Pickle Of The Month - The Chronicle of A Funny Start-up

Secret hotel rates

noreply@blogger.com (Doug) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 18:21:00 +0000

I used to work at Orbitz.com. Orbitz taught me much, good and bad. One of the more interesting lessons I gleaned from my time there was that Hotels and Airlines give secret, "unpublished" rates to travel agencies like Orbitz, Expedia, and Travelocity, with the agreement that the travel agencies cannot show those rates to the end consumer. They do this by bundling these rates with other products into vacation packages (think booking your flight + hotel together) Shady? Probably not. Good business for them? Absolutely, it lets them get rid of excess inventory without exposing lower rates to the public.

So what does this have to do with pickles? Nothing. However, I think I've figured out a cool way for consumers, people like you an me, to figure out exactly how much money you can save by booking your flight and hotel together, versus buying them separately. Introducing my newest website - www.DiscountTravelPackager.com. Go check it out, and let me know what you think.

Frozen pickle pops? Seriously?

noreply@blogger.com (Doug) — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 14:07:00 +0000

I got a call at work the other day from someone who had run across the Pickle of the Month blog (of course she thought it was a great idea), and told me about FROZEN PICKLE POPS, made from pickle juice. Seriously. Here's the link to the website - Bob's Pickle Pops. What a fantastic idea! I hope Bob does well with his frozen pickle pops. Maybe if these had been around when we started Pickle of the Month, we'd have made the big time.

In other random news, I am helping the company I work for develop a generic domain we own - www.MovingTruck.com. We'll be initially focusing on helping people find a moving truck, figure out which moving truck rental is the best, evaluate moving companies, and find cheap moving boxes. We've also thought about having reviews on moving trucks and companies, and having people post their funny/horrendous moving stories. Stay tuned! Right now it's just a placeholder site, but big things are on the way.

Free first class tickets on Orbitz

noreply@blogger.com (Doug) — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 14:44:00 +0000

Orbitz is giving away 100 free first class tickets in October, for users who send in updates and tips to their new Traveler Update service. Check it out at http://updates.orbitz.com/promotions. Currently there's only 30 or so people entered, and they're giving away the tickets to the top 100. Could be a great way to score some free first class tickets.

New blog

noreply@blogger.com (Doug) — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 06:26:00 +0000

This is a very random post, but I started a new blog, after watching a random MTV Real Live - I'm Flat Broke episode. Check it out - http://helpdemarlon.wordpress.com/

Final Tally

noreply@blogger.com (Doug) — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 19:55:00 +0000

When I tell people we're shutting POTM down, people usually respond with, "it's about time, what a stupid idea anyway, I told you guys you were morons!" Ok, they're not that harsh, but they do ask how many orders we got. Poking through the database, I've tallied the final numbers, here they are:

Total Orders: 81
Total Customers: 64
Percentage of customers we knew: about 50%
Total Revenue: $2700.58

I haven't run the final numbers on profitability, but we probably came up just short. If we would have sustained our November/December pace, we would have been quite profitable, but the pickle pace slackened in the beginning of the year, and we lost motivation.

Now, on to bigger and better things!

A Sad Day

noreply@blogger.com (Doug) — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 23:11:00 +0000

Tears are falling here in Pickle of the Month land. As of 6:07 pm central standard time, Pickle of the Month ceases to exist. That's right, we shut 'er down.

In the end, postage killed us. It turns out $9 pickles are just too much to stomach, even if they do tickle the tastbuds, and arrive in delightful green packaging. The $20 price for the 4-month subscription seemed to appeal to a wide range of pickle lovers, but the additional $16 in postage usually killed the purchase in its tracks.

Lesson learned - don't ignore the obvious.

Looking back, a lack of motivation played a part as well. We started off wonderfully, but as the month dragged on and orders did not take off, we lost our vigor. Not that that's bad, it's just a fact of life.

Lesson #2 learned - things become tedious when there's no light at the end of the tunnel.

I don't mean to sound too down, the lessons and fun earned from POTM far outweigh the sadness of shutting it down. It's been the source of bushels of laughs, smiles, lessons, strange looks, and countless other moments of joy over the last year. In fact, it even played a part in me getting my last job, and has opened up a number of doors since. Who would have thought?

