Welcome to our weekly update of the "Founder's Log" a blog dedicated to the progression of American Butchers JERKi, highlighting the things we've accomplished thus far in the past week, paths we are currently working towards right now, and unchartered paths we hope to accomplish in the upcoming week! Starting a business can be a tough decision so I've added this so you can stay up to date with things I've learned along the way! Have a question, don't hesitate to leave a comment below!
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A look into the past week
August has been one of our best months, thus far, regarding total sales. It has also, however, been one of the slowest two weeks regarding total orders. We seem to have a trend that when orders are made, the quantity of those orders is large and the impact that customers make towards overseas contributions is incredible! Space in-between orders do range quite often and I can say that it does not matter if you have hundreds of people visiting your store or if you have five people visiting your store on a given day, the number of completed sales does not seem to change. What do you mean? In the past two weeks, I have seen a day's total visitor count reach over 150 but no completed sale. In that same week, we had a day that generated one order but only four unique visitors had reached our website.
I look at this information as days we are expanding the marketing side of our business. The side that informs and explains who we are. We might not complete a transaction but we will provide someone with an understanding of American Butchers JERKi. As a business generating sales is a big thing but it isn't everything. I am sure you might know of John Deere tractor or Air Jordan shoes but it doesn't mean that you are going out and buying them. It comes down to becoming a household name. If American Butchers JERKi has come up in thought with those previous 150 viewers, there is an opportunity where they might hear/see about us again. Maybe that second time around we might generate a sale or help someone's family who has a service member overseas in need of some JERKi. We might not get the sale but we definitely will get the thoughts.
Today
Thoughts don't always pay the bills though! As a small company that was not started with a large amount of seed money, the actual growth rate is probably slow and steady. This is definitely good for us as we can't currently donate all of our time to the success of American Butchers JERKi (maybe one day). For now, the growth has been slow and consistent, we love seeing the unique visitors each day and the random orders that come in throughout the week giving us a sense of thrill and excitement. It means that we are slowly making rounds and people are beginning to understand who we are and what we stand for! It gives us time to show appreciation to each and every order that we might not have been able to do if we had hundreds of orders to fulfill.
Following the completion of flight school and the time begins to come back into my power, we will slowly be able to grow the brand further and begin to think of new and improved ways to move forward. Some of you might have already caught onto this but today is Saturday. Not the usual time that we release one of these Founder's Log iterations. We are beginning to transition the jerky focus to a weekend timeframe giving us more opportunity to provide the development that is needed. Fulfillments will continue to be as needed throughout the week but for orders that specifically shipping to overseas service members and to marketing needs such as writing these blogs or exploring new avenues of approach, we will primarily be doing these on the weekend.
Cheers to the Future
So the future? Well, just this last week we had a local Dallas business reach out about trying to explore opportunities for new and improved bags. If you have ordered through us or haven't yet, you will notice that our bags are a little different than what you typically can find in your grocery store or rather any type of jerky bag you currently find. We did this because we wanted to stand out and we developed a bag that does just that. We hand wrap each bag of jerky in a sturdy folded construction paper that provides an extra level of ridged protection and craft. From there we add two printed labels to the front and back. This can be a tedious project that with a larger amount of orders can cause delays to production. We have thought about these custom bags that many jerky companies have used and are currently using but we also want to be unique and different. That being said, we are currently looking at trying it out with only one flavor.
As the classic seems to be our most popular flavor, we have decided to make this our "golden child." We want to run a number of tests on the classic flavor to get more information such as nutritional facts and health information. This will then be provided on a custom bag that could potentially make the flow of packaging and operating at a quicker timeframe. This is only a thought currently and something that we can touch more on as we progress forward but thought I'd include a little early sneak peek to the thought process as we continue to move forward!
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The Founder's Log is designed to be a behind-the-scenes of American Butchers JERKi. With that, I encourage you to ask any questions you might have regarding our product or about the business! Hope to catch you next week, Same time?
-Calvin