Things we wished we’d done…

Time really does fly. Even on those days when it seems like 5 o’clock will never get here. 🙂

I’ve been wanting to branch out into other things with my art recently, but I can’t seem to stop painting poppers. That’s not all bad, but I’m not sure the popper audience will fully appreciate the context of whatever I produce. Not to sound like I’m painting the Mona Lisa over here or anything, but I think some of the designs come out pretty well – at least as far as fishing goes.

But could I produce something else? Something that takes the humble fishing popper to a new demographic – a new audience? Maybe. Maybe not. But I guess I’ll never get an answer to that question without producing a few unconventional sets and putting them out there – for sale – or to be criticized? My pen-pal friend from Down Under just got his Zazzy Pops the other day and he seems well pleased with how they turned out saying that they were quite the little works of art. It always makes me smile when someone says that, because I think back to my high school days. I think I took about as many art classes as I could squeeze in from 9th grade until I left college. In most of them, I was a stand out. No, not like that – when asked to paint a boot, I was the kid that painted everything around the boot, leaving the outline. Once I remember a watercolor class where I painted tribal figures using a spoon instead of a brush. Odd? Sure. Everyone thought I was nuts and maybe I am – but here I am, painting fishing lures…

…and I don’t think it’s nuts at all on most days. 😉

SO, in light of all that useless blathering, does anyone see anything they recognize below? This might seem a little crazy, but I’d hate to look back 30 years from now and say “Now why didn’t I ever paint up a tribute to my favorite artists?”

Three Zazzy Pops to the first person to correctly name each artist by Friday, August 3rd, 2012.  Bragging rights if you can also name the painting.  Good luck! 

Wet Ink.

We hate commercials!

If Zazzy Pop made a commercial, what would it look like? Discuss! ( and win a free ZP “micro” pop )

 

Quickie

Just a quick note to let you know we’re turning out a new batch of ZP’s this weekend and next week we’ll continue our deal (all the way to August 1st) where you place any online order and get a free Micro Pop! Due to some computer problems, we haven’t been on the blog much this week but look for that to change next week as we’ll get back on our regularly scheduled ZazzyNess. 🙂

What keeps you going?

Sometimes, it’s the little stuff – ya know?

Even if nothing comes of it, the other day we got an email asking about Zazzy Pops. Someone in our home state was looking for a popper for their fly shop to replace their supplier, whose apparently gone under.

Now, keep in mind that it takes a couple days to turn out a ZP, so I’m not sure we can help them with their main popper needs, but perhaps we can hook them up with some on a “premium popper” basis – which is really what we do around here anyway.

So maybe nothing comes of it – maybe they don’t want them at all once they find out I can’t do 100 a month. That’s ok. In the end, it was just nice that someone noticed and liked them enough to ask. They also bought a couple for a first hand inspection, so that was good too. LOL

As long as the wheels keep turning and we’re moving forward, I’m going to consider that a win – no matter what the spreadsheets and pie charts say. Pie…hmm….pie would be good. Strawberry or blackberry though?

So, what keeps you going? What motivates you or makes you press on when things don’t always go your way?

Zazzy on Demand!

Maybe to alot of people who’ve been in the business world for a while, it’s no big deal – but to people like us who are just getting our feet wet, it’s hopefully a step in the right direction – and yeah, it’s a big deal to us.

Now, I can’t say that I’m really happy about the process of starting to learn about tax laws and regulations and all that, but it’s something that has to be done, I suppose. As you may know, we’re thinking about going full-on business with this thing starting sometime in 2013, so it comes with the territory.

Anyway, enough of my blathering – I just wanted to let everyone know that you won’t have to email us any longer to place an order. It will allow you to pay via credit card, speed up transactions and also speed up our order fulfillment process. We’re pretty excited about this move and we hope it makes things better for our fishin’ friends!

We still need to get all the different sizes up, but if you’d like to take a peek at the new Order Page, help yourself!  Of course, if you’d rather pay by check or Money Order, you can still send an email and we’ll hook you up.

Pics from this week and a Heads Up!

Here are a few pics from this week! We’ve got a set of green poppers headed to Kentucky and a big pile of assorted saltwater and freshwater Zazzy Pops headed to Australia!

But we know what you’d really like is a great deal on some Zazzy, right? Well, someone is probably going to get a great price on a 7 pc. set of Zazzy Pops this week by keeping their ear to the ground and their “bid button” handy. Remember that set of citrus “flavored” Zazzy Pops? Well, I decided to put them on eBay to see if there was a market for high quality poppers. So far, there are 6 people “watching” that auction. So, although there may be a bidding frenzy in the end, you could get them for a song compared to our regular price. Right now, they’re sitting on about 1/2 price!  Wanna take a peek? Here ya go. 

And now….photos from the Popper Mine:

We turn them for 2 hours to make absolutely sure they’re coated evenly…

As the turner …umm…turns?

Pre-Epoxied “Morel” mushroom Thunder Pop

Green popper close up…

Kentucy bound green popper set

Things gettin’ crazy ’round here

This blog is supposed to be the behind-the-scenes view at Zazzy Pop ( among other things) so hang on – here we go…

 

Between working on orders and taking photos using a new set-up, I’ve managed to half-way implement an online ordering system on the ZP website. It’s not fully functional, but should be by the end of the week. I know it may not sound like a big deal, but for us it’s quite the leap of faith. You see, currently this is still just a hobby. I make poppers for myself, and we sell a few here and there on the side.

Over the course of the last few weeks, we’ve added some signage to the vehicles, invested in some additional marketing materials and now added the online shopping thing-a-mah-jig. There’s more to do, but since we don’t really know what the heck we’re doing, we’re going to take it slower than most people probably would. That said, I want to make sure I thank you all for the steady flow of requests for poppers coming in now. As word gets out (hint, hint LOL ) about Zazzy Pop, we expect to be running wide open sometime in early 2013. Who knew there was so much to do – almost continually – and we’re just scratching the surface really.

In other news, our Big Fish Contest is rolling right along and we now have a winner for May and June. We only started the contest in May, so this year will be your BEST SHOT at winning a monthly BIG FISH event and qualifying for the drawing on Jan. 7th, 2013. In case you’ve forgotten, we’re not giving away peanuts here – the Grand Prize Winner will receive a Custom Fly rod from Misfit Fishing Rods worth $500.

I guess I should offer some kind of “purchase not necessary to enter” thing? Hmm…just thought of that. One of a million thoughts that went through my head today as we “caught up” on our record keeping and such – and started the online store process.

Hopefully next week I can get back to videos and customer spotlights and all that jazz we talked about a month ago. For now, business needs and personal commitments are keeping me off the blog here for the most part. There’s alot to juggle and again, we’ve just started down this long and winding ( and bumpy?) road. Wish us luck, tell your friends and enjoy the ride with us!

Thank you all for being a part of this new journey!

~owl