Well, that's enough rambling for this Sunday afternoon. May you always have wonderful, tasty pickles.

Pickliest Regards,
Doug

New Site #1

noreply@blogger.com (Doug) — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 23:30:00 +0000

I am ecstatic to announce our newest foray into ridiculousness - www.CelebrityWakeUpCall.com. That's right, we want to bring the voice of your favorite celebrity to a wake up call near you.

Until we flesh out a bit more of the site, we're keeping things on the DL (that's the down-low, for our older readers). We just have an email sign up right now, which we'll keep up until launch. What are you wating for go sign up now!

Stayed tuned for updates, including screenshots and general tomfoolery.

Almost ready for the next step

noreply@blogger.com (Doug) — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 14:32:00 +0000

Thanks for your patience, loyal blog readers (all two of you). I am happy to report we're super close to the inital launch of our next set of stupid websites. Check back tonight for more details!

We are still alive

noreply@blogger.com (Doug) — Fri, 26 May 2006 16:09:00 +0000

Just wanted to throw a quick post out there letting everyone know we're still alive. We haven't posted in a while, because we've been working on some top secret pickle projects.

More to come next week.

Beer shirts

noreply@blogger.com (Doug) — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 16:03:00 +0000

So I was doing some web research for my real job, and I ran across www.squidoo.com. It lets anyone publish pages on whatever they want, and make cash for doing so. Very cool site and idea.

Check out the guide to making sweet beer shirts I made - http://www.squidoo.com/beershirts/

Summer in Chicago

noreply@blogger.com (Doug) — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 13:22:00 +0000

One of the greatest joys of summer in Chicago is sitting at Wrigley field on a warm, sunny, Tuesday afternoon with a hot dog in one hand, and a cold Old Style in the other.

It almost makes our slow sales worries disappear. :-)

Mike and I are pretty excited to see what kind of response we get for the pregancy pack. We're hoping that we generate decent enough sales from that to offset the decline in regular pickle of the month subscriptions. I guess we'll see!

Standard deviation

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 03:16:00 +0000

I'll be the first to admit, I've deviated from last week's preliminary timeline for rolling out our latest product offering and subsequent advertising. If anyone at my new employer happens to be reading this and fears it's indicative of my abilities as a Project Manager, be not alarmed. POTM isn't an urgent priority at the moment (while getting up to speed in the new job most definitely is) and the slip was hardly unanticipated. It's all about prioritization.

I have made some gradual progress though. The staging site has the new product bundle (minus a good picture of a pregnant person - Dubs, I'll be emailing you shortly to get that last piece taken care of). I also think I've identified the last component for the Proud Parent Blast - it's a bib with a "lil pickle" on it. It's cute, functional, and the right size for our packaging needs. My initial thought is to resell the one I found online, then create our own version if this proves to be a popular offering (and thus increase our margins).

Pickle sales are what one might label as slow, and by slow I mean Slowsky slow, so we're hoping the new offering and the incremental advertising pays dividends. If not, we'll just try something else. Afterall, we've got plenty of ideas...

Is this great or what? Combine this with a Big Papa and Hot Mama pickle, and you have yourself baby gift nirvana that's fun for the whole family.

How to kill time the fun way

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 00:21:00 +0000

This blog is being penned from Gil's Cafe on Milwaukee's East Side. How does Milwaukee have an East Side, if it's bordered on the east by Lake Michigan? A fascinating question. I think it's because the direction is relative to the river, not to downtown. But I digress.

I'm here because I'm killing time while my wife goes to grad school. As it turns out, killing time is a lot of fun at Gil's, mostly because they have two of my favorite beers (New Glarus Spotted Cow and Texas' own Shiner Bock) and some rockin spinach artichoke dip. I learned to appreciate Shiner Bock while spending time in Houston as an Accenture employee. My advice to other first time visitors - enjoy the beer, but avoid sucking any crawfish heads. Trust me on this.

