Asparagus
This weekend’s highlights: Long delivery times to the US, changes on the website, which are intended to give our customers a better choice to have samples shipped priority, desperate trials on a business card design and my dear Vero and a Vega of the past (a topic for tomorrow).
When going for my groceries I usually try to buy stuff that is ecologically reasonable. This may implicate not to buy foodstuff arriving fresh and luscious from far away places by plane. I am not religious about it, but when there’s a choice why not by cabbage instead of exotic or off-season vegetables? Coincidently I shipped a little parcel with a Le Maroc pour elle before cruising through my local food paradise on Saturday. We were faced with a perfume lost in space somewhere between here and the US, probably customs related. Maybe customs associates with Le Maroc pour elle something like “Arab country”, with “pour elle” being a trick to fool customs; maybe they see a hidden dangerous message within this flacon, undermining home security? Who knows, we live in strange times; unfortunately, with all our virtual coming closer to the most hidden place on planet earth we still face the ugly reality of transporting goods across borders.
I wanted to bring my patient customer’s misery to an end and thought I will make her happy, sending off a priority shipped free replacement for a perfume that sits somewhere waiting to be cleared. The price tag for this idea: 19 Francs, about 15 $US for shipment of just a few hundred grams perfume in a glass flacon and cardboard, all neatly packed.
In my grocery story I came across fresh asparagus from Mexico for an astonishing 7 Francs twenty cents a kilogram. Shipped all the way by plane, fresh and yummie looking. Now, could anyone please explain to me, why my innocent parcels cost almost three times of what I pay for asparagus? I know that sometimes the working conditions for Mexicans are close to modern slavery, thus in a first assumptions we may assume that human labour does not matter much for the final price tag of these green vitamin sticks. Thus, how does this make sense?
Maybe, we should consider sending our perfumes as asparagus packages?
pix by me1234567, from www.sxc.hu
# posted by andy : 8:48 AM
6 Comments:
Farmers too bemoan the pricing scheme on their produce and grains. And by the sheer virtue of everyone wanting always to get the "better deal," they are actually worsening the problem. Hardly anyone in Oregon wants to pay for Oregon strawberries, since the inferior Mexican (and occasionally Californian) ones only cost 20% of what the much better tasting, and more expensive ones cost. What a pity. I think this is symptomatic of the Western world's tendancy to seek quantity rather than quality. Not that I can judge too harshly, for I am sadly just as guilty of it as anyone else.
By going to the extra expense of making your customer happy, you have shown her a your own quality as a businessman I think.
P.S. You have caused the unintended effect of making me hungry and craving asperagus with that picture. Sigh.
First of all - the photo is as Katie says - mouthwatering.
Secondly, the mysteries of shipping costs will never cease to astonish me. Personaly I think that postal services worldwide (not to mention customs) are out to wring every single Franc/Krona/Euro/Dollar they can out of you and not necesarily deliver the goods.
Katie, when it comes to peoples tendecy to pay lower prices and getting lesser grade of goods, I simply can't understand it. There is nothing on this earth that taste like ripe Swedish high-summer strawberries (hmm, apart from the Oregon ones I presume LOL)and yet people buy these less-than-strawberry-tasting things from Italy and Belgium.
How I long for the summer, when I can pick my own grown tomatoes and cucumbers...sigh....
Dear Katie
I am glad you got hungry when you saw the asparagus picture and not when looking at the lonestar guy of last Friday....
And I agree so much with your view on quantity versus quality. It is so strange: When the regional strawberries come on the market in May/June, people here are not buying them anymore (or to a little extend) because they have been eating strawberries for months, from Israel, then Morocco, Spain, Italy! But I tell you: They just can't be compared to the locally produced, fresh products.
And yes, my dear Ylva, I have a few strawberrry plants, too. And picking them in the evening, still warm from the sun, a dream you can't buy!
Before Sweden joined EU the farmers on Öland was growing a fantastic variety of strawberries which was quite small and with almost pure white pulp, and a luscios, rich taste. Nowadays the farmers no longer can grow this variety, since it is not as easy to transport as the big, plastic strawberries that EU promotes. But they are cheap!
I very rarely eat strawberry nowadays.
The neverending race for lower and lower prices drives me mad. Food prices these days have no connection to the real world!
I try to buy locally produced as much as possible, organic when offered.
I actually think my perfume interest is vaguely connected to this phenomenon. When everything is focused on cheaper prices, it is so refreshing to get such kicks out of a liquid with an astronomical price per milliliter! It puts the focus back on quality for me!
Well, dear Victor, I agree very much and I draw one selfish conclusion from your post: I could sell for a much higher price ;-)
If you would live around the corner, I would invite you for strawberries with cream... I do not get a lot of berries from my few plants, but this dessert is out of this world....You have to plant strawberries, too. Not much work and a few minutes total hapiness. And a fight with the snails....
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