MrSnuff - Under New Management

Warning : This is a long post!

Hi, my name is Jonny Anderson and I am the brother of David Anderson, who you may know as the person who started MrSnuff. David has stepped away from the daily running of the business and has asked me to take over. David remains as a product advisor and general repository of knowledge and experience.

My background is in IT and finance but over the last year I have been busy behind the scenes learning all about MrSnuff. I am now turning my attention to the core business: the products MrSnuff sells; your experience on the web sites; improving shipping; reducing returns due to customs; and customer service.

Shipping
MrSnuff has overhauled its shipping to the US. We are now using a mechanism called ‘eCom-in-a-Box’ which allows us to send all our parcels from our UK (Isle of Man) warehouse to the US in batches (boxes). The individual parcels are then unpacked and injected into the US postal system. This makes our shipping cheaper and more reliable.

Many businesses use their shipping costs to encourage or discourage customer behaviour, or as an alternative revenue source. We performed a thorough cost analysis of our shipping and the price you see now accurately matches our costs. Simplicity and transparency was our goal.

The only debate we had was whether to provide a flat rate or a graded rate depending on the recipient’s US postal zone. We found that the variation was actually marginal because most of the cost was getting the parcel from the Isle of Man to the US, and this is fixed per parcel. So we decided on a simple flat rate.

We also removed the option of the cheaper untracked alternative. All parcels are now sent tracked. This is because the untracked option generated a lot of customer service emails which then had to factored into the shipping cost. Simplicity was cheaper in the end.

The downside with eCom-in-a-Box is that tracking only begins when the parcel is injected into the US postal system. This creates a delay of a few days before the tracking registers any changes. This delay is disconcerting and is the single biggest source of customer service emails. We are working on a solution to this. Possibly two tracking links, one for the first leg that tracks the box (containing your parcel) between the Isle of Man and the US, and a second link that tracks the parcel through the USPS system.

Destination Countries
I was asked to perform the data analysis to establish which countries MrSnuff and MrSnuff UK should sell to. This was triggered by our payment processor’s risk assessment team. They told us to localise our sales; so UK sites should sell to the UK and the US site to the US. This is because the payment processor’s risk algorithms penalise tobacco sales to multiple jurisdictions - the more countries you sell to the more likely you are to be breaking local laws, they say.

So I looked at the sales and the returns. I also looked at how often returns were due to customs rejections, or non-payment of local taxes and duties by the recipient. This allowed me to rank the countries and eliminate those that didn’t meet the threshold. The results were sobering. The list of countries that made it through this process is given below.

Valid Destination Countries - MrSnuff UK
France, Germany, Iceland, Isle of Man, Norway, Spain, Switzerland , United Kingdom

Valid Destination Countries - MrSnuff (USA)
Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea, Thailand, United States

To pick an example: Ireland had a 36% return rate on sales of just ÂŁ1,242 for the year. Given the cost per return is fixed, this means the relative cost per return for Ireland was above the cut-off threshold. Many countries were way off, with some at nearly 100% returns.

On the bright side we have recently applied for and received an EU IOSS number. This reduces the customs friction at the EU border and, once this is all setup, we will run trials to see if we can get the number of returns below the threshold for all EU countries.

Customer Service
We have appointed a new customer service operative. She is Kay Anderson and if any of you have had an email answered over the last two months you have been speaking to her. She is really smart and kind and will do everything she can to sort out your problems.

We are also experimenting with AI to try and speed up the response times for standard enquiries. This will include something called ‘sentiment analysis’ to automatically prioritise friendly emails. It is an interesting experiment.

Products
We have recently removed a swathe of products from MrSnuff. These were products that our payment processor considered high-risk, such as spoons, sniffers, bullets, smoking related products, CBD and anything that could remotely be considered drug-related. We also discontinued some under-performing snuffs. The good news is that this frees us up to expand our range of core snuff products to compensate.

If your favourite snuff has suddenly disappeared, and you want it back, let me know so we can reconsider the numbers.

Websites
We plan on completely overhauling the design of the websites. We analysed the customer feedback and commissioned some experiments to see if we could nudge up our conversion rate. Some of the changes you may have seen, but making incremental changes is hard with our current tech.

Therefore, as soon as we can, we will be updating our websites with a new, modern interface that should make finding and buying your favourite products much simpler.

Thanks for reading this far. I am really excited to be leading MrSnuff forward. I am sure we can improve your customer experience and still bring you the biggest selection of snuff anywhere on the internet.