The aforementioned delicacies (beer and dip, not crawfish heads) were perfect complements for my detailing out the list of changes necessary to push ahead with our pregnancy-themed offerings. 45 minutes of web surfing tells me the pickle+pregnancy+baby market is horribly underserved (much like the monthly pickle market). With that in mind, here is my plan:

Step 1, itemized list of what needs to change (did this tonight)
Step 2, create the copy and upload the pictures to our staging site (Thursday).
Step 3, promote to the real site and test (Friday).
Step 4, sign up for Google AdWords advertising and see what happens (Fri-Sun)

I'll do a separate post on Friday explaining our use of AdWords, because we think that's a pretty powerful (and quantifiable) means for little guys like us to advertise like big companies.

Hopefully, our pickle pregnancy offering will be less controversial than Shiner Beer's "Get Caught with Bock" campaign, where this image was found.

Changing it up

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 21:40:00 +0000

There are a couple things worth noting in today’s blog regarding change. For one, I am changing jobs at the end of this week. Though this change is the right move career-wise, it’s no less difficult saying goodbye to the people I’ve worked with the last 5 ½ years. However, it does mean great news for POTM. My plan is to use the week off between current job and new job to bring the pregnancy theme to POTM. This means determining the new product bundles and branding, taking and editing product photos, updating the site copy for the new offering(s), and possibly incorporating a new pickle pregnancy t-shirt. I’m excited to finally have time for this, as it seems blog entry and pickle shipments are about all I had capacity for the last few months.

Another significant change will be the migration of our current site to the much-ballyhooed RoR implementation, which Doug will be managing. This will totally rock. Why? Because it will enable us to change themes, design, features, and copy much more efficiently than our current platform allows. My vision has POTM’s look and feel changing with each significant holiday - and even more than a few insignificant ones (Casmir Pulaski Day, anyone?). This variety will help keep the site fresh and different for recurring visitors, and make things a helluva lot more fun for us to change whenever we decide to get creative.

More to come this week about the results of our NCAA marketing endeavor...

Bradley Braves, Beers, and Bellys

noreply@blogger.com (Doug) — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 15:03:00 +0000

For all you Bradley fans out there in Chicago, we will be congregating at Belly's tonight for the game. Click on this link to see where it is. First person to recognize Mike or I that doesn't know us yet gets a free pickle.

POTM loves BU

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 03:53:00 +0000

I write this blog during commercial breaks of Scrubs. The second episode on tonight is absolutely fantastic. If I spent the next 48 straight hours watching Scrubs and reading online articles about Bradley Braves basketball, and if every commercial was a different version of that new VW "Unpimp my ride", I'd consider it 48 hours well spent.

But back to Bradley basketball. Un-BU-lievable! Not sure if we ever mentioned it in the blog before, but Doug and I both are Bradley alums and are self-admittedly addicted to reading every bit of news we can about our team at the moment. I'm losing my voice just thinking about all the yelling I'll be doing Thursday night when they play...who's that team again? Nashville? Whatever - doesn't matter. If this article in a Detroit paper doesn't make you an instant fan then don't even bother seeing Hoosiers, Rudy, Field of Dreams, or any other heartwarming tale of sports glory. My San Francisco cousin Kate even emailed and said she had a floor ticket to the Oakland regional game if I could find a flight out there. After some quick research, I realized that was too pricey a proposition. But then an email from friend Sean got me thinking: what if I don't fly out there, but POTM does? I.e., cousin Kate sports some blatantly pro Bradley/pro POTM gear and we bank on a CBS camera man giving this smartly clad super-fan a second or two of national tv time. That would be the best (and coincidentally only) advertising $$$ we'd ever spent!

Doug found a vendor, The Tshirt Deli in Bucktown, that did sameday shirts. I swung by this evening after work, and got two seriously pimpin shirts made for the princely sum of $40 each (you pay by the letter - here I thought our URL was just a pain in the ass to type). I'll next day ship them to Kate tomorrow morning and keep my eyes glued to the TV Thursday night for them. Hey, it's well worth it just for the 20,000 fans to see, let alone a shot at the whole nation.

Here's a couple pics of the beauties, along with one of the forthcoming SI covers. I love how they come wrapped in butcher paper like deli meat. Great gimmick, and really nice people that work there. I have a feeling they thought "GO BU" was some sort of cute motivational phrase (Go, be you!). If you could design and order their stuff online they'd be shipping shirts like hotcakes...

