Fresh Bet Bits, Claire Burke Original Memories, Home Fragrance Product Updates and Commentary

Last month I emailed Richard the new owner of Claire Burke regarding the roll-out of Haunted Home for this Fall. I was concerned that they were not offering a full line up of their usual products.

Because Claire Burke is still recuperating from their buy-out last year, they apparently will not have Simmering Oil, Vapourri or Potpourri. They will have the Witches Brew ceramic candle and a Spooky Candle Tea Light Holder Trio in black/orange/purple. Richard emailed me this past week to let me know they WILL be offering the plug-in warmer refills in this wonderful fragrance.

We expect The Haunted Home to arrive in early September. We will have scented bookmarks to send out with your orders so you can “sniff” this scent ahead of time. These electric warmer refills will fit any recent Claire Burke plug-in warmer.

Haunted Home is a warm and comfy blend of maple, clove, caramel and amber. Simply yummy! These items will be available on our website to purchase in September.

Now that life has settled down with Claire Burke, I thought it was time to give you a quick update on their new items and availability issues.

EVERYTHING IS AVAILABLE, EXCEPT THESE ITEMS WHICH THE FACTORY IS OUT OF STOCK:
* Original Warmer Refills - more expected in May or June.
* Apple Jack Simmer Oil - due in May or June.
* Original Tealight Candles due late May.

JUST ARRIVED:
* White Lavender Vapourri 2-packs for $15.00

We have just placed an order for Pomegranate Plum and The Haunted Home to be received around Sept 1, 2008. I am pleased to report a full offering on Pomegranate Plum: * Vapourri * Reed Diffuser * Warmer Refills * Potpourri w/Refresher Oil * Shimmer Candle * Simmering Oil *

Their Haunted Home offering is limited this year to:
* Witch’s Brew Filled Candle * Spooky Candle Tea Light Holders *
Sadly there will not be any Potpourri, Vapourri or Simmer Oil.

Claire Burke has also delayed the launch of their new I Decor Line of oil diffusers.

We are delighted to have Claire Burke back in stock again! There are plenty of Reed Diffusers and Lampourri Oil now, so stock up while the getting is good.

Click here for Claire Burke.

The factory surprised me today when their truck delivered a big shipment of Original Vapourri 2-packs that were not supposed to arrive until Mid-March. Naturally we are delighted to finally have these available.

Stock up now while the getting is good! Vapourri typically sells for $10.00/ea. This is your one chance for the year to buy 2 Vapourri for only $15.00. We now have these available in Original - You Save $5.00.

The Apple Jack & Peel 2-packs are due in the next 1-2 weeks.

If you are signed up for our Newsletter, you should have just received a $3.00 off Coupon good thru February 28th.

In the next few weeks, we will also have the new Claire Burke White Lavender Reed Diffuser - just launched.

Click here for Claire Burke.

Today we are pleased to report we have received a large shipment of Claire Burke Original Warmer Refills from their new Canadian warehouse. HALLELUJAH!

Naturally we have more on order that should arrive in the next few weeks. We should now have enough stock to fill all customer back orders. As promised, we will include a FREE Gift with each shipment as our THANK YOU to those who have been so understanding.

Again I want to thank everyone who has been so patient and gracious as we waited for the new management to make our favorite product available again after a 7 month delay.

We also have plenty of Apple Jack Warmer Refills, White Lavender, The Sea and Citrus Blush. Apple Jack Simmer Oil is back in stock and there are no longer any major availability issues.

Remember, these refills will only fit the gray sconce style warmer unit as pictured below:

Click here for Claire Burke Original.

Bet

I think the sun is starting to shine just a wee bit on our Claire Burke availability issues. This morning I spoke with Tania to check on a few items. Here is what she tells me is now enroute to Freshbet:

* Apple Jack & Peel Simmering Oil
* Original Reed Diffusers
* Original Vapourri singles

Most of our stock issues will be resolved when these items arrive. This leaves us with Original Warmer Refills that should be shipping to us early next week.

Original Vapourri 2-packs are still not expected until late March. To place a pre-order, please call us at 1-800-322-0525.

Apple Jack Vapourri 2packs and Reed Diffusers should arrive anyday now.

