We are reaching the end of our spring succulent season and that’s always a particularly busy time for us, so I thought I would check in with you all! We are officially transitioning into our summer season now and since the heart of our business involves a living product we need to make some slight modifications to keep plants shipping happy and healthy over the warm summer months.
This blog update will cover changes to our shipping schedule, live plant uploads and we are also updating our Communications Policy. Please take a moment to read over this information so we can implement the changes that we need to make to keep things running smoothly over the summer and moving forward.
Shipping Schedule:
As we move into summer we are shifting our shipping days. We will now be shipping on Mondays and Tuesdays to allow for USPS delays and to ensure all packages make it to their destinations by Saturday. This change is effective immediately. If you have any questions regarding order shipping please email us at fulfillment@cedarcreekfarmhouse.com
Live Plant Uploads:
We are now entering into our summer listing schedule. We are no longer ordering Echeveria, Pachyphytum, Grapotveria and Graptopetalum in bulk from our farms in Korea. With the summer heat stretch, rot and risk of DOA for these types of live plants is much greater. We may order a few of these types of plants occasionally if we are highly familiar with how a specific cultivar may do in hotter temps, but we will not be ordering in bulk and live uploads for these types of plants will be tentative throughout the remainder of the summer.
If you have made a request we do have your information on file and we will continue to look for your plants in the autumn.
We will be selling haworthias over the summer this year (maybe a few cacti sprinkled in too) almost weekly until we return to our regular schedule in the autumn.
All live uploads over the summer are tentative and subject to change based on summer importing conditions, but we anticipate having one upload every Saturday at 9:45 PM, EST. All other weekly listings have been suspended until mid/late September.
July 11 th, 2020- Saturday evening upload in Rare Succulents, will still be a nice mix of plants, possibly some Random selections mixed in. Live upload will start at 9:45 PM, EST. Link to this category is here.
July 18th, 2020- Saturday evening upload in Rare Succulents, will still be a mix of plants, possibly some Random selections mixed in. Possibly one more GBU sale to completely clear out our racks. Live upload will start at 9:45 PM, EST. Link to this category is here.
July 25th, 2020- Saturday evening upload in Rare Succulents may still be a mix of plants, possibly some Random selections mixed in. We will be listing a good deal of Haworthia as well. Live upload will start at 9:45 PM, EST. Link to this category is here.
August 1st, 2020- Saturday evening upload in Rare Succulents will mostly be hand-selected Haworthias. Live upload will start at 9:45 PM, EST. Link to this category is here.
August 8th, 2020- Saturday evening upload in Rare Succulents will mostly be hand-selected Haworthias. Live upload will start at 9:45 PM, EST. Link to this category is here.
August 15th, 2020- Saturday evening upload in Rare Succulents will mostly be hand-selected Haworthias. Live upload will start at 9:45 PM, EST. Link to this category is here.
August 22nd, 2020- Saturday evening upload in Rare Succulents will mostly be hand-selected Haworthias. Live upload will start at 9:45 PM, EST. Link to this category is here.
August 29th, 2020- Saturday evening upload in Rare Succulents will mostly be hand-selected Haworthias. Live upload will start at 9:45 PM, EST. Link to this category is here.
September 5th, 2020- Saturday evening upload in Rare Succulents will mostly be hand-selected Haworthias. Live upload will start at 9:45 PM, EST. Link to this category is here.
September 12th, 2020- Saturday evening upload in Rare Succulents will mostly be hand-selected Haworthias. We may start introducing some Echeveria, Pachys and Graptos back into the mix. Live upload will start at 9:45 PM, EST. Link to this category is here.
September 19th, 2020- Saturday evening upload. We will be making a shift back to our traditional offerings of Echeveria, Pachys and Graptos. Link to this category is here.
Depending on how plants are importing we may starting implementing our normal weekly schedule by September 21st, 2020. Our weekly schedule would consist of Make it Mine Mondays, Friday Night Sale Succulents, Saturday Rare Succulents and Sunday Random Rares. We will likely be keeping our shipping days Monday and Tuesday moving forward.
Communication Policy Changes:
All customer support emails will be handled by our staff now. It’s the only way to ensure timely communication. Please use our support email: succulents@cedarcreekfarmhouse.com with any questions you have regarding orders and plant care. Our social media accounts will also be staff manned as well.
A Note from Crystal Regarding Communication Policy Changes:
Our business (thanks to your support) is growing and I am really humbled and honored by that. This has been a small family run business for a long time and nothing about that is changing. Our staff is family and close friends, people who know my business inside and out, but we are going to have to utilize more help in order to keep CCF growing.
With growth spurts, there are changes in organizational structure and processes and milestones that a business has to make in order to be more efficient and grow the way it needs to. I don't want our progress to stagnate and I want to grow CCF in terms of the retail we offer and for us to have the capacity to offer larger uploads.
I have to keep my inbox open for vendor-related communication and business management. I can no longer personally handle the day to day volume of inquiries that we get from our customers via email and we have to implement a staff-supported customer care team. It doesn’t mean that I don’t care about you or don’t want to get to know you better, but we cannot keep our shipments going out on time and do all of the things around the CCF office that have to get done each day to keep orders and listings flowing and simultaneously answer up to 50 emails a day (and some days a lot more).
We have to rely on our support email now. It’s the only way our business can grow and for our customers to get timely responses to their questions. We have a great team of people in place to help—all are experienced collectors of rare succulents and are very knowledgeable, all three of our gals know my business from the inside out and my staff is authorized to do anything that they feel I would do in relation to your account (including making address changes).
We will likely have help in our Special Requests inbox soon too, but that will probably be a combined effort.
This does not mean that I don’t want to chat with our customers, but in order to do that I need to be able to have the time to sit down with a cup of coffee and get to know you better a few times a week. So anything order-related, plant-care related or general inquiries need to come to succulents@cedarcreekfarmhouse.com If you send correspondence to my email please know that all customer emails are being forwarded to our team automatically (unless you put the word ‘Chat’ in the subject line). And I would be more than happy to chat with you about your family, your pets… whatever is on your mind, as long as it’s not time-sensitive or business-related. I want to keep my line of communication open for cultivating friendships with the folks who support what we’re doing here and the only way I can do that is through help with our emails. I don’t want you to email me and wait a week for a response because I’m answering questions about plant care.
So if you send an email to my inbox and get a response from one of our staff, I promise I’m not trying to single anyone out or pass your question on, it’s being forwarded so that you can have the timely response you deserve and I know our staff can handle it.
If you send in an inquiry to our succulents@cedarcreekfarmhouse.com inbox and my team feels that I need to address it personally they will send it over to my inbox and I will personally work on it.
These will be overarching changes to all of our communication platforms, including all of our social media accounts. These accounts will be staffed in terms of our DMs and messages moving forward.
I always will make myself available to you after our live uploads via our Community chat and during the summer, I’ll be in our Community chat every Saturday night at 9:45 PM, EST to say hi. So please feel free to pop in and say hello. I love our Community deeply, so nothing would make me happier than to see you guys there after the uploads and on Saturdays during our slower summer season. If you are new to our site or have yet to participate in one of our chats the link to chat with us is: here (and you can find this by visiting the Community tab on our homepage).
Thank you all so much from the bottom of my heart. This Cedar Creek Farmhoue is something that I pour my heart into and our customers are the soul of what we do. So, please don’t feel like I’m pulling away, I just want the customer experience to be better and our responses to be more efficient.
Thank you all so much for supporting my dream and my passion around this hobby. I sincerely appreciate you all.
-Crystal