Firstly this is not to bad mouth or put down Seeds Here Now, as we have always enjoyed working with them and they will continue to carry our gear, but here is what's been going on.
For the past year jan 2017 - jan 2018 we had Jez as our sole US packed and shipper working on Mephisto direct orders. Initially he kept a full time job with the thought that he could do the Mephisto orders ‘after hours’ it soon became apparent that it was a full time job. He then opened a company so we could pay through our business and he’d have a taxable income. However being a one man band and the order volume seemingly perpetually increasing it became clear he needed help, he could just about manage normal day to day orders but as soon as it was promo time he really struggled despite us advising him strongly to get help! During the year under the reign of Jez he also disappeared out of contact at times during the year which made it really difficult to operate. A lot of the time however he did do a decent job and we wanted to find solutions but if someone isn’t receptive or unable to put those things into place there’s not much we can do. The straw that broke the camels back with Jez doing our orders was this past black friday sale. Orders that should have been completed in a few weeks ended up spanning a few months time, and no one was happy about it. After that we decided to contact Seeds here now to see if they’d be interested in helping us with this vital component of our business.
We were told by the owner that they've been packing seeds for multiple other companies, had 6 people on hand ready to start packing our orders, and wanted to take us on as soon as possible. This sounded perfect for us, a team of 6 people to pack our orders should have meant everything was getting shipped out 6x as fast, but as we found out, that wasn't the case.
Seeds Here Now received all shipping supplies and seed stock and said they were ready to start taking our orders, so we reopened the shop after a long and tedious few months without taking any direct orders at all. We’d even pro-longed the time the shop was closed to make sure 100% that everything was in place.
They were fully aware of our whole process and said that it would not be a problem and anything was possible with their team on it, so we put our faith in them to knock it out of the park. Within the first week of being open they had received around 150 orders. They got about 40 of them sent out after 5 working days, then another 4 working days passed with us asking each day what was going on and for an ETA of when these orders would ship out but with no concise feedback, At this point we closed the shop for U.S. orders once again as we didn’t want any further damage or frustration to occur. The last thing we want is for people to think we’re taking their money swiftly and then not delivering.
When they responded they made it clear that they would not be able to take on the work load in the same fashion that we have been doing things like they initially conveyed to us. Since we offer so many different strains, in so many different size packs, and each order is custom crafted, I can only assume they felt the time invested per order was too much. They're used to acting as distributors packing 5 or 10 seeds in vials, putting them in a prelabeled package, and sending them off. Our process involves three different styles of packaging, loads of different strains (each with accompanying strain stickers), adding hologram security stickers, stuffing our vials with cotton so the beans don't rattle around in the mail.. it takes a little bit more effort to do our way, but they were aware of this beforehand.
While they acknowledged that things weren't going to work out between us as initially planned, they said they would still get all the remaining orders they had received packed and shipped by Saturday so we have been telling everyone to expect tracking no later than Saturday (yesterday). Well, still no updates from them, and only vague answers as to when they will get the rest of the orders they have on hand out.
What we have been told is that the rest of the orders will ship "this week". We have also heard complaints about people receiving tracking numbers, but the actual tracking linked to those numbers has not been updated in a few days. I asked them about this too and they said they don't know what the issue could be. I assumed that maybe they were printing shipping labels and sending out the tracking before actually dropping the physical packages off at the post office, but they said everything with a tracking number has been dropped off at the post office already, so I'm left scratching my head as to what is really going on.
Obviously if we had forseen any of this we would not have reopened the shop, and looked for distribution elsewhere. As of right now we have no real answers. We are all truly sorry and disappointed by this whole series of events. The old saying, if you want something done right you've got to do it yourself is ringing in my ears, but at the same time doing all the shipping takes us away from other important tasks, and as many have pointed out, we need to delegate that to keep the wheels in motion for everything else.
As of now, we are hoping that all orders will be out by midweek. When I have any updates I will let everyone know. If you are one of the customers whose order has not shipped yet we will be offering you a 25% off coupon to use in the future. We have a new gentleman ready to take over the U.S. shipping, so once the orders that Seeds Here Now have are completed and all packaging transferred to the new, new distributor we will once again open the shop for U.S. orders.
Also, all of this has caused us to push back our new Artisanal Release until 4/20 instead of late March, as we do not want to put our new new distributor under the immediate stress of having a huge amount of orders. We are trying to avoid the same situation repeating itself, where he gets flooded with orders and decides he cannot handle the workload either and quits. We are hoping to reopen the store in a few weeks, let him get the hang of things, and then have a killer 4/20 promotion.
Once again, we are in a position where it seems like a proper debacle and the stress levels at Mephisto HQ and the team as a whole have been immense. And that’s the polar opposite of the situation that we were expecting.
I wish I could give you all more updates, but we are all in the wind together on this one. Thank you all for your understanding, patience, support, and positivity during these times. Hopefully this covers everything. Feel free to ask any questions and I'll respond to them the best that I can.
I know guys will get it all sorted and keep rockin
you got some of the most loyal customers so take your time, i know we all will still be here once everything is back to normal
4/20 is going to be a great drop!!! 
