More accolades from a customer

We have a very nice customer who sells to lots of stores who are household names.  Their product is private label, so while our client is the importer, it is the retailers' logos on the items.

They approached us early this fall because we handle a part of their business along with two steamship lines with whom they have direct contracts.  They had some heavy traffic coming for their clients and needed some assurances that somebody could move it.

Courtesy of the partner carrier we are working with, we were able to provide them all the space they needed and also were in a position to price the product more competitively than their other carriers.  These two elements combined to give us the opportunity to move a high volume of cargo on their behalf.

I am proud to say that their Camelot team of Gloria, Ellie and Marianna have done yeoman's work in making sure the goods are cleared and delivered.  Our carrier partner has been of great assistance as well and we wouldn't have been able to do it without the Hong Kong partner who handles these shipments and vendor communications.

Today we received the following unsolicited e-mail of thanks, and we're especially grateful to have been a part of their success.  We firmly believe that our clients fight hard to stay on their customers' shelves and in their catalogs and it is our goal to complement and enhance that effort.

Scott,

We don’t always hear the good stuff, so I wanted to let you know just how great this *** service is.

**** takes care of our largest customer, ordering and managing this account. She mentioned  today that our Out of Stocks would have been very high if it wasn’t for these SPEEDY trains with ***. Honestly, I look at the website on Monday and the ship is not at port, but when I review it on Tuesday, our containers are in IDAHO!!!

Unbelievable

Also, please give a pat on the back to Ellie and Gloria with the way they handled the container situation yesterday.

We had 2 hot containers which had an unexpected delay and with their help, we were able to have these delivered today.

Again, we were able to fill our orders.

It is a pleasure working with your team!

Your chance to see me wave my arms for as low as $65.

I have been fortunate to be able to annually do a seminar for the International Trade Club of Chicago about what I like to call "VH-1's Behind the Broker".  That's not the official title, mind you, it's some fancy-schmancy thing about Import 101 or some nonesuch.

Heck, you can read about it on our website here.

The point is, that while I do this in the large-group setting on an annual basis for them (or for other organizations around the Midwest), it is something that can be tailored for delivery to companies if you're interested.  The content runs about three hours or so in a lecture style, but the speed varies in a smaller group setting because we can be a bit more intimate and the Q&A doesn't need to be held for the ends of sections.

It's a great way to spend the morning and you can have the benefit of talking to other importers and compare best practices

Unsolicited compliments from customers are the best kind

When somebody raves about your service, you want to share it with the world.  However, it's usually best to make sure they don't mind the world knowing about it first.  Not that we get a million hits on this blog, but nonetheless it's important to keep it proper.

We have a great client who makes a rather unique product, inflatable slides.  They work hard with their factory to meet shipping deadlines for these things.  Over the summer we arranged to get one from China to Europe to meet up with a yacht that was cruising the Med.  It required a bit of work, but it was worth it.

So their factory gave us one to move last week, without telling us the deadline in advance.  It left us scrambling a bit to change the destination, bump up the arrival time and do some work in a place we didn't plan.

But at the end of the day, THIS bad boy was put on display and will hopefully garner a host of orders for our client:



And after arriving in Hong Kong on Wednesday morning, we got it on a Friday evening flight to Miami where it was cleared, available for pickup by the client on Saturday morning and on display at a show on Saturday evening.

We couldn't have done it without the great partnership from Link Force Cargo Ltd. in Hong Kong who help us out greatly with shipments like this.  Thanks to their team for getting it rebooked and out smoothly and for making the possibility to move more of these in the future a reality.

Which takes us to the comments from the customer.  Here, in there unedited glory, are their words to us:

GREAT JOB ON THE MIAMI SHIPMENT!!!!!!! WE RECD. IT IN TIME FOR THE PARTY WITH 6,000 ATTENDEES. WE HAVE ALREADY RECD. SOME GREAT RESPONSE ON IT!!!! WE WOULD HAVE NEVER BEEN ABLE TO PULL IT OFF WITHOUT THE HELP OF LINK FORCE AND CAMELOT!!! I WILL BE FOREVER GRATEFUL!!!! YOU REALLY SAVED ME ON THIS ONE!!!! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!! (PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO EVERYONE WHO HELPED GET IT THERE IN TIME)

You're so welcome, Donna.  Anytime.