April 2025 Newsletter - What’s Next for TFG?
Christmas Recap
Christmas came and went and we had an amazing selling season. Bread bow knives were the top item and it wasn’t even close. They were a good selling item for us last year but what happened in December was mind blowing. We sold 165 last year and 107 of them were in December. Of the 107 in December, 68 were sold online—68!! Of those 68, 60 of them were within a span of 8 days. (Sorry I’m a data guy in my real job!)… We hadn’t had that kind of online presence ever before. Since it was unexpected, we didn’t have them all pre made or have the blades we needed to fulfill them all. Huge shout out to Alex, Melissa, and my wife for all the help to get those out. The below picture was the first push, but somehow, someway we got all of those orders shipped out on time. That is the stuff I live for and hope to have more of it this coming year!
MANY THANKS to our past customers and supporters. It sounds so cliche but it’s so true, we simply cannot do this without you!
What To Expect this Year
While we ended the season on a high note, the new year brings new challenges. Sales flourish seasonally but the new year always finds a way to remind us how tough this business can be. The first quarter has brought the fewest online sales we’ve ever seen in any 3 month span in our young history. Our Etsy shop provided a bigger boost than normal but has us rethinking how we manage this whole year. Our goal has always been to make an in person customer a website customer and we were quite unsuccessful with that last year. We handed out over 800 10% off coupons to use online and only 1 of those was redeemed. The online bread bow knife order frenzy were all new customers brought to us by Etsy and website SEO. We have spent this first quarter completely revamping our website style and improving SEO. Somehow it hasn’t worked...yet! In the last week, we started running Google ads for the first time ever to promote our on-demand gift giving power. We are hopeful to net our first sale from those efforts.
So what does this mean for TFG?
First, we will remain hopeful to manifest good things around us. We recognize this new year has brought about economic uncertainty. Prices are rising everywhere. We are doing our best to keep our prices the same and have yet to make any changes. I’ve seen friends take a step back in their small businesses and we hope to stay where we are.
Second, we are going to start running coupon codes throughout the year. We have talked about it and a few times teased it but have never consistently kept them going on a monthly basis. Starting tomorrow— We will be having a Rush to Tax Day Sale of 15% off with coupon code TAXDAY15. Good for 15% off any item in stock online. For the rest of the year, we plan to have themed sales similar to this. It doesn’t make sense for us to run a sale and only have 1 sale. We will be leaning on our subscriber list and social media feed to serve these coupon code. We want to first reward our most loyal customers. Follow along on social media; mainly IG and FB. Please like and share our posts. You don’t have to don’t anything you don’t want but know that it’s very helpful if posts are liked, shared, and interacted with. We try our best not to be annoying but we’d rather stay in business :)
Lastly, our in person events. We are going to continue to do in person selling events around Central Virginia. We will be expanding our reach into northern Virginia and continue our presence in Richmond as well. We will be choosing to do larger events where possible. It takes a tremendous amount of effort to put more than one person in a location in a given weekend. This is why our focus will be on larger events. We will be trying to heavily push past customers towards the website for future purchases where possible. We have changed our events calendar on our website and can more easily keep it updated with our plans. Check them out below
Upcoming In Person Selling Events
Last thing for now. We remain committed to delivering the best products we possibly can. Our attention to detail is what sets us apart from the crowd. We work very hard making our products in batches so that our shelves are stocked when customers need items, even personalized. We offer laser engraving on every item in our store for a small fee - usually $6 - $10. While we can’t compete with Amazon on pricing or shipping speed, we have better quality and our shipping time is not THAT much slower that Amazon. I mean, you can’t even track their items from point to point anymore?? Speaking of quality, this is obvious but all of our products are made in our shop. Other retailers source their products wholesale; high volume ones are sourcing products from overseas made cheaply and with poor quality materials. All of our products are made in Virginia, made by us, and made to last a long time.
Feel free to ask questions. I’d love your feedback!
Thanks,
Cody Lester
Owner & Maker
