Anniversary sale

Blog entry for April 2013

Incredible though it seems, the 15th of April was our eleventh anniversary, and we decided to repeat last year's successful Anniversary Sale. Meanwhile it looks as though our long struggle with ever-rising yen levels (and effectively higher prices for our puzzles) are over, meaning that prices in our customers' home currencies have typically fallen by more than 20% from the peak levels in early 2012. We hope this will continue, giving better and better prices for you, but meanwhile we cannot sustain the current discount level indefinitely. Here's what I found (my own notes!) in the module that calculates discounts...

// ****************************************
// ***SPECIAL 10th ANNIVERSARY*** : 20%
// while yen index < 400 : 10%
// while yen index < 350 : 15%
// ***SPECIAL 11th ANNIVERSARY*** : 20%

This "yen index" is a simple recipe: add the number of yen obtained at the curent PayPal rates for a euro, a pound, and a dollar. So in January 2012 it was €=94 + £=114 + $=74, total 282. It is now somewhere just below 400, so for the time being we will go back to flat 10% at the end of April; eventually it will return to the graduated discount on order size.

Don't lose out! People have asked about puzzles temporarily out of stock, or special orders... as long as you make the order in April, you will get the special discount even if you have to wait for the puzzle to arrive. (Note there will also 24 hours or so grace, to allow for timezones and stuff like that.)

As business has picked up over recent months, we'll be expanding our range of puzzles further. There are new artists coming, and in particular we'll add more fantasy art, and more of the huge range of anime characters in the Artbox range. Just ask if there are specific titles you are interested in. And there are more "small piece" puzzles: the first "tiny 1000" puzzles from Tenyo were billed as the World's smallest (1000 pieces at A3 size, 420 x 297 mm), but these were beaten by Beverly: 1000 pieces at 380 x 260 mm (standard 300 size). Now Epoch, or officially its subsidiary Apollo enters the fray with 1053 pieces at the same standard 300 size. There are so many different "small" and "tiny" pieces now that I hope soon to have a system in place to show the actual piece size for these puzzles...