Hey everyone, how has your summer gone? It's been busy on this end. We are still about eight weeks before we ramp back up to our normal weekly upload schedule, but I did want to share some exciting news with you, starting October 1st we are changing how we sell live plants.

New In-House Policies

We're entering into our second autumn at Cedar Creek Farmhouse and realize some changes need to be made to how we conduct business. Small business is a tricky thing, you learn lessons along the way and try your best to grow from them.

These changes are exciting ones, from now on all plants will be in-house unless denoted with the word 'PRESALE.' We are switching to an in-stock model for all of our regularly scheduled uploads. In order to do this we need your patience and cooperation as well with one piece of this new model, photos.

We will still be utilizing photos from our various farming partners in Korea for Make it Mine Monday and Random Rares (on Sunday). We are doing this for two main reasons, we want you to see your exact plant pre-transit so you know what you can expect it to look like after recovery (which should be minimal in most cases) and we're a small business with a high demand and by using photos from our farms it saves us an incredible amount of time from having to take the photos in-house.

Our promise to you is we will personally inspect all of the plants as they arrive to make sure we don't see any issues outside the scope of normal transit-related minor leaf consumption, slight changes in shape/color, we will hold an even higher standard of quality in this next step because we can pull any plants we feel aren't good representations of the cultivar and set them aside for clearance sales.

A specific request from Crystal: I am going to ask that you do not email asking us for additional photos of the plant you are purchasing, because if I make exceptions for one customer that will snowball into me having to take photos of every single plant for everyone, which is why I have held onto our presale model for so long. I have a family and with the level of volume we process I would never sleep if I had to take photos of every single plant we ship. But, what I will do in return is offer complimentary return labels if you feel any plant in your shipment was misrepresented by the grower's photos and if you feel I have made a mistake in how I have listed something. And I will personally inspect every single plant prior to the upload, on the same day as the upload. If you disagree with how your order has shipped you can email me personally and I will absolutely take care you. Or if you want to see our in-house photography of plants post-shipment you can always tune into our Saturday upload.  -Crystal

What do these changes mean for me?

What these changes will mean for you is you will never get a rough shipment from us, ever. The plants will be inspected before they are listed, on the same day of the scheduled listing. There won't be any cancellations because something arrived DOA or different to the way we expected them to ship.

Your order will ship faster, banning extreme weather conditions in your delivery area expect your package to ship within 7-10 days. We are still quoting a little longer window than you might expect for an in-stock business model, we do this so we can offer free shipping to everyone. All of the purchases you make during one week will ship out the following week (even if it is just one plant). For example, you make a purchase on MIMM, your order will ship by the following Thursday, so your shipment will include any purchases from our In-Stock listing on Saturday or Randoms from Sunday.

What do these changes mean for Cedar Creek Farmhouse?

We never have to disappoint you by saying a plant didn't ship well. We have the peace of mind knowing that what we list will be a quality product before anyone ever reaches checkout.

We will be able to list more plants than ever, because there will be more hours in the day that aren't spent on trying to source replacements for presales that didn't ship well and communicating specific plant issues with customers. Everything we ship will be top quality, and this will dramatically cut back the amount of paperwork time we've had in the past.

We can work on pulling plants for individual customers throughout the week so during our shipping days we already have orders pulled and ready to ship out the door.

We will have a more robust The Good, The Bad and The Ugly sales schedule. You can expect to see those sales every 60-90 days.

Will Anything be Presale?

Yes, we will make rare exceptions to our model from time to time, but on the whole expect 95% of our listings to already be in-house when we host a live upload. Any items that are presale will be denoted with the word 'PRESALE.'

All special requests will be presale, this way we can show you what our farms currently have in stock for the plant you are requesting. Expect shipping to take 2-3 weeks from checkout.

Our Annual White Peacock Collection will remain mostly presale.

Final thoughts from Crystal: Nothing will change about the shopping experience at Cedar Creek Farmhouse, we love the principles on which our business have been built upon-- everything will feel the same in terms of our uploads, but the plants will already be in-house and ready to ship when your order is placed. You will have the peace of mind knowing that these plants have already cleared Customs, arrived in good condition and you'll never get that dreaded cancelled order, and your orders will ship faster and our response time to emails will be quicker.

Our processes will be smoother, there will be a lot less paperwork for me to keep track of and I will be more regularly available in the Community Tab to answer questions and more readily available via email and social media, taking this step will allow me the time I need to offer the stellar customer service you deserve (not to mention more hours in the week to source things like Special Requests). Right now paperwork accounts for about 20% of my work week, so this will be time that I will gain back that I can put into efforts that will make Cedar Creek a better place to shop.

We're excited to embark on the next evolution of Cedar Creek's business model. Again, nothing will change about our commitment to quality, the feel of our live uploads or our appreciation for our customers, the only changes you will see are faster lead times, and better quality plants.  -Crystal