Interesting issue with my website

Had an email yesterday from a lady who, when she lived in NZ, bought slippers thru my website. She has subsequently moved back to her home country of Slovenia and wished to purchase more slippers. Great
But she was having an issue as her home country was not listed on my "approved" countries into which I sell.
I never even knew I had this list, never mind that it did not include a vast number of countries. I perhaps will not add Nigeria onto the list, but don't have a problem with Slovenia, or should I have a problem with it??
When I have some quiet time, I shall have a closer look at this list and probably will add a whole lot of countries that are not there at present. I have no idea why my tecchy guy would have left all these countries out.

I now know why I don't get orders from a lot of places, so shall fix the problem.

Any countries I should steer clear of ? and why ??

Do you not have an "other" field for countries not on your list? That might be the easiest way to solve it.

Not having Nigeria on your list hasn't stopped some interesting orders, has it?

....geese and I thought I had troubles mastering facebook for my work profile.:eek::eek::eek::eek:

good luck, I would certainly be asking questions too.

Having fun this morning. So far, I have added 27 new countries and only up to K.

Will be interesting to see if I actually get any orders from these places. Bit annoyed to think I may have been missing out over the past 5 years. But now that I know about it, I can fix it

As long as possum is not on Cites list to cause a conflict due to being protected as a native in Australia, you ought to be able to market world wide.

Stikkibeek;342626 wrote: As long as possum is not on Cites list to cause a conflict due to being protected as a native in Australia, you ought to be able to market world wide.

When we first started making possum products, I checked with customs and was assured we would have no problems with exporting it to any country in the world as it is considered a pest in this country.

I suspect it was just an oversight on the part of my web designer that he only listed 40 countries for me to sell into. Perhaps it was a time constraint thing - don't know. Took me a while this morning to add the ones I did.

It has been quite accidental that I found this issue. Thankfully, my customer really wants to buy from us and I have now made that happen.
Always nice to get repeat customers from anywhere in the world

that is an interesting problem, great that the lady let you know!

when our family business started selling wool blended with possum fur they had to put out a newsletter and do a page on the website expaining that it was not the opposum! they were getting people commenting on not wanting to have 'rodent' fur in their wool! not that opposums are rodents (i think) but alot of people did not like them.

then they had to highlight the information about it being a pest as people thought they were too cute to be killling....

Thanks for that tonic, we often get Americans who are totally surprised at how soft our possum is as like you say, their opposum has a very harsh fur. We also have a lovely photo which we display on our stand to show what our possum actually looks like as the closest most of the tourists come to one is squished on the road.

Ah, Ronnie there is a very good point..... when my uncle and aunt from Sydney came across a few months ago, they with their friends all bought possum ''peter heaters'' etc and then gave them to me because they were under the impression they could not take possum fur (or any fur) in and out of NZ and into Australia.

so unless people go out of their way to ask customs (which they don't) they won't buy the product because of the belief and trouble of 1. having to declare skin/fur on customs cards when flying and people think its a hassle to hop into the ''something to declare queue" b. aussie travellers ''think'' they cannot take obvious possum fur back to aussie because its a darn native animal there (would be happy to take possum blend knits though).

This might be a good point/issue to raise on your website to assist would be possum fur slipper purchasers decide.

(for those who think the same re the something to declare queue, I once raced SOH through the two separate queues and I got through quicker than he did standing in the normal line.).

Yes, swaggie, we have that conversation regularly with our customers at Queenstown. MAF and Customs both told me as long as the skins have been commercially tanned there would be no issue with taking them out of NZ and into any country in the world.
Hence, we only use commercial skins and tell our customers the above. I have never been advised by any of our customers that their slippers were refused entry from anywhere. I am sure they would email me if there ever was an issue as they are not a cheap item.
And I have a large customer base in Australia []
although, a lot of Aussies wont even touch the possum fur, let alone buy it - hence I also have the sheepskin products

what I am thinking though Jan is the mindset of the people who might be looking at your products and have this issue as a problem already set in their mind...so they don't bother.

My relos certainly had it yet have the available funds to have bought substantially more.

swaggie;342725 wrote: what I am thinking though Jan is the mindset of the people who might be looking at your products and have this issue as a problem already set in their mind...so they don't bother.

My relos certainly had it yet have the available funds to have bought substantially more.

Yes, we get those occasionally. No amount of talking will convince them they are allowed to take them back. They just have that mindset and that is pretty much that. We can talk the odd one around, but its hard work [}]

ronnie;342726 wrote: Yes, we get those occasionally. No amount of talking will convince them they are allowed to take them back. They just have that mindset and that is pretty much that. We can talk the odd one around, but its hard work [}]

yes it is and its all to do with the customs card you fill in, it makes you nearly feel like a crim and you start to wonder if you are coming in with anything, just anything that could be classed as contra band.

If you can address this head on with the website with the appropriate links, then I believe you are half way there encouraging more custom. anyhow its just a thought and as my A & U are big tourists around the world, I thought it good to share their perception of NZ products.