Our Personal Suez Canal

Our personal Suez Canal

While the tale of the Ever Given's drama-filled journey through the Suez Canal has dominated the news and social media this week, we were experiencing a liquid-based crisis of our own.  

(And before you freak out, no, your pillows are not stuck on a grounded container ship. Don't worry.)

Here's our problem child.


On its face, this beautiful 2-oz spray bottle of our sleepy-time lavender elixir isn't troublesome. Since we've been in business, we've bottled hundreds of these with no problems to report. Because our sleep sprays are the only product we control production on, they seemed like the perfect thank you gift to send to you, our amazing pre-order customers. 

We've used the same bottle supplier for all of our sleep sprays, but we'd never ordered such a large amount at one time. We had thousands of these bad boys shipped to us - a whole pallet full. We picked a nice Saturday awhile back to start our sleep spray assembly line. In 8 hours, our team of 6 (including voluntary in-laws) were able to get almost 1700 sleep sprays bottled. Next, we were ready to start applying the labels. This is where things took a turn, literally and figuratively.

We've got a leak.

As soon as we started turning bottles over on their sides, we realized they were leaking. We were quickly able to determine a few things:

1. The leaking was due to a flaw in the tops of the bottles
2. The company who sold us the bottles had no intention of helping us out.


You may be wondering if there is one of my excellent, gif-filled Twitter threads about this topic. The answer is yes, and you can read it here.

Our ultimate solution wound up being rubber gaskets to insert into the sleep spray caps. After lots of experimentation AND ordering the wrong size gaskets initially (insert face palm here,) we had 1700 sleep sprays that were no longer leaking. We shook those babies like a Polaroid picture to make sure. We only had a few hundred labels on hand, so we labeled and boxed what we could and shipped them over to our fulfillment center. 

We've got ANOTHER leak. 

Reader, I wish this was a joke. 20% of the sleep sprays we shipped started leaking in transit. I am so thankful we were out of labels, because we would have shipped all 1700 of the sprays we had bottled up and not realized they were STILL LEAKING. 

So here we are again. We've now bottled, capped, un-capped, gasketed, and re-capped these sleep sprays, and we're still faced with leaks. This problem required a very strong solution. Now entering the scene: TOOLS. My sister (Licensed Esthetician, head of our Customer Service Department, and sleep spray guru) has spent 30 hours over the last week tightening every. single. lid. with a pair of vice grips.

As of this moment, we have about 2,400 non-leaking sleep sprays. (I will pause for what I assume will be your thunderous applause.) We're still working on labeling and boxing so we can ship them all over on a pallet to our fulfillment center. At that point, they will be shipped out one by one to each of you, our dear pre-order customers. 

Thank you so much for your patience with us as we've worked through this issue. When you eventually get your sleep spray, hold it in your hands for a minute. Take a moment to look at it closely. And while you do, know that it has taken almost every ounce of our collective sanity to get it to you.

 

 

 

 

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