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Jonny - the following is a table of what one pays in sterling when ordering from Wilsons (Sharrow) compared to Mr. Snuff:

Size - Cost, Mr. Snuff Cost,Percentage Increase
5gr - ÂŁ1.36, ÂŁ2.39 ,75.74%
10gr - ÂŁ1.9, ÂŁ4.49, 136.32%
20gr - ÂŁ3.6, ÂŁ5.99 ,66.39%
250gr - ÂŁ19.2, ÂŁ49.90, 159.9%
500gr - ÂŁ34.8, ÂŁ71.59, 105.72%

Average percentage increase = 108.81% when buying from Mr.Snuff.

How do you justify that huge increase in costs for your customers? All the benefits of no Customs and Excise duty and ad valorem tax by purchasing snuff direct from the manufacturer are lost by more than doubling (on average) the cost on your site.

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Thanks for the analysis.

You definitely have a point and in fact I was speaking to the warehouse manager about this just a few days ago. The source of the problem is bad data in our warehouse software. Over the years poor processes have allowed bad data to accumulate, duplicates to proliferate and product field values to drift away from reality.

One of the huge tasks that we have just completed was winnowing the products in the warehouse system to end up with a Certified Product List - that is a list where we are 100% sure that every product is real, unique and one we should be selling. This provides us with a guarantee that every product in this list is worth putting the effort into. Before nobody was sure, and so the drift continued.

Armed with this list we can now attack each data field within it. So the product descriptions all need rewritten, the product categorisations need redone, and so on.

One of these fields is the cost price and by extension the sale price. One vital process that had fallen by the wayside was the continual updating of the cost price of the products. This has changed; when the warehouse manager books product into the warehouse he will now update the cost price. Basic stuff, but without it the data drifts from reality and we end up with anomalous pricing.

I will take a look specifically at Wilson data across the range because that does seem particularly egregious. Over the next few months I expect to see all the cost and sales prices realign with reality which will make everything more consistent and transparent.

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This explains the new website design and why so many products are out of stock.

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This is all well and good, Jonny, but I want real questions answered by a snuff CEO:

How many tins do you keep on rotation at your work desk? If it’s under a dozen I’ll be disappointed.

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Hi Jonny. Thanks for the update and the information. It’s always better to hear what’s going on than radio silence!

All the best for your new role.

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Thanks for your explanation regarding sales prices, Jonny.

I turn 75 next month and bear witness to the alarming decline in snuff-taking and snuff manufacture, at least in England and the rest of the UK, mirrored across Europe. The distribution of snuff was once free and easy, stocked in every tobacconist with a lively export market across the globe, accounting for half of all manufactured snuff sales .Those times are past.

It seems to me from posters’ comments on Snuffhouse that many people outside Britain are now largely dependent on a handful of middlemen for purchasing snuff and the sales price (bad data or not) is ultimately a reflection of what people are willing to pay in a tobacco-hostile world of ever diminishing procurement.

Hopefully, once your sales prices are a more realistic reflection of cost prices it will stimulate demand and make snuff more easily available to the impecunious as it always used to be – leastways since 1978 in the UK.

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Any chance the 41 Photo White Elephant is coming back? Also, what about the new Temple Car snuffs that have been produced for the export market? I have really been waiting to get my hands on those. (Simon reviewed them on his YT channel recently, and my assumption was that Dave put them in his hands.)

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How does this affect the Snuv line?

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I really order only for the snuff not found at toque. I see both are getting into nic pouches but I’d much prefer real swedish snus, and then if the price was good I wouldn’t go to the snus websites to get it. But my biggest concern is the new EU regs and all my favorite producers going out of business. And unfortunately it seems everyone getting into snuff manufacturing is doing it in India, and the QC and scents (and the metal test) is at the point I avoid any tobacco products from India. I really hope someone in the UK buys as many German brands, their recipes etc, to keep them alive. Or at least buys enough in bulky to last for the next 10 years of supplying it.

I know there is a cost to having inventory, but I find the only way to maintain or grow the snuff market, and snus market, is to bring in other tobacco enthusiasts by offering products they use and trying to educate them about snuff , and snus.

Especially by having products or offerings that are not widely available so the search for something leads them to the site or paying to be a top result on search.

Rare cigars, rare pipe tobacco, snuff and snus. Especially if your prices are going to be high at least have high end offerings and make the brand feel more high class. Sir Walter Scott is one brand that brings me to your website.

Find some master tobacconists to help, high class. The whole gentlemanly luxury angle could be good. Everyone thinks cigars, expensive pipes, and the premium brands, they don’t realize that snuff is a high class product (as are many snus offerings)

The Savile Row of online tobacco.

This category will die if someone doesn’t start educating the public, and understanding how to reach hipsters and millennials. Micro breweries and natural wine , and organic food, and vintage clothes… This kind of customer can be reached and marketed to.

