Upcoming Web Store Update #1

Our (Possibly Temporary) Logo

We are smack-dab in the middle of building the new web store.  If you go to the store URL (http://www.scalliwagtoys.ca) you will find a place-holder page that says

The store is closed

We are temporarily closed for maintenance. Sorry for the inconvenience. Please check back soon.

I am planning to edit that rather impersonal blurb (it came with the software) as soon as I get a moment to spell out a few more details, such as when we expect to open the store (mid-June, for those who can’t wait to find out) and where one can go for information in the meantime (here at the blog, for one, and the store’s Facebook page [search for Scalliwag Toys] for another.)

Getting the web store together is a fairly daunting task.  There are tons of permissions to set, and choices to make, just to make the thing function properly–and that’s without putting a single item into the inventory!  And even a seemingly simple chore (such as changing a logo) can consume huge amounts of time (It’s not working!  Why isn’t it working?!  No, wait–it DID work!  But now this part doesn’t work!  Arrrggghhh!)

What we are aiming for here is a fairly clean-looking and functional web store, where customers can shop (or browse, of course) for toys and games at their convenience. The software that we are using is very robust and extremely flexible, and we are confident that, once we get everything running, it will serve us all well.  Customers will be able to shop and to rate items, using a star system and adding a short personal review, if they so choose.  We will be able to post all kinds of information for products, from links to lost instruction sheets for games, and customers will have access to referral forms and wish lists.

In case anyone is wondering why the web store won’t be ready for another five or six weeks, it’s because we are taking that time to fine-tune the inventory.  We’re ordering in some of our old favorites (which many will already have seen in the bricks-and-mortar store) as well as some new and interesting products.  We’ll also be attending a trade show in June (the annual American Specialty Toy Retail Marketplace) at which we will meet with suppliers both old and new–and we’re hoping that there will be some really amazing “latest and greatest” type of stuff that we can add at the last minute.

So, this is definitely still a work in progress, but we are moving toward the goal.

We’ll keep you posted.

New Web Store Coming!

I am hard at work right now building a real e-commerce store out of our website at  www.scalliwagtoys.ca.  Up until now, this has been a purely informational site, largely because in the past I found the whole idea of choosing shopping cart software, arranging payment gateways, and the store-building process pretty daunting.  Now, however, we have finally found some e-commerce software that seems to make the process do-able.

Customers will be able to browse and buy toys, games, puzzles, and other interesting stuff on the site.  We will be able to accept payment by VISA, MasterCard, and PayPal (maybe American Express, too–I’m not sure about that one).  We will be shipping purchases to our customers across Canada and the United States (although local folks may be able to pick up their purchases at the store.)  We’ll also be incorporating this blog into the site somehow, so it will all be at the same URL.  We’ll bring all the archived posts and so on with us (I hope), or, if we can’t, we’ll at least be sure to leave a breadcrumb trail to them!

This is a huge project for us–it’s tantamount to opening another store–but we are very excited by the prospect.  We’ve had lots of customers tell us that this is what they would like to see–that they would like to be able to buy from us online as well as browse–and we’re listening.  We’re hoping to have the whole thing up and running by the beginning of July 2012, although we’ll keep you posted.

Scalliwag Toys Web Store Coming Soon!

We hope.

I’ve discovered that I can actually create a web store using my current HTML editor, Sandvox from Karelia Software (yay!), rather than using one of the somewhat lame templates offered by my ISP. This makes me really happy, since Sandvox is (in my opinion, admittedly) one of the best site-building programs on offer and I would have been sorry to have had to give it up.

So, that’s what I’m doing right now. It might still take some time for the thing to be up and ready, since there is a great deal of information to gather and to shuffle into some semblance of order, but it does look manageable.

Fingers crossed.