We are thrilled to be hosting an online seminar with Seth Goldman for our community of Sellers on November 4th! Seth is first and foremost a very warm person who has a stellar reputation  in the natural product world. He is the founder and TeaEO of Honest Tea, a trailblazer that Coca-Cola bought 40% of last year. Seth has been the keynote speaker at several conferences and we are quite excited about the direct interaction we will have with him next week.

Seth will spend a few minutes sharing his experience with us and we then open up the WebEx to questions and answers.

This event is only open to companies that sell on the Abe’s Market – (we are one big loving family). We will hit on a few fun and compelling developments at Abe’s during the last few minutes of the call. Please confirm that you will be joining us via the email announcement. The excitement starts at 4:30 pm EST on November 4th!

The youngest of my three kids (that’s them, on the right) is almost 4.  Thankfully, she’s been potty trained for a while now.  Last night, though, my wife said to me, “I spent a lot of time on Abe’s Market and have a new favorite product – the Bottoms Up Reusable Baby Wipes Kit.  Absolutely brilliant.  Better for babies, better for the environment, and cheaper than regular wipes.  Since we have no more kids in diapers, I’ll have to buy some for a friend with a baby.”

Her comment struck me for a two reasons.  First, it’s true – the Bottoms Up Wipes are a really cool product.  Second, this product is one of many that counters the belief that great natural products must cost more than their traditional (i.e. non natural) counterparts.  In her product description, Lesley writes that “Even if you were to use just one pack of disposable baby wipes per week at $4.49 per pack, you would spend over $450 within the first two years! The Bottoms Up Baby All-In-One Kit costs $59.95, that’s a savings of almost $400!”  So, it’s not only NOT more expensive than disposable wipes – it’s significantly cheaper!  While some products in the natural/green world may stir some debate, this product is a no-brainer.  (Hhhhmmm, should we have another kid so we can use the Bottoms Up Wipes?)

We love all of our Sellers. Jon and I handpicked most of them based on their reputation, product mix and design. I do want to highlight a specific Seller and applaud their work.

We often talk about how 10 years ago buying natural products meant sacrificing on design. Adam Lowry of Method talks about design and their success being partly due to the fact that their natural cleaning products have a more original and compelling design than the non-natural competition.

All this is to say that I love BabyBearShop and the thought and care they have taken with their product design.  The color scheme, playful images and nostalgia all combine for a top tier look and feel.

The founder and CEO is a mother and those are her kids with her in the picture below. BabyBearShop grew out of her personal need for natural products after her kids reacted to off-the-shelf ingredients. She has since expanded the line to include products for ‘Mama’ and all ingredients remain 99%.

BabyBearShop is the perfect complement to Abe’s Market. They offer a high quality natural product with a heart warming design and the people behind the company are solving a pain they experienced and are passionate about their creation. People just like you and me going out and building a company that makes products they believe in.

We like to have fun at Abe’s Market.  And we’re always thinking of ways to help shoppers easily find products that appeal to them.  We just combined these two elements and started tagging products under shared, and somewhat whimsical, themes.  Richard created a tag for Healthy Snacking as an alternative to traditional junk food.  I created a tag for Spirits as great examples of natural products made from some favorite alcoholic beverages.  (I actually bought one of those Essential Mojito Soap Bars and love it.)  We’ll be creating many more of these themed tags.

You can also get involved.  See some natural products on Abe’s Market that you think can be bundled together under one theme?  Come up with a tag for them and go tag each product with that tag.   It’s easy.  For example, if you see 7 products on the site that make you think of Scooby Doo, just go into the product page of each of those seven products and, on the right hand side under “Add Your Tags,” just type in Scooby Doo.  See some products that you think can be bundled together under one theme but you don’t feel like doing the tagging?  Send us your ideas, and we’ll make it happen.

There is no better compliment in my book than an application being so good that I find myself wanting to tell my friends about it. Even better when it is an application that plays in the mundane ‘forms’ category.

Wufoo is more than I ever expected and a bag of chips. We were looking for a tool to interact with the companies that sell on Abe’s Market (Sellers) before our site was ready and we thought to use an online form for applications, uploading products/photos and answering our Seller interview. Wufoo made constructing a form and applying our brand look and feel quick and easy. We were then able to embed the forms into our domain. Exporting, sorting and searching the data was simple. We don’t have any use for it right now because the application is on our site, but I am looking for excuses to build another form.

Rapidfax automatically emails us a .pdf of our faxes. I know this is a crowded market but at $9.95/month Rapidfax has been dependable and simple to work worth.

Google Docs is a no brainier for sharing spreadsheets, which we do a whole lot of. I still enjoy seeing changes being made in real time and never having to think about saving.

We have sent emails to our community via mailchimp and I want to see what else is out there. I find the interface clunky and it may simply not be designed for the type of email tracking that we are looking for e.g knowing who on our list opened the email.

Finally, Jon and I are big fans of Usertesting.com – which works by recording both the audio and browser of a tester as they navigate through our site for 18 minutes. We have received several results and were able to get quick and insightful feedback on how users interact our site. Usertesting allowed us to assign tasks, choose the demographic and read a summary by each tester – all of whom tried the site within 24 hours of our completing the form and for $69 for the first three testers. Jon tells stories of expensive corporate focus groups, I’ll stay with Usertesting.com for now. Thank you Mark Hurst for the recommendation.