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Creating a Collection: Shipping

12.15.2020

This is the last blog post in our series about what it takes to create a prayer journal collection. You can read our post on planning and production here.

This was an unusual year for shipping journals, but hopefully, we can give you a peek into what shipping out thousands of journals actually looks like along with a little dash of extra drama from 2020. 😉 We anticipated receiving our spiral prayer journals in October/November. However, due to delays in production and uncertainties with Covid that date was pushed back to December 9. This is far from ideal for our team and for our customers and we were pretty discouraged and anxious for them to get in.

For those that don’t know, our team is fairly small. Val and our Shop Manager, Jane, live in Lafayette, LA where our business is based. (Oh, also, Jane has only been with us for a few months. A big 2020 welcome to the team, Jane. 🤪) Kara, the Chief Marketing Officer, and Brandi the Social Manager, both live and work remotely in Texas. So, we always gather together a group of local helpers (the best family, friends and kiddos!) who help us ship during this time.

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While we usually spend about a week getting journals out, this time we filled that week to the max. I’d say our team worked 9-5, but they were often doing that plus working into the night and taking on early morning hours to make sure everything could get out in time to be shipped by Christmas with all the delays due to the pandemic. This process consists of printing shipping labels, quality checking the journals, inserting a how-to guide, packing up the orders, and having our postal service heroes come to pick up a huge pile of packages at the end of the day!

Kara and Brandi were the points of contact during this time for customers via email and social media. We’ve honestly never received so many emails, but that’s understandable considering the delays! We worked hard to keep you updated throughout the process so the rest of the team could focus on getting packages out.

As of right now, we’re at the end of this process and all pre-ordered prayer journals will be shipped out by tomorrow (12/16) with 2-3 day shipping so they can arrive by Christmas (and have a little breathing room for delays).

Y’all, I don’t think we’ve ever worked this hard in our lives, but the Lord has been so good to keep us going. This is good, good work. Thank you all so much for your patience, prayers, and cheering us on throughout this past week. I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again, we have the best customers ever!! We can’t wait for you to each have your journals in your hands.

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Here’s a little Q&A on the process!

What’s the top-selling prayer journal?
The inkwell Rhythms! We’ve been talking about a black prayer journal for a couple of years now and are so excited y’all like it. The Rhythms Journal is sold out, but check out Signature Prayer Journal. This is the one Val will be using this year.

What music do you listen to while packing?
Jazzy Christmas because we’re basically elves. 😍

How do y’all stay warm?? I would freeze!
Luckily, Louisiana doesn’t get too bad, but one afternoon, we each took a batch home to package so we could be in our cozy houses! 🥶

Do you ship in clusters? Last name? Region? State?
We try to keep everything based on date, but within the date, we also separate by color. And hey, we’re humans dealing with thousands of orders, so it doesn’t always happen perfectly this way, but everything will be out by the 16th no matter what!

How excited are you!? Praising the Lord for his faithfulness.
The efficient part of me is so excited to get everything moving and cleared out. And we’re so excited to get these into your hands as quickly as possible considering the long wait!!

No question, just wanted to say I’m praying for you guys!
This means more than you could ever know! Someone told me the other day in DMs that they have me and VMP listed in their prayer journal to pray for us. 😭😭😭

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