David's AW News: Lost Moon Bowls Come Home.

Greetings from Ancient Wisdom HQ.. Sheffield

It's all happening this week, and a bit of drama as we almost lost our Full Moon Bowls.

Last week I was telling you about the Lokta paper that just arrived, and how the new Dropshipping website is launching.. If you missed it you can catch up here.

It's July already.. I can't believe how fast this year is flying by.. and on the 1st of July (that was Tuesday), we welcomed a new team member.. Holly.. who is our new social media manager.

These days a very important job. Holly is a keen yoga enthusiast and instructor, so already halfway an Ancient Wisdom team member.

An Indian shipment of GemstoneTree Gardens - some with Yoga figures just arrived.. so it seemed a good fit for Holly to make her first social media post about this collection.

So a BIG welcome to Holly, if you have time please check out the above YouTube and send Holly some encouragement, feedback or just say Hi.. in the comments..

Thank you  and you might even like the new collection. (arriving soon!)

Well we had a bit of drama this week..

A shipment arrived from Nepal.. 155 cartons, pretty much a full truck load. It came by air (everything from Nepal comes that way). I don't know if you know this, but generally shipping rates from Nepal are cheap, I think probably subsidised or controlled by the government there. Nepal is landlocked, of course and sending by sea is possible via India, but is very slow, bureaucratic and you need to wait for a full container load to be ready.. We have done it, but it's very hard work. This shipment by air came in at £1.50 per kg, which compares with current China rates at about £5. Of course, you need decent volume and a good shipping agent to make this happen.

Anyway, Mr Padam, our lovely Nepalese shipping agent, consolidated our orders, packed and arranged shipment from Kathmandu, to Istanbul to Manchester airport with Turkish airways. All the export documents sorted, packing lists, etc sorted. The stock arrived on Monday morning, I was quite excited - a full truck load.. I went to see it unload..

Big mess!

Alarm bells started ringing when we saw a jumbled mess, cartons had been slung on the truck, badly stacked and not secured at all. Our guys unloaded the truck and the second the last carton was off the driver was hassling to get a scrap of paper signed, offered no copy and was away like the wind. We made a big mistake not getting a copy, and he was away.

Sure enough.. There were ten cartons missing.. and those cartons were the most expensive.. our Full Moon Tibetan Singing Bowls..

Lost.

James was on it.. but the shipping company said we had all the stock. Gave us the full fob off.. Lots of calls, no joy.  I was so depressed.. We checked the CCTV, We got pictures of the guy running away.

Mr Padam found us proof of shipping in Kathmandu, in Istanbul and Manchester airport, and even customs clearance confirmed the amount.

Anyway, to cut a long story short.. James went to the airport, to personally check.. and guess what - in the back of the warehouse he found 10 cartons.. about £5k stock actually.

So your singing bowls finally came home, and will be online at AW Artisan very soon.

Anyway, got to rush.. it's Tomas' birthday today, so we are having a little celebration..

Wishing you an amazing week, I hope the British sunshine comes through again.

Take care, more news next week.

David