We truly appreciate everyone’s patience as we strive to manage your backorders and get them shipped out just as quickly as possible.

I hope I won’t jinx things by letting you know that Tania, our Claire Burke Rep, now tells me they have finally received our Original Warmer Refills at the new Canadian Warehouse today. If we had not had so many broken promises about these, I would be jumping up and down!

Tania tells me they have received 1800 refills and these are to be divided amongst their top accounts. Fresh Bet has been promised 200 of these to be shipped this week - their first shipment of these going out the door.

She also tells me that Mark assures them they have 8000 more Original Warmer Refills due in next week via air from Portugal. At that point, they will then be able to fulfill all of our back orders. It is still too soon to tell exactly how long transit time will be between their Canadian warehouse and South Carolina.

Tomorrow we expect to receive our first shipment from Claire Burke since before Christmas. We were told this left on Jan 18th, so this took 6 business days to arrive. Tania says there were Customs harmonization codes to be resolved, so hopefully these shipments won’t take so long in the future.

Please know we will be shipping our oldest back orders first just as soon as the Original Warmer Refills arrive the first week of February. Again, thanks to everyone for their incredible patience and we will be including a free gift.

The Claire Burke inventory situation seems to be slowly improving. Currently we are awaiting our first shipment from their new Canadian warehouse which seems to be taking forever to arrive!

These items are already enroute to us:
Apple Jack Warmer Refills, Reed Diffusers, Hand Soap, Tin Candles & Potpourri
Vitabath Gelee Gallons - all scents
Festive Simmer Oil Samplers
Original Tin Candles, Vapourri, Parfum, Luxury Candles, Votives
Sea Simmer Oil, Warmer Refills

We expect the above items to arrive by the end of this week. I asked about the status of a few other items which are out of stock:

Original Warmer Refills - expected to arrive at the Factory on Feb 1, 2008.
Apple Jack & Peel Simmering Oil - not expected to arrive until May 20, 2008.
Original Lampourri Oil - due at the warehouse on Feb 20, 2008.
Original Reed Diffusers - due to us within 2 weeks.
Christmas Memories & Oh Christmas Tree Warmer Refills - sometime in May or June 2008.

Please know that we are doing our best to keep you informed. We appreciate your patience!

Those of you who are long time Claire Burke afficionados will remember that we usually have the Original and Apple Jack Vapourri 2-packs in early January every year. Last Fall I started asking Claire Burke if these would return. I was delighted to hear they would offer these again, but a bit disappointed that it would not be until February.

I asked Mark about these last month and he explained the reason for the delay. These are produced in Massachusetts and the Factory has been slammed with orders. However, they are on order and expected to arrive by mid February.

We are now showing these on our website at zero cost. This is because we do not want your card to be charged prematurely until these are ready to ship. So, if you would like to place a pre-order, please CALL us (1-800-322-0525) and provide order information. This way we can better control when your card is charged just before we ship.

If you add them to a shopping cart order, we will email you requesting you contact us with payment information. We will not be taking shopping cart orders for these 2-packs until they are actually in-stock.

These are produced in limited supply and this offer only comes around once a year. You can get 2 Vapourri for $15.00 - a savings of $5.00. So, hurry and place your pre-order today!

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”

I am sad to report that the Claire Burke Original and Apple Jack Warmer Refills have experienced another delay. On December 3rd I spoke with Mark who told me he expected 5000 to arrive at their warehouse within one week. Today I checked with them to find out if our shipments had left the warehouse.

Mark tells me the warmer refills have arrived from Portugal but are now being held by Canadian Customs for inspection. This apparently can take as long as 2 weeks because this is the first time this supplier has imported into Canada. What rotten timing! Now that Claire Burke has shut down their US warehouse to be moved from Upstate NY to Canada, there is no way we can have these to our customers by Christmas.

The new Canadian warehouse will resume shipments on January 2nd. By then, the warmer refills should be in stock. This means we probably will not get these prior to January 7th. UGGHHH…

If we can all muddle along through the last of these shortages in January, hopefully things will improve with Claire Burke as we move into February. Again, our sincere apologies for the delay.