Since I promised everyone in that email that this was my commitment to blog, I tried to cut and paste that letter in here to no avail..... my technical illiteracy is all the more apparent now that Steve's not here to cover my back. Gonna try again here......
"First of all, we as a family would like to thank all of you who responded to Rick’s illness with your prayers and positive energy. We are pleased to report that his bloodwork is improving, so we hope that this means that his kidneys are healing, slowly but surely. In the grand scheme of things, that’s all that matters, and we are living with more purpose and direction than before. However, this means that you, our loyal friends who share our life’s work, are sometimes taken on winding roads as our business evolves over time and circumstance. Please bear with me and read through to the good stuff at the end, it’s long but it’s been a long time coming and simple explanations of fundamental changes happening here at RocknRocks just won’t cut it at this point.
There’s just no way to follow the rules of always being perky anymore when talking to you. Our backs are against the proverbial wall and we’re having to backtrack just to survive here. As you probably have noticed over the past year, we’ve invested the majority of our time, money, and energy into transitioning to a new software solution, Netsuite, which we were led to believe would enable us to serve you so much better and to make smarter decisions with better reporting tools, etc. After almost a year later and $50,000 actual expenses, not mentioning the lost revenue, we are down from a staff of 17 to just Rick and I with some help from Kendall and Doris… After all that, a month ago (the same day Rick landed in intensive care with no health insurance), we finally launched the pretty new website- only to watch our already lagging sales fall to the bottom for the month of April. After a lot of investigation, we found that the Netsuite e-commerce solution part of the package was never and would never be right for us. It was hard for me to accept that all of our suffering over the past year was for naught but we had to make a decision to change direction or to give up, and five minutes was enough to realize that giving up is simply not an option for us.
We have no choice but to drop back and punt from here, move back to where we came from and start over. Rocknrocks.com is now back at our old Marketworks website (the old “devil you know vs the devil you don’t” thing and we’re reinventing ourselves from the ground up, back to operating as a start-up all over again after six years in this business. For this metamorphosis to be successful, we really do need your support, both in terms of your financial support in choosing our products to your spiritual support in whatever way you practice, to lift our family up out of this murky swamp of “bad karma” lately of near biblical proportions. As I write to you today, it’s on a pieced- together-salvage- computer on a dusty workstation in an unused office because my office and our studio flooded last weekend, frying computers and hard drives with all our images and artwork, turning laminate flooring into a giant mold spore sponge smelling like raw sewage……
In the past six months, we have sat vigil for births, deaths, devastating injuries, and critical illness without the benefit of health insurance, as well as have endured more personal tragedy than our privacy allows me to elaborate. Not knowing how to draw that line between the personal and professional has left me silent with ya’ll, except for sales notices for too long, so today I’m breaking all the rules and just gonna start tellin’ you like it is. I promise not to bog you down or violate my family’s need for privacy with the personal stuff, but you’ll be seeing a lot more of me on the blog. I’ve gotta talk to stay sane and not worry about whether my opinion on this or that in the world will make you buy beads somewhere else. An old friend of mine used to say, “You just gotta get over your cheap self” so that’s what I’m gonna try my best to do. This is where my commitment to blog is coming from, not to drive sales at RocknRocks, but to grow spiritually and “be the change that I want to see”. It’s impossible for me to separate the family from the business so bear with me as the two overlap at times. It’s what I do, therefore, it’s a big part of who I am. Hopefully we can all start talking with each other in a real way and come up with solutions that will make our world a better place and our collective lives less stressful.
In the meantime….. you know that old saying that “money can’t buy happiness?” Well that’s true, but I have one thing to add…… “I know it can’t buy happiness but it sure could solve the bulk of our problems”. We are having serious issues with creditors after this whole Netsuite fiasco and not to mention this nasty recession thing, so desperately need to generate some cash flow. If you are planning to spend any money on beads in the near future, please give us first shot at meeting your needs. Our family isn’t a faceless corporation…. when you buy from us, you’re literally putting food on the table and keeping the lights on.
In the spirit of what got us started fooling with rocks in the first place, I’ve got a big piece of quartz crystal sitting on this borrowed desk, hoping that it will somehow help me be receptive to guidance, to always remember that we are spiritual beings having human experiences. Before I get off on a tangent of our new plans, (you’ll have to tune in to the blog to follow the birth of the Divine Market, Clear Conscience and all), I’m going to give you all the same opportunity that I’m taking myself today, a stroll through the quartz to make myself a Mothers day present. You can give yourself the same treat and when you’re done having fun, go to Checkout….. my gift to you will be an automatic 40% discount on all the quartz in your basket! Who knows, maybe we can all put our creations up on the blog and send positive energy to the wearers…… figure none of this stuff can hurt!
Know that I broke all the rules here, got too personal and talked too long, but some things just need to be talked out among friends and we’re glad you’re still here with us along the way. Once again, thanks for all you’ve done for us in the past and we continually strive to be worthy of your continued trust, support, and friendship as we all navigate life’s path. Our goal now is to support you, to inspire you, to empower you during these challenging times and in the process of doing so, perhaps we too will be lifted up into a better future for our own family.
Please let us know if these values are important to you also, by where you choose to spend your beading dollars. If we don’t carry what you want, let us know and we’ll see what we can do for you. We have strived for years to be clean in a historically dirty business, so keep an eye out for the continuing expansion of Clear Conscience Manufacturing into other areas, but for now we’re proud to announce that all products at www.rocknrocks.com and www.thedivinemarket.com (coming soon) meet our standards as Clear Conscience products and we guarantee you won’t find that assurance from any other suppliers in this market. We’re open to new ideas and directions anytime as well – the Divine Market, opening soon, is a good indication of our willingness to embrace change, so stay tuned!
Thanks for your patience during the journey – talk to you again soon."
