What a relief…we have finally got some stock in. For what follows, I give credit to snuffster for quietly suggesting I keep everybody informed as to what is happening in my tiny corner of the snuff world. I just sent out a newsletter to our members, but I may as well post it here in case you are not on our mailing list or it bounced. I corrected a couple of typos, otherwise it is exactly the same. It never ceases to amaze me how I can read through something I have written 20 times, think it is perfect, send it off with a copy to me, read it five minutes later and see glaring primary school-boy errors popping off the page. Thanks DaveWebsite Here Newsletter July 15th 2010 MrSnuff.com First of all I would like to thank everybody for their outstanding support and encouragement. It has been a rollercoaster ride as you can imagine. A lot of us in the snuff world wondered for some time if this was the end of our wonderful hobby. Not one to give up I pondered our options as a company. As many of you know I was born in Scotland and fortunately enough I held on to my passport, figuring that one day it might come in handy. And it has. I suppose, technically, we are now a ‘multi-national’ company. It makes me laugh when I think of how small we are, but if these are the hoops through which we must jump to stay in business, then so be it. As most of you know we have now opened a new warehouse in Bonnie Scotland. While it has been a difficult and expensive endeavor, the positive side is that we will undoubtedly end up being able to serve you better. We will soon have a wider choice of snuffs, cheaper prices, and most important, with delivery ex-factory down to one day for UK snuffs, super-fresh product. Please bear with us as we work through some inevitable teething problems. Product Any of you who have visited www.MrSnuff.comrecently will notice less product than a few short weeks ago. We are working very hard at rectifying this situation. Tomorrow we take delivery of 5862 tins of snuff. That should improve things! (see below!)Our goal is to have the widest selection possible. As well as the old favorites, soon we will have 20 different US Snuffs; 5 Photo snuffs (all of them); Sun snuffs; Frederick Tranter; Mullins and Westley; Samual Gawith; Gawith Hogarth, Paul Gottard and whatever else I can get my hands on. Feel free to drop me a line with suggestions if I have missed anything. I should also add that now that I can buy UK snuffs in the UK then obviously I can reduce the prices.Non-UK snuffs should be cheaper or much the same as before. Rest assured I will sharpen my pencil and work out pricing that is fair to you, competitive, and keeps us in business. Members Only For those of you that are members you will be pleased to hear that we managed to transfer your membership across to the new servers. Unfortunately we were not able to transfer details beyond your name and email address. This means that in order to log in we have had to assign you a temporary username and password. After logging in, go to the Members Account page and update your details as you prefer. If you put in your address details then when you purchase something the system will pre-fill the fields for you which will make things quicker and easier. Your credit card details are not stored at this time. I apologize if your name was dropped out the system. Login Details are as follows: Username: your email address Password: mrsnuff USA/UK/EU/Rest of World Websites In order to make things simpler we have set up separate websites for the USA, UK and EU. The rest of the world is handled by the US site. This impacts the currency you pay in, the taxes, and the shipping costs. Please select the appropriate website for where you live, or plan to ship the snuff to. For the time being your credit card is billed in USD and then converted by your credit card company to GBP or EUR at their prevailing rate. The result is that posted prices may be a few pennies more or less than what actually shows up on your bill. We are working on a multi-currency processor which will eliminate this discrepancy. Tax/VAT We are now required to collect tax on behalf of the government for UK/EU. If you live in the USA you should continue going to www.mrsnuff.com. You will not be charged any tax. If you live in the UK, you should go to www.mrsnuff.co.uk If you live in the EU (other than the UK) then you should go to www.mrsnuff.eu If you are outside of these geographical areas use www.mrsnuff.com. You will not be charged any tax. Please do go to the correct website for the geographic region to which you are shipping. You will get the best possible deal. You cannot ship to the UK from the US site, for example, and you will have to start all over again because when you switch over to the correct site it will not retain your shopping cart. The bonus on the UK and EU sites is that shipping is less. Shipping We are in the process of setting up bulk mailing with the Post Office. Rather than flat rate we plan to charge based on weight. Shipping will be significantly cheaper if you live in the UK or the EU, the US will be cheaper on smaller orders and a little more on larger orders. Our goal is to be competitive and fair. As time goes on we will continually refine this to try as much as possible to minimize shipping charges. It is lot of work because the Post Office works in increments of 20g and each increment takes a significant amount of time to input because of the different charges based on geographical region. Right now the prices kind of