Claire Burke Availability Update
Well, it’s been a long haul with Claire Burke since last July when their parent company went belly up. This is such a wonderful old brand that many of us hate to hear about these kind of problems. Last week I attended the Gift Show in Atlanta and was pleased to meet the new management: Richard is the new owner and Chuck is his 2nd man in charge. Naturally it was a pleasure to see Mark again who is now over their procurement.
Richard is a delightful man who has a long background in the fragrance industry. Essentially he has come out of retirement and bought Claire Burke/Vitabath with cash assets. He made a point of telling me this so I would know the future financial health of the company is secure. Richard told me there are 2 top priorities at this point:
1) Insure that inventory is ALWAYS available
2) Immediately start improving upon all of their candles
Naturally I was delighted to hear this and give them more suggestions for products for 2008. Here are a few recaps from our conversation:
* They tell me they will be making Original Refresher Oils available again in a non-spray format with a plastic dropper insert style top to meter the droplets out of the bottle.
* Original & Apple Jack Vapourri 2-packs ($15.00 for 2 sprays) will be available in February.
* Original Warmer Refills are promised to ship to us by January 31st, 2008.
* Apple Jack Warmer Refills are already enroute to Fresh Bet from their new Canadian warehouse. We expect these to arrive by January 25th, 2008.
There wasn’t much new to see in the Claire Burke line for Spring. Naturally they have been so busy trying to get their “sea legs” under them, they haven’t had much time for new product development. This is totally understandable and we will all try to be patient in this regard. The only new item I saw was a White Lavender Reed Diffuser, which we will be adding soon.
They are starting to focus on their Fall/Christmas lines for 2008 and have assured me that next Winter we WILL have simmer oils and many more products available in Christmas Memories and Oh Christmas Tree. They will be launching Pomegranate Plum for September 2008.
The much-awaited warmer refills in Oh Christmas Tree and Christmas Memories will be available in June 2008. We are pleased to take your pre-orders by PHONE for these items to avoid premature charges to your credit card by ordering on-line.
* We also expect Vitabath Gelee gallons to arrive this week in all 4 scents!
* I forgot to ask about the Apple Jack Simmer Oil. This is expected sometime in February. It had to be reformulated for a new Factory because the previous Canadian manufacturer decided to retire.
Richard has a lovely woman named Nikki who has apparently worked for him many years. Nikki will now be in charge of reformulating all Claire Burke candles to make them more fragrant and improve the wick quality.
All in all, it was a very productive meeting and I was able to share many of my concerns with all 3 of these gentlemen who assured me that Fresh Bet is FIRST in line for backordered product shipments. I sensed that many gift retailers have opted to drop the Claire Burke product line as a result of availability issues; please know that Fresh Bet will always offer Claire Burke because this line is so near and dear to my heart!
Fragrant Regards,
Bet aka “Freshbet”
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