil laugh)

~NFM