A Few of Our Favourite Things

Here's next month's Gimme That! Giveaway. Inspired by Oprah's recently aired Favourite Things episode, but severely hampered by my lack of a few billion dollars of net worth, I decided that the best I could do was to give away some of my favourite CLC goodies. Okay, so it's not a refrigerator with a built-in television or a brand new car, but it will make you feel good and smell good :)

Up for grabs is a prize package worth a little over $40 and contains a few of my favourite CLC things. One lucky gal will receive:

• 4 oz jar of Flutter Butter scented in Holiday Sorbet: I love both the scent and the formula and it is now a constant fixture throughout my home. I currently have a 2 oz jar scented in Raspberry & Lettuce Leaf that's curing for my upcoming trip. May the powers that be help the TSA person who tries to take this away from me.
• 4 oz jar of Moisture Whip Light Conditioner scented in Mandarin Mambo: Between this and our other conditioner, TLC, this is my favourite because it's light and gives my hair just enough moisture. Having stick-straight hair, I can't really use an overly moisturizing conditioner otherwise I'll look like Alfalfa with hair stuck to my head.
• 30 ml EDP in Dark Pink: Sabrina, one of our amazing customers, said, "It's sexxaaaayyyy!" From the day I introduced this blend, it's been a HIT. 'Nuff said.
• 4 oz bottle of Luscious Lather scented in Lemon Meringue: This is a new product in our line and I am absolutely in love with it. We tried a lot of 3-in-1 formulas before falling head over heels for this one. The amount of lather it produces is fabulous - thick, frothy and dense. As a shampoo it cleans without stripping and as a body wash, it doesn't leave your skin dry...and all the while producing all this fab lather. I plan on taking 2 - 4 oz bottles of this stuff with me, but I haven't gotten around to making them because I can't decide on the scents!

To enter, simply subscribe to our newsletter located at the top right hand corner of this page.

...And in other news, I'm almost done taking inventory of all my supplies. The day before Thanksgiving, I received 11 boxes of packaging supplies. I've broken them up in 2 sets - a smaller quantity to have on hand for my workshop and the excess to go to our storage facility. I numbered all my boxes, created a spreadsheet of their contents and then applied filters (lluurrvv filters). So now, if I'm ever running low on say, 4 oz oval bottles, I just look up the item from my drop-down menu and voila! it tells me which box houses the rest of these bottles. Okay, so it's not rocket science, but hey, I'm a firm believer in celebrating life's little accomplishments.

Before I sign off, CONGRATULATIONS to the following beauties who each won a 4 oz jar of Sugar Cloud:

• Dina F. - NY
• Candice J. - MI
• Katey V. M. - VA

Thanks for reading! Please keep checking this blog for updates. Oh! One last thing...If you were notified of a Fragrance/Product test, you should have received your packages by now. Please let me know if you didn't get yours and e-mail me with any questions.

Crunch Time & Plan B

It was around my birthday in September when I decided that the best gift I could give myself was to re-open Crater Lake Company. At that time, I thought I had a lot of time to get everything in order given that I had a target re-opening sometime mid-January. But my how time flies!!! Looking back, I've been consistenly checking off all my tasks on my to-do list, so technically, I'm in pretty good shape. There are times however, when I feel overwhelmed and can't believe that in spite of all the foundation work I've done, there's still more ahead of me. I just want to open already!!!

Now it's crunch time. In less than 3 weeks, I will have to have all my product pictures taken, Fragrance Bar edited, copy and layout finalized for the storefront, and other details which I'd rather not mention for fear of overwhelming myself! I know it's getting down to the wire because my web designer is now listing all my deliverables and before he starts his list, he writes, "Don't freak out!" I'm running on adrenaline, excitement, anticipation and sheer terror and I love it.

I know I wrote about trying to find a new space for CLC, but I've decided to resort to Plan B, for now at least. My space requirements are unique and my budget pretty tight. Two factors that didn't make my task of looking for space very easy. What I've found in my search for a new CLC HQ is that in order to get the space requirements I needed, ie. plumbing, I was basically looking at retail spaces which charged a premium for their location. Since all I needed was a manufacturing space which wouldn't be open to the public anyway, why would I pay the premium rent for the traffic and location that I didn't need? On the other hand, I could have rented an office space that was more in line with my budget, BUT most don't have plumbing in the space itself. I mean, I was looking at professional office spaces suitable for lawyers, accountants and the like. It certainly didn't fit my needs. I can just imagine the conversation with my new office neighbours going something like...

"Oh hello there. I'm Charles Winslow Stratford III, CPA, your neighbour down the hall. And 2 doors down from you is renowned attorney Rob U. Blind, Esq. Welcome to the building." (Sorry, bad lawyer joke. Couldn't resist!)

"Hi I'm Sharonn My Mom Didn't Give Me a Middle Name Itliong. I don't have any alphabets at the end of my name, but I do have a Dual Masters Degree, does that count?! I just love to make things that you put on your body to make you smell good and make your skin soft, smooth and glowy! Do you suffer from dry skin? Do you want to try a small jar of our Whipped Soy Body Butter?"

Yeah, I'm gonna fit in just fine! Eventually, when CLC grows enough to afford the rent a retail space charges, I'd like to move into one, but for now, I've decided to resort to Plan B.

CLC's office will be a custom designed room in my humble little home. Previously, we housed all our supplies in the space in which we worked, making it difficult to find and store all the materials we needed. Learning from that lesson, I've rented a large off-site storage space to house all the excess inventory (ETA: I'm talking about packaging supplies here, which I buy in the thousands) that I don't need to have on hand. Since the storage space is only 5 minutes away, it shouldn't a problem accessing any supplies I need. Thanks to my grad school professor, Dr. Silverman who taught Organizational Something or Another, I've designed my workspace so that everything I need to make my products are within my reach and is organized in such a way that each step of the production process flows smoothly into the next. For all you chefs out there, it's mise en place, as you say. Whereas before, our workshop space wasn't really conducive to our production process, we're designing this room to ensure that this process goes smoothly. Believe you me, it's going to save me a lot of time. So, as CLC grows, my storage facility will be able to house the overflow.

All this work is going to be done while I'm away, so when I get back, I'll have a brand new space waiting for me. Yey! I can't wait!!!

Well, I think that's about it in terms of an update. I received 11 LARGE boxes of supplies the day before Thanksgiving and I'm getting ready to head out to our storage facility.

Thanks for reading. Don't forget about this month's Gimme That! 3 ladies will win a 4 oz jar of our foaming sugar scrub, Sugar Cloud. I'll announce the winners around the first week of December after all the winners have responded to claim their prize.

I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving and made out like bandits in your quest to find the best bargains ever.