Settle in, this is a bit of a journey story here.
So lets rap about the star gazer for like an hour, shall we? Walk with me down memory lane and let's discuss this shit show debacle that basically had the Scentsy community gathering pitchforks and torches.
Ya'll think I am kidding, but there was some violent stuff circulating over these warmers, I mean it's silly and all to get your panties all wadded up in your butt over a warmer, but it was threatening our paychecks and I mean you mess with a gals money and I can kind of understand the immense frustration.
So our story begins like any other, it's around October and we get a release of the December Warmers and Scent of the month, as consultants these things hit us about two months early so that we can sign up to receive them through WOTM and SOTM if we want to and prepare ourselves for all the promotions we can do with the new warmers and scents.
WOTM or Warmer of The Month: A new warmer that comes out every month that is featured at ten percent off, consultants can sign up to receive these early before anyone else can even order them. Same goes for Scent of the Month or SOTM
So we all see the amazing new December warmer of the month, the star gaze warmer. It described as a brilliant display of light and color and looks like amazing fireworks. This thing is seriously glorious. When turned off it looks like a mirrored globe, when lite up its like a rainbow firework display. WE ALL MUST HAVE IT.
Problem: So many consultants run and subscribe to the WOTM in order to get this thing that we basically sell it out before the general public can even get to it.
So no big deal right? Scentsy corporate pulls the warmer for December and instead makes it the January warmer of the month, this will allow for weeks of additional production in order to meet the demand of this amazing little warmer.
So what do we do? -We start taking pre-orders
You could see and tell from the internet hype that this warmer was going to be super popular and that it was obviously going to sell out. I began to take pre-orders myself, I took about 30. 30 customers, some of them first time buyers gave my money and credit cards in order to promise them one of these awesome balls of fireworks. Once it came to game time by the way only 23 people actually wound up giving me final payment.
During the shenanigans I viewed a post on Hiedi's Helpful Hint's Facebook group, a Facebook group for consultants where we can discuss pretty much anything Scentsy related. It was a post that asked simply: "How many Pre-Orders have you gotten?" hundreds of consultants chimed in, many with over 20, some with upwards of 50 orders!
I got that Han Solo feeling, you know the one about this being bad.
Placing Orders
I live in Maryland. So in order to get those pre-orders in without them selling out you have to wake up (at least on the east coast) at 3 am on New Years Day. I set my alarm, was out of bed, and entered all 23 orders and finished up around 4:30 am. That's dedication, I was half drunk still, don't judge me it was New years Eve.
The next day the Scentsy community is ablaze with flame wars from angry women who either waited until the morning to enter their orders or got them in rather late in the evening. Because it sold out in 90 minutes.
90 minutes.
I know what you're thinking, let me stop you. The reason they sold out so quickly is that Scentsy did not project correctly, they later went on to say that no one could have known how popular this warmer was, no one could have anticipated and projected correct numbers for the supply and demand. Well I call BS, and that's fine, I am not mad at Corporate, I just think that is a lie and as a marketing professional I could have done a way better job at warning the company that this was going to be a shit show of astronomical proportions. Bad projecting aside, we are now faced with the debacle of figuring out who gets their warmers, when they get them, and how in the heck we are going to make enough to fill all the orders after that.
Filling Orders
At this point Scentsy outs out a schedule for receiving orders, basically by the time stamp on your submission, now since I didn't hit enter at exactly 3 am I am technically out of range for the first shipment and mine are now on back-order until February. I was butt hurt about this, especially because i am dealing with customers who have never bought anything from me before and I have charged them for something they will now have to wait months for. My sponsor put her orders in during the first batch and was supposed to receive hers by the last day of January, due to a "port" issue, whatever the heck that is she even got her weeks after that, so she basically had a bunch of customers she had lied to the entire time about when things where coming in.
What I assume Happened next.
Ok, so this is just my opinion, but I believe that it was at this time that Scentsy put the petal to the metal on getting more of these warmers, The are hand made, each individual one, I can attest to that, and that makes them take longer than other products. So everyone is scrambling to pump out as many star gaze warmers as possible at this point to fill those thousands of back orders.
so queue the shit and the fan, they hit each other, HARD.
it is at this point that consultant start receiving orders of ten to twenty warmers, and they are completely colorless. Like the are black and white and have no color. Which is the opposite of what we were selling to our customers, which was the 110% opposite of how it was described BY SCENTSY. Pictures start circulating, people start demanding their money back, consultants are now on the war path.
Facebook Videos are made, suggestions are given, we are asked to discuss the issue with our customers, try to spin it positively and hope for the best.
It did not go well, omg let me tell you, so much piss and vinegar.
Now Scentsy releases a statement that the colorless ones are within acceptable color range to what they consider is what we sold, while I completely disagree i go along. Now we are asked to share a picture that shows the color variations to customers, they have then two weeks to cancel their order and get their money back.
Here's the thing, if they cancel and get their money back, we lose PRV and money. So we don't want that to happen, ever. It is at this time that many consultants are just done, like hit the wall or dealing with Quality issues, done.
When My Order Arrives
My order comes mid-February, earlier than expected. I am pleased to announce that all of my warmers were perfect. They still weren't exactly like the first round were, those first ones were a dark blackish green with a lot of rainbow colors, but my customers are elated! so I dodged a bullet.
Those consultants who put their orders in the morning of the 1st still don't have theirs, in fact I gave one of my personal orders to my downline because she didn't have enough orders to close a party, she hasn't gotten it yet, and it's mine lol. ughhh. So basically this was in my opinion the biggest series of unfortunate events to have taken place in Scentsy History.
The Aftermath
So now that I have given out my pre-orders and people are seeing them, I have a flood of people who now want them. Why didn't you just pre-order it when I asked you, 100 TIMES. I don't know, maybe it was too close to Christmas, but people now want them, they want them bad. They are in our new catalog but not available until all the pre-orders are filled, and that should be by May/June.
Im supportive of Scentsy, I do think this entire thing was handled awfully, but I do stuff wrong in my life too, who am I to judge. I hope we as a collective all learned from this and that systems are now in place to not have this happen again.
Feel free to comment questions, I will always answer honestly.
