New Barcoding Process

Hi Jill, We are putting a plan together for unique one off pieces and we absolutely do not want to stifle our artists and stop their creative process, quite the opposite in fact. We will have a system where these products are not classed as new products, and we will be showing you how you can create your own barcode number which will be added to your stocklist, which can then be bulk uploaded to our till system, instead of what happens at the moment, which is every 'new' product having to be manually inputted, as we have to create the barcode number. I won't go into too much details on how this works, but it labour intensive and we have to make a change to this while it is a quieter time of year, as it really does have an impact on the staff when it is busy. At the moment I have had 10 or so emails from artists and I am taking on board all the feedback and making sure we put something in place that improves our service to the artists, before we finalise anything. At the same time, we just need to have a bit more control over the amount of products that come into the store. We are looking at everyone's sales from the past 12 months so we can help and advise artists on where to best spend their time and have more regular meetings to help improve sales. It may seem like less pressure to spread this over the year, but its not actually the adding the new products that is the issue, it is the amount of new products that are being added pretty much on a daily basis, without any process. For one artist It can be 2 new products one day, then a price change the following week, then another two products a couple of weeks later and so on and so on. As you can imagine, with 150 artists in both stores, this is a constant job for the staff and all we are asking is to have a little more time to do this. When it is done on a certain date, and the products are approved as new products, this can all be added to our system at the same time, instead of drips and drabs.

These changes won't affect the vast majority of artists, but it will allow us to help the ones who need it most. It won't be just twice a year that new products can be added, there are all the seasonal dates too. And if we feel we have to add another date to accommodate artists, we will of course do that once the process is in place. We just need a little bit time to get this right. As well as listening to the feedback from artists, we are also listening to customer feedback and the feedback from the staff who do a fantastic job at running the stores, and who speak to customers and artists every day. They too want to spend more time helping the artists and customers, and spend less time doing admin at the busiest times of year, when they know that time can be used better to make more sales for you all. It is my job to listen and support these changes and to make SDX a better place for the staff, artists and customers. I will engage more with everyone on the hub and we will be setting up video calls and one to one meetings, as soon as we get the process finished and communicated to everyone. I just need the time right now to get the process in place, and make sure it works internally for the staff, then get this out to you all. We are all doing our best to get this done as quickly as possible with the least disruption as possible to the artists businesses. That is why we are going ahead with this in January, and not later in the year. All the best Lynzi