jump every so often because we are working in 100, 200, or even 300g increments to keep things simpler. To spread the cost of shipping across as much product as possible, try adding or subtracting the quantities so you stay right below the next postal band. Obviously in addition to actual postal rates we incur storage and employee charges as well as packing materials. These costs are spread across product pricing and shipping and handling. Please bear with us as we sort this out. It will take another couple of days. Discount Codes The discount codes did not carry across to our new servers. I manually re-instated the military discount (for those of you in the armed forces). We will gradually re-instate other codes as time permits, especially when we run our frequent specials. Final Note Again, let me thank you for your support and the words of encouragement from many of you. It is really much appreciated. We will be running an official Opening Day Special in a couple of days, so keep an eye out for that email. There will be deep discounts, though only for a very limited time. One last thing: Enjoy. Mr Snuff (aka Dave)PS: Since I started this newsletter, 6596 tins of snuff have arrived at the warehouse. You will be pleased to hear that I have now sorted out prices and most are less than in the US. They are live as of about 20 minutes ago. Thanks 
Mr. Snuff, I was wondering if Taxi Red might return to it’s former price of $2.86 or whether it will have to remain at its current price of $4.46? Thanks
All prices on your uk site should include vat (not put on afterwards) Everyone elses does.Postage in 20g units is easy to set up. Royal mail gives s list of prices for small packets in 20g units .Normal offices manage quite well with a pair of scales and a franking machine.There are no regional variations on the uk mainland Bare in mind toque give free postage anywhere in the world for orders over £7 and its an open secret here that if you phone in an order to Wilsons of Sharrow over £10 its uk post free and factory fresh. Be interesting to see what happens to your uk sales but its early days yet.
Hi Mr. Snuff. I tried to place an order at your EU website. When I tried to pay using my debit card, an error occurred. I tried again using another credit card. The same error occurred. I know for sure these two cards work properly. Could it be that your website is still not working? Please let me know, I am very interested in being your customer! Enrique
Well done Dave and thanks for such a comprehensive update. Wishing you all the very best in this new phase of your business - onwards and upwards!
@regencybrougham: yeah, that doesn’t seem right. Maybe the $2.86 was stock clearance from the US warehouse? I’ll take a look and see though. Thanks for pointing it out. @LondonJack: I take your point re VAT but the problem is if I do that then all customers worldwide would have to pay VAT because there is not a way to deduct it in the checkout phase, only add it. It really is a pain. I like the UK way of pricing with it included. I have never quite got used to the US way of doing things where it is added in when you pay. I will take anopther look at it and see if there is some kind of workaround though. It might be that there is a tag that at least displays prices with and without tax at the product level so you know exactly what you are paying before you reach the end. As for postage it is not quite as easy as you think. Every postage increment I set up I have to name, set a price for, set a min weight, a max weight, and then select which countries it applies to by holding down the ctrl key and individually clicking on them out of a list of 232 countries. That’s fine for just the UK I suppose, so I should do that first, but try remembering all the countries in Western Europe (not just EU) There are 62 of them on the Royal Mail website and some of them differ from the website. It is great for my geography I must admit. If I click one wrong one then I have to start over. There are approximately 102 bands set by weight, so I would have to set up 306 postal bands to cover all the variables by weight, price and geographical region. You notice how it is only manufacturers that offer free postage. That’s because they can absorb that cost much more easily than a retailer. If a product costs $1 to make, sold to retailer for $2 and sold to customer for $2.50 then the retailer has only a 50c margin to play with whereas the manufacturer has $1.50. Unfortunately it is a bit of a ploy by manufacturers to undercut retailers and there is nothing we can do about it except compete by offering a good selection. As a retailer, of course, I do not think that manufacturers should be in the retail business at all…but then I would think that wouldn’t I! I absolutely do take your point though. I know that postage is a vital component of this so I will over time be refining it and squeaking the prices down as we get our bulk mailing on line. What seems fair to me would be the cost of the packing materials, the actual cost of the stamp, plus maybe a pound to offset the employee and warehouse cost. As a consumer I would be happy with that, and that is generally how I approach these things. @Enrique: thanks for pointing that out. I will look at that and let you know. @snuffster: thanks! Keep the comments coming. It is great. Dave
@enrique: thanks for your email as well. That bit of detail you gave helped a lot. I think it is fixed. If you could do me a favor and try it again, it would be much appreciated.
