Website Went Down

Our website has been down since 10:33 PM unfortunately. We are working on resolving this problem with Dreamhost.

Cyber Monday

We broke a record today! The most number of orders in one day was broken by 6pm. And the orders are still coming in. We even had two orders in the same minute. I don't think that has ever happened before. Yay! Gotta get to filling the orders.

Grammar Girl SleepPhones!

We sponsored Grammar Girl's Episode 198 November 27, 2009 entitled "Because," Due To," "Since," and "As." It has just been released! In her podcast, we learn to avoid the wordy ways to say "because." Because we type like we speak sometimes, we may be too wordy. Instead of saying "on the grounds that," the phrase could be shortened to "because." We enjoy sponsoring smart, practical people like Grammar Girl. Here's what she said about SleepPhones.

I'm really excited to be able to tell you about this new product called Sleep Phones. I love the Sleep Phones because I have to listen to something such as an audiobook or podcast to be able to fall asleep. I'd tried every kind of headphone I could find and no matter what I did, my ears would hurt in the morning and half the time the earbuds would fall out and turn into little speakers in the bed, which kept my husband awake. And then I tried Sleep Phones, and my ears didn't hurt anymore, and because the SleepPhones fit right they don't fall off, and I don't have to crank up the volume to be able to hear. They're amazing, and they'd make a great gift. So, go to sleepphones.com/gg and use the code GRAMMAR to get $5 off. That's sleepphones.com/gg and the code is GRAMMAR.

One lucky Grammar Girl SleepPhones customer from November 27th to December 31st will receive a free copy of The Grammar Devotional!

SleepPhones Now Available in Different Sizes (Again.)

SleepPhones available in XS and XL now! Most people still fit best into the One size fits most. But if you know for sure you have an extra small or extra large head, then we now have a better fit for you!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving turkey dinner at the SleepPhones household.

RealSleep CD

RealSleep CD is now for sale by SleepPhones!
RealSleep, created by a neuroscientist and an award-winning musician, is a CD you play while you’re going to sleep. Nearly-inaudible sounds embedded in music work directly on the arousal centers of the brain, helping your mind relax and unwind. This produces the same effect as rocking a baby, helping many people with sleep problems go to sleep faster and stay asleep longer.

Lavender Soap Coming Soon!

We have been working with the owner of Annadele Sundries to bring you the best lavender soap with the highest quality ingredients available. They are a Pennsylvania home-based company that hand-makes soap. It takes weeks for the owner to make the all natural soap using traditional methods. The ingredients are saponified olive oil (for moisturization), saponified coconut oil (for rich lather), and essential oil of lavender. We use high quality steam distilled lavender oil from French Lavendula angustifolia. There are no petroleum or animal derivatives, sodium laureth sulfate (a strong detergent), or antibiotics (good germs on the skin keep the bad germs at bay). This adds to our line-up of products that are good for your sleep and for the environment.

Bloggers Help Marketing and Search Engine Rankings Part 2

Oh, I searched with more terms and found these cool websites referencing SleepPhones.

Dream Views - Lucid dreamers can use SleepPhones to help.
Transparent Community - Learning Strategies is a a company in Minnesota selling CDs that help you achieve your potential. They have a bulletin board where someone wrote about us.
Anew Perspective - A hypnotist in Oregon sells SleepPhones on her website.
Articles Base - Our only Hungarian order so far has resulted in a great review!  Neato!
Here First - It looks like the Hungarian person saw this blog post. Small world.
Sleep Disorder Help - This takes you to Amazon to buy SleepPhones. The affiliate program for Amazon is a really great marketing tool. We did not ask for these affiliates. Amazon gives them a commission, so they write about stuff.
Inventor's Spot - SleepPhones had been handmade by me initially. The first holiday season was just sitting in front of the sewing machine for me after getting home from work. Very busy. Then I hired some employees. Etsy didn't like that I hired employees, so they took us off of their listings.  Oh well.
IM Shopping - Thanks Mrs. Joshica for recommending us!

Trolling is when someone goes on a bulletin board and pushes their product. It's like being a door-to-door salesman. Most people don't like it.  And so they will block you from the bulletin board. We don't troll. But we'd love to have more customers to help advocate for us!

Bloggers Help Marketing and Search Engine Rankings

We have been very fortunate to have such strong supporters for SleepPhones.  There are a number of blogs online that rave about SleepPhones. Most blog entries were completely unsolicited. We just search on the name SleepPhones every now and then and find stuff about us.

Here is an annotated list of some of them.
Sleep Required - Thanks Dan for a completely unsolicited review about SleepPhones!
Brain Waver - This was one of the earliest random reviews for us. Thank you so much for your early support!

Art Van Furniture - We work with Sleep to Live, a division of Kingsdown. I think that's where this link came from. That's a nice picture!
Cranky Fitness Reviews - She contact us about doing a review and then a giveaway. She's a popular blogger, with high rankings. So we worked with her, and she gave us a very detailed honest and positive review.
Carina Romano Photography - She's our photographer for many of the pictures on the website. She was nice enough to put us on her blog, which is very popular.
Miscellaneous Finds 4 U - She contacted me about doing a giveaway on her blog, and it certainly drew a lot of great attention! Lots on nice comments about the product.
Boing Boing Gadgets - We contacted them to see if they would like to try our product. Well, they just wrote a review and never tried it. So I don't think they can really say anything with any authoritysince they've never seen just how good SleepPhones are. What they propose doesn't work. SleepPhones work. Hmm... I was going to put a link down, but on second thought, I won't give them that.
Kaboodle - A college student in TX apparently added us on this site. Thanks!
Nerd Like - Someone we don't know named Jazzy gave us a great review. Thanks!
Mind Reality - Someone we don't know had put this great ad up for us.  Thanks!

Listen and Learn - I contacted her because her blog was featured by BlogSpot as a great place to get short free music for autistic kids to learn about the world. And I had just received a rave review from a parent of an autistic child. So I asked if she would review a pair for me, and I'm so glad she liked it!
iliketotallyloveit - Another unsolicited great review. Thanks!
Deep Delta - Thanks whoever you are! Nice info on binaural beats and how we can help.
Busika - We're so glad Yellow Start 2000 put us on the list of must-haves for travelers! I found out about it from Google Alerts.
Thifty Boutique - Thank you for this Ad! I think she probably gets a commission from Amazon when someone buys with her link. Well, that's fine by us!

Some bloggers contacted us via email or Twitter to see if we would send them a free pair for a review on their blog. We have taken a few people up on that, but there would be a never-ending free sampling if we were not discriminating about that. In the past, after we did two giveaways, many small-time bloggers (who had just set up a blog to get free stuff) wanted giveaways too from us.  We just can't afford that, so I had to turn them down. Now that bloggers are suppose to disclose these deals, I expect we'll see fewer of these propositions. I think it's great advertising for us, but realistically, when the blog is about free stuff and cheap stuff, the people visiting those sites are not ready to put down $50-60 for SleepPhones. We have not seen much sales from blogs, even when we offer a coupon for the blog readers. I think the biggest benefit to advertising on blogs is name recognition, back-links for search engine