There are so many pipe fb groups and forums, and cigars too. If you start caring those products you could get a lot of traffic. There are lots off ig and social media and YouTube accounts out there, influencers in the tobacco world who don’t use snuff and maybe never tried it. One if these guys trying some good beginner snuffs and mentioning the website could get a lot of traffic.

I saw a shirt video on IG the other day of three attractive 20 something swedish girls, and then they all flip their lip and have a snus pouch underneath. Why isn’t snus or even nic pouches being marketed to the us females, attractive young women enjoying some nicotine in a way other than cigs.

The companies themselves can’t advertise. But you might be able to. Especially if you sponsor some influencers or give them some free products to try and review.

Grow or die.

It’s the only way snuff exists in 5 years. Get some chefs or brewers or perfumers or cigar guys or oipe guys to do a collaboration and do a limited release

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Hire me! I have a B.S. in IT with a specialization in web and database admin. I have a google IT certificate and have used many content management systems. Also I’m a smokeless tobacco lover. All kinds. I know a lot about nasal snuff and can help fulfill orders!

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Hey @Jonny have you all ever thought about adding a “Wishlist” to the site? Each snuff page would have a ‘save’ button that would save the product to your Wishlist so you can come back to it, and when items on your Wishlist go on sale Mr. Snuff could send an email notification.

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@Demigros

White Elephant is coming back. I will check with the product guy to see if we deal with T.S.M.

I am aware that lots of our product have been out of stock for a while. This is next on my list of things to fix. We are rolling out new software to help us better predict stock levels and so order appropriate quantities in time.

This means you should see all the products coming back online over the next few months, depending on manufacturer lead times. Thereafter they should not go out of stock again without a very good reason.

The goal is pretty simple: If we have decided to stock it then it should be in stock.

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@BarlimanButtersnuff

have you all ever thought about adding a “Wishlist”

I have passed on your suggestion to our tech guy. He is currently researching new Shopify themes and third party Shopify Apps so now is great time to ask the question.

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@Brown_Boogie

Thanks for the post, there are a lot of great ideas there.

I totally agree with growing the snuff market and your analysis is spot on. Perhaps we can use the organic growth of nicotine pouches as a route-to-snuff for the younger folks you mentioned?

As for cigars and pipe tobacco: Whilst I can’t disagree with your points, we have made a strategic decision to only sell only smokeless nicotine products, and that means no vape either. Our payment providers are getting ever stricter so we are trying to stay ahead of their risk curve.

Right now though, my focus is on simplification and the core business of selling snuff. I am busy stripping away the layers of entrepreneurial paint to get the company back to the bare wood so we can see where we really stand.

Once that is done I think we can carefully build things back, but only using ideas with testable definitions-of-success. Pricing, inventory, stock control, shipping, and website experience are all under review and ripe for optimisation.

We can be bold, but only if the data leads us there.

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Thanks for the update on this. Any chance of the American snuffs coming back? Particularly Maccoboy and Checkerberry.

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I’ve been a big customer at Mr Snuff(mostly through Snuffstore) . So big that I rarely need snuff anymore :smiley: . I like to hold weight of my faves . On a personal level I’d like to see stock levels so I can manage my budget for bulkier purchases . I like the big tins , I like the multibuys , but I’m still running a tight ship with me money .

I got a lovely website discount the other day to buy 9 ounces of 6 Photos .The savings were much appreciated . I noticed you sent the parcel out ‘1st class Signed for’ . Between me and my Postie , we can likely make it work but that service is next to useless for the end users . You only see tracking once it fails to deliver . To isolated rural UK addresses like mine even first class post is a more reliable service . Tracked 48 is another one that is pretty much flawless in operation . The traditional ‘signed for’ services can be a bit shaky . I only mention it because you were talking about maximizing your operational efficiency in an earlier post . The likelihood of undelivered ‘signed for’ returns is much higher out in the Boonies .

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I understand it needs to make business sense but in that case tobacco and snuff in particular probably doesn’t make much sense.

A shrinking category in a shrinking industry.

The numbers will probably suggest shutting down.

That leads me back to growth.

The only other thing I would say other than grow the category with various promotions and advertising is to get more snuff. For example I wanted to try imperio do Brasil but their website won’t let me buy from US. So if you had their line completely stocked I would buy from you. If I remember correctly you don’t have Rosiński and pflazer . You do have sir Walter Scott. It’s the only reason I buy. Sad you don’t have all these other options.

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@Demigros

I have an answer regarding T.S.M.

It turns out we we have just started dealing with them and recently received some products. These have been booked into the warehouse and now need to get these new products uploaded and on to the websites. There has been a delay doing this because of the general product review we have undertaken, but I have asked that these new T.S.M. products are expedited.

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