One more thing I forgot to add: we have an opening week sale of 10% off everything. Dave
Looking good Dave! Two problems with my account update on mrsnuff.com 1. System insists that Colorado, USA is in the UK. I change it and enter, open it and look … yup! UK. 2. System won’t accept my birth-date either that or I’m somehow failing to enter it after I list it? Maybe just cant handle a BD in the 1930’s ? Congratulations on making a horribly complicated move and business change look as smooth as it does to us outsiders. Regards
@gbrhys. I am not surprised that the system insists that Colorado is in the uk. I rent a few gigs of online storage space and the providers system insists that London, England is in California. Cant change it so I just pay in USD an be thankful that I dont have to pay 17.5% uk vat (a sort of sales tax). So much for technology!.
i’m just waiting for your SG selection.
Speaking of SG, will you be having the rumored-to-exist 25g containers? There are a couple SG’s on my wish-list, but I’m not that keen on the tap-boxes.
@carol: let me know what’s on your list and I’ll see what I can do.
David, you quote US$ for me. Can I use the SA exchange rate (about R8.00 per $) to calculate the total of my order?
Hi Pieter: to be honest I ma not sure exactly what to use since your bill is USD and we run the card in USD with no currency conversion from our side. For a guestimate I go to xe.com but that is always midpoint. Right now it shows 7.62041 so 8 is probably about right. The CC companies will most definitely not be using midpoint, but rather the highest rate they can get away with. I remember way back when buying about $1500 worth of snuff from the UK and foolishly paying with my CC figuring it would save me bank wire fees ($20). The rate on xe.com was 1.54 USD for 1 GBP. My esteemed CC company charged me at a rate of 1.74. Unreal. Cost me 20c on the pound if you see what I mean. Pretty close to a 13% above midpoint. The rate was volatile at the time, but not THAT volatile. Hope that helps, Dave
@mr.snuff: “let me know [what Samuel Gawith are] on your list and I’ll see what I can do” How about “all of them” ? Seriously though, if I were you I’d stock the entire range in the 25g tins and (if necessary) drop the tap boxes, for several reasons: - Stock is going to go stale much less quickly in the vacuum sealed tins than it is in the tap boxes. - Aside from Smith’s and one tobacconists in Dublin, you would become the only retailer I’m aware of to stock any SG in tins, almost certainly the only one to stock the entire range in tins and certainly the only internet retailer to offer them. It seems to me that you’ve got an opportunity to offer something none of your competitors have. - I’m guessing the tins would retail at about double the cost of the tap boxes. That’s hardly an increase which would put off many potential customers from purchasing. - Judging by the discussion we had recently on the evil of the tap boxes, there are many people (including me) who refuse to purchase SG in tap boxes at all. I’m sure the number of customers you’d gain from stocking the tins would more than compensate for any loss of sales due to dropping the tap boxes.
Mr Snuff, Presumably when we pay on your uk site in GBP, our credit cards are debited in GBP and not converted to USD?
Have stopped buying SG due to the “stale” tap box problems
The only way I’ll buy SG again is in 25g tins or in bulk. No more tappers, ever.
Good news, I wish you best of luck. It’s great to have local (inside EU) source for US and Indian snuffs. Also, I’d buy SG if I could get it fresh. No tap boxes for me either.