Greetings Feeders!
January 28th, 2006
On behalf of the Dr. JB’s Hummingbird Products family, I’ll say welcome to our new blog, our first blog entry, and hopefully a brave new discussion of hummers.
First, an introduction. I’m Chris — one son of Jay Whelan (Dr. Jay Whelan, M.D., also known as Jay Bird, and therefore also known as Dr. JB.). My sister, Anne Hawkins, also joins us in this family business, as does my brother, Joe Whelan, M.D. , and Dad’s cousin, Terry Thomas.
Like you, we’re busying ourselves during the winter whilst we wait for the hummers’ return. For us, this means all the stuff of being a new business. We’re getting our hummingbird feeder products ready and splashing on into the pool of e-commerce. Anne and Terry were at the big bird show in Atlanta earlier this month, which they said was a great success … good feedback on our products, a lot of people to meet, lots of talk of the birds, etc.
We family members will take our turns at these entries, ideally on a weekly basis, and we’ll try to introduce a topic for discussion each week. For now, I invite you to leave comments for us on this blog page — hummingbird questions you would like answered, or suggestions of other sites and blogs for linking, or anything of interest to the world of hummingbirds. Let’s see where next week takes us!
Happy Feeding!
Chris Whelan
Entry Filed under: Hummingbird News
2 Comments Add your own
1. JS | January 31st, 2006 at 6:04 pm
Nice product, but may I suggest a higher retail value on your direct sales if you want retailers to buy at the GC price?
2. Chris Whelan | February 6th, 2006 at 7:53 pm
Thanks very much for the question!
We are running into quite the balancing act by committing to keeping our products made in the U.S.A. We would like to sell them as low as possible to everyone, and we certainly don’t want to hurt our retailers with competition on the internet. With our current direct pricing ($24.99 for the Clean Feeder), and considering shipping/handling of about $10 on average, $34 to 35 is at the top of the price range that online shoppers will tolerate. Granted, we expect these to last at least three times as long as our competitors’ feeders, but still. We believe that we have the online price set such that they are not significant enough of an advantage over the in-store prices. Finally, a Perky Pets 30 oz. feeder can be found online for less than $14 — certainly lower than the in-store prices. That should be an indication; the in-store customers are not likely to look at your prices and then go online to save a couple dollars. They will buy where they shop.
None the less! … This is our first year. We are setting the prices where we think we’re fair to everybody, and we’ll see. Hopefully we’ll get to move some volume and lower your prices. Thanks again for writing!
Chris Whelan, Marketing Manager
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