Don't Hate Little Pepe

noreply@blogger.com (Doug) — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 14:18:00 +0000

Comments trickled in over the last couple of weeks that people didn't appreciate the Little Pepe pickle as much as his pickle brothers.

Why hate Little Pepe I ask? Just because he's a bit smaller, and a bit spicier, does not mean he doesn't try just as hard to be a great pickle. Maybe the fault lies not in the pickle, but in the pickle preparation?

I thought that very thing Monday night as I bit into Mr. Little Pepe, and then the idea struck. Why not include this little spicy number in one of my favorite foods - turkey burgers! Without further ado, I happily present Pickle of the Month's very first pickle recipe!

Little Pepe Spicy Turkey Burgers

Ingredients:

One package ground turkey
3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1/3 cup red onion, finely chopped
8 shakes of Lawry's Seasoned Salt
1/2 Litte Pepe, finely chopped

Instructions:

Mix ingredients together in bowl
Form delicious turkey burger patties
Take a swig of the beer you're drinking (you should be drinking, you're making pickle burgers for goodness sake)
Grill delicious turkey burger patties
Enjoy! I like to have mine with ketchup and mustard, some enjoy barbecue sauce.

The Greatest St. Patty's Day Shirt Ever

noreply@blogger.com (Doug) — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 14:11:00 +0000

As Mike mentioned in his previous post, our green "What a Stupid Idea" t-shirt made for one great St. Patty's day shirt! Check out Megan sporting this beauty. Thanks for supporting us Meg!

Irish Pickles

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 05:28:00 +0000

This is a big week for redheads and pickle lovers: St. Patrick's Day of course! We got things started early as usual here in Chicago, with a raucous celebration at the South Side Irish Parade on Sunday morning. Good weather (aka above freezing and not raining) just about quadruples the fun factor of this event, and when your friend Mike offers up a huge parking lot, plentiful indoor bathrooms, and hand-wrapped corned beef sandwiches for all, it's impossible not to have fun. Unless of course you're the uninvited punk he body-tossed out the back door.

For the first time in 5 years, I didn't have to drive myself home, so needless to say this was my favorite parade in recent memory. Heck, I even got sunburned, which is hard to imagine given my carribean bronze irish skintone. You best believe I prominently wore an emerald green "Stupid Idea" tshirt the entire time, even if it meant drinking my beer through chattering teeth. Always Be Closing, that's our motto! Oh wait, maybe that's Alec Baldwin's motto. Anyway, between my shameless advertising and Doug's sister-in-law Megan's proud patronage, we'll surely double the website hits after this week.

Some photos from the big event...

The man next to me is a former Div. 1 athelete (granted, it was swimming)

Obviously some sort of South Side gang symbol

Nothing says St. Patricks day like a huge furry green cowboy hat and three not-so-sober friends

Google enters word processing

noreply@blogger.com (Doug) — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 14:37:00 +0000

This post has little to do with pickles, but it'll grab your interest if you're a geek anyway. Google bought Writely yesterday, launching a full frontal attack on Microsoft.

Writely is a very cool online word processor, that lets one, or many, people crank out word docs with no problem. We've used it a bit here at Pickle of the Month to work on our website copy together.

If this battle were in the old WWF, would Microsoft be the Andre the Giant and Google Jimmy Supefly Snuka?

Belated Shout-Out

noreply@blogger.com (Doug) — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 14:34:00 +0000

I want to throw a belated shout out to Kerstin Furneisen, our wonderful designer who came up with the POTM logo. It seems we never actually told her we ended up using her logo (a big oops! on our part). If you 'd like to have Kerstin design some stuff for you, you can email her at gingersouffle@yahoo.com. She does great work.

Here's a fun note for the weekend - if you happend to be swilling green beers in Chicago this weekend, keep your eyes peeled for a "What a Stupid Idea" POTM shirt. Our good friend Megan volunteered to wear it for a little publicity on St. Patties day. Thanks Megan!

