I wrote this post, then rewrote it since it felt I was kind of rambling with no clear direction. It just felt like a post that was taking up space. If it still feels like I’m rambling, sorry! Let me know via a comment at the bottom of this page. This is a continuation of part 3.

So without further ado: There were a few things I wanted you all to take note of when ordering something online:

1. Find out who is going to deliver it and get the tracking number
2. Call the delivery company and tell them you are going to handle the customs/brokerage/duties fees
3. Also make sure you ask the supplier if there are going to be any additional fees for delivery to your door

I got hit pretty hard by #2 and #3 when the bouncer actually arrived since I didn’t know you could save money by doing those steps, so hopefully you guys remember this in the future. Oh, I just remembered a few extra notes:

1. Federal Express will charge you the customs/brokerage duties fees regardless if you say you will do them or not. They do it by default and there’s nothing you can do to avoid the charges unless you don’t use them as a delivery company. I know I’ll avoid them from now on
2. Once you pay the duty/brokerage/custom fees at the customs office, they will deliver your package to you if you want. You don’t have to pick it up from the warehouse. They do this service because some people might have trouble picking up heavier items themselves.

Jeff and his daughter came over the day the bouncer was delivered and we set it up to make sure there was nothing wrong with it. For those of you who haven't seen our first bouncer, here's a picture I saved from the first day we set it up:

I’ll admit, we also bounced in it for a bit and took a bunch of pictures for the memories. What can I saw, we were both really excited that it was everything we imagined. Our kids were sad that they didn’t get a chance to try it out, but it was cold outside and they both had runny noses so we put off letting them try it out till they got better. We ended up packing it up and started planning our next moves. Since it was fall we didn’t think we’d get any rentals so we decided that our focus will be the next year to really push our bouncer, but if we got any rentals we’d take them. Over the next few months Jeff and I posted, looked for any results, re-wrote and reposted ads to various facebook groups and kijiji looking to find out what combination of pictures and words elicited the most reactions and comments from people. Also, I was doing research on other bouncer businesses in Winnipeg and online, making notes on what features the best sites had and thinking of what I can design for us that would put us ahead of the competition. I’m an IT consultant, so this was right up my ally. I came up with a site that had easy access to all our products from the landing page and a feature that no other bouncer business in Winnipeg had at the time: the ability to book a bouncer online! Our scheduler also had the nifty feature as doubling as a way for us to keep track of our order information as we could log into the site and see all the details of the order, the name of the customer and a number to reach them in case we had a question. This time was extremely busy for me as well as we had just moved to a new house, I bought a truck to carry the bouncer and I was trying to sell my car and our son was born. It was hard, but I just made do with any free time I had to work on the website and eventually it was in a state where everything worked, it just wasn’t pretty. Cosmetic features didn’t interfere with the functionality though, so I launched it in that state with the idea that I’ll make it “pretty” when I had time. The important thing was having our scheduler up and a presence on the web.

The site has gone through many iterations and tweaks since its' first inception, but if you want to see it's current incarnation, go to www.bounchingbellobouncers.ca

This is a good place to end, but I thought I’d mention how Jeff and I got our name. I was having lunch with some friends at Clementines and we were discussing my new bouncer business. When they asked me what we were calling ourselves I said I’ve been thinking about it but I wasn’t able to think of a name yet. Now, from my memory it was Tim who said, "why not Bounchingbello since it has your name (Bello) and Jeff’s (Ching)?" My friend Mark thinks it was himself who came up with it though so I’m not sure who actually came up with it now. All I know is I owe someone a dinner/lunch for coming up with that awesome name! Thanks Tim/Mark! Markim? Tark? Yeah my naming skills need work! See you next week!