Our Truck Driver Just Got Arrested ????

It's Officially Been Two Months Since I've Started My Newsletter!

I never thought of myself as a "blogger" or the type to sit on an airplane writing a newsletter about business to thousands of subscribers. It's an absolutely crazy feeling and thank you for the support. I'm so happy to hear how helpful last week's email was, also we had the highest open rate ever at almost 70%?

As we enter Week 8, I want to start covering more of the real-life issues I am seeing on the day-to-day front with CROSSNET. Here's what I'm currently working on:

LOGISTICS ARE A F&CK1NG NIGHTMARE

The freight situation is continuing to get worse & worse, with no real end in sight. If you are short on inventory, placed orders now for Q4 & Q1 2022. If you are selling a smaller item consider air shipping. Quotes for this have certainly risen as well but at least you can 100% expect your package in two weeks instead of 4 months. If you are on the search for a new warehouse or 3PL partner do your best to try to find one on the west coast as it will dramatically cut down shipping lead times. This is why CROSSNET moved our warehouse from Connecticut to San Diego back in 2020.?

The ports are backed up, drivers are stressed, customers are frustrated. Make sure your customer service is fully staffed come BFCM. Short-term hires can easily be found on websites like Freeup, Upwork, and Fiverr. Here's a real-life story from yesterday's CROSSNET shipment?

Follow me on Twitter?for more riveting stories?@chrismeadej

MAP Pricing

For those entering or currently selling in retail make sure your all vendors are fully aware of your MSRP & MAP pricing. This may seem like common sense, but you would be shocked at how many retailers will discount your product without telling you just to move a few units, especially if you're selling a seasonal product. No matter how many store visits you do, you can't check every location. Remind your buyer quarterly that here is our MAP pricing, do not break these terms, and here are the available dates we would like to run a promotion with you.?

Guess what?! We failed to do this with one of our biggest retail partners (won't name names) and they heavily marked down CROSSNET by 50% just to clear shelf space and make room for their Fall & Winter products. No communication, no email, just received word from somebody asking us why we were not advertising "our major sale"....well hey buddy I didn't even know it was happening!

So not only did our brand value take a quick hit with the discounted pricing, but now the reselling market on Amazon is going crazy. You know those hype beasts that wait in line at 4AM for a pair of Nikes just to flip them on eBay an hour later? Well apparently CROSSNET has a similar market. Catch 22 I guess. We are now dealing with over 16 unauthorized sellers selling CROSSNET on Amazon at a much cheaper price than our $149.99 MSRP. Amazon won't take them down, they don't listen to our C&D letters and now we simply have to wait out the storm until they are sold out of inventory.?

All of this happening because one retailer didn't follow MAP. Shit's crazy.?

List Building

Ever find yourself saying "what the hell should I post today"? Ya.. it happens to all of us. We've been building some really nice swipe-ups for these exact situations to build out our SMS & Email list. List growth and owned audience is everything going into the holidays. Get your organic social followers farther down in the funnel and you can even have your influencers (in our case volleyball players & CROSSNET U athletes) post these.?

Random Sales Channels

Believe it or not, you don't only have to do wholesale deals with big-box retailers. Here are a few channels we've been selling to lately. For context, each deal is structured differently depending on the following: are they a distributor selling to a wholesaler, are they a wholesaler, or are they the end consumer?

• Businesses for gift giving for their internal?team. We're currently working on a deal where we'd sell several thousand CROSSNET's to ULINE...they plan on using these for their employee & customer rewards program. This is legit a company that sells packaging, I would have never guessed they would be an amazing customer.?
• Hotels & AirBNB's?
• Parks & Rec Departments?
• International Distributors - Not ready to go global yet? No problem! Start with a distributor who is well connected overseas who can help spread the brand. We've been working with a distributor?in Germany?for the past year who has purchased well over $100,000 in CROSSNETS. My team is in no way, shape, or form prepared on dominating Germany at the current moment, but we have a distribution team who has been spreading our sport for us while we turn a nice profit on each order.?

Building Remote Rapport

CROSSNET is a 100% remote company. We are now over 24 employees are working from their bedrooms, bathrooms, toilets, or airports. I don't care, as long as the work gets done. However, building comradery across all departments can be challenging especially when some teams honestly have zero reason to talk to one another. Here are a few things that have been working well:

1. Weekly Monday company-wide stand-ups. These are 30 minute long and we focus on a different topic each week. A great way for other teams to learn what their co-workers are doing.
2. Quarterly All Hands Meeting - Every department shares and presents how the previous quarter went. 100% visibility into all of our wins, losses, financials. P&L is 100% visible to the entire company.?
3. Hey Tacos?- We found this funny plug-in on Slack that employees can reward other employees with emoji Tacos?when they do exceptional work. Only a certain amount of tacos can be given weekly, so they are perceived as "valuable."?The app automatically tallies these up at the end of the week and the winner gets a prize.?

Q&A Time

I'm traveling to Italy on Monday to scout wedding venues with the future Mrs. Meade for our September 2022 wedding! I will be traveling to Rome, Naples, and the Amalfi Coast from September 20th to the 29th and then Santorini, Greece from October 29th to the 5th. If anybody has any good recommendations in any of these places please let me know!

With that being said,?I want to hear back from you!?What can I help you with? What can you help me & CROSSNET with? I'll be stuck on way too many planes over the next few weeks and would love to chat with as many of you as possible. Leave a comment below!

Love you,

Chris