And that's why you never Copy-Paste

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 04:20:00 +0000

If you've ever done any sort of programming or word processing, you know the seductive power of the Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V key combinations. All these words copied and pasted so quickly! This is more efficient than the ESPN Plays of the Week! I remember learning of this wondrous key combo in my first 2 weeks of training at Accenture. Teammate Jen from Manila was writing code at a ridiculous speed as I looked over her shoulder, and that's when she told me. Why write your own words when someone else has already done it better!

Well, it came back to bite me here at POTM. Seems in writing my SQL queries to pull back recurring orders, I copied and pasted the date ranges for the orders I was seeking, and neglected to update the year in the process (thank you customer Mike for pointing it out late last week). Not a big deal, until you start getting to orders placed after January 1. When I first realized the gaffe, I was admittedly quite nervous. After some calm investigation, turns out the number of affected accounts was relatively small, with a small number of customers missing their February pickles. I packaged those additional orders today and will ship them tomorrow AM along with a note explaining the gaffe.

The moral of the story is, Copy-Paste can be a potent tool, but one that must be used with the utmost vigilance. Much like dijon mustard.

And the band played on

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 05:33:00 +0000

We received this email from our college friend Adam, and felt obligated to share:

"I just wanted to give you all warning at pickleofthemonth.com that after a heavy advertising rotation at Mardi Gras ’06, pickleofthemonth.com may experience some heavy web traffic over the next few weeks. Everyone at the yearly festival wanted to know why I would have such a silly (and well fitting – thanks Mike for your foresight) T-shirt on. I told each and every one of them to check out pickleofthemonth..com and order their loved one the perfect gift. I told them how tasty the Big Papa was and how much I look forward to Lil’ Pepe. As you can see, the gentleman behind your newest billboard cannot wait to get his first pickle in the mail.

Thanks pickleofthemonth.com, you just made me the hit of Mardi Gras."

Couple thoughts came to mind upon seeing the picture. First, I think this was Mardi Gras in St. Louis, not New Orleans as it looks a bit chilly for the Gulf Coast (not that anyone could tell by the time this was taken). Second, both gentlemen NOT wearing POTM shirts freaked us out considerably and we'd prefer if Adam you don't let them borrow your POTM shirt anytime soon (at least not while they're drinking heavily). Thirdly, thank you Adam for the unsolicited and awesome publicity!

For the rest of you out there, this emerald green beauty of a shirt is sure to be the hit of any upcoming St. Patrick's day gathering you plan to pass out at. Help us get rid of these last few so we can stock some new designs ASAP (Sorry Dubs, I know we have yet to unveil the pregger pickle shirt and you are mucho preggo, but we will soon!).

If only the world had one more blog

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 05:25:00 +0000

I felt guilty for all the completely un-pickle-related posting I've done of late on this blog, so I decided to start a new one. If you commute, or know someone who does, you should enjoy. I'll continue posting to both blogs, but this way the geeks can keep reading about our start-up while the working stiffs can get their fill of commuting stories.

The Root of All Evil: Flat Light

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 15:55:00 +0000

Riding the train this morning, shared a car with an immaculately dressed old guy who obviously enjoyed being out and about this Thursday morning far more than the rest of us. When the automated announcement said, "Caution: the doors are about to close" Spry Old Guy answered conversationally, "OK, alright, go ahead and close 'em then." Now he's chatting up the conductor. He says hi to every other person that walks past. The over-under for this guy is a solid 83 years old, but it's obvious he loves his routine. Guess we all grow into things eventually, as much as we think we won't.

Let's switch gears and talk briefly about the Olympics. Anyone who caught 5 minutes of the women's downhill finals was treated to a gutsy post-crash performance by Lindsey Kildow and at least 12 mentions of the "flat light" conditions on the course. Honestly, they made this flat light phenomenon (diabolically caused anytime it's cloudy outside) sound responsible for every mistake or nuance of every racer. At one point the announcers deftly tied it to the JFK assassination as well as the Enron collapse, and I'm sure as hell blaming any future speeding tickets, marital misunderstandings, and failed business ventures on the evils of flat light.

Got some pickles to pack tonight. I just pray the flat light conditions in our basement won't cause too many issues...

Can you believe this flat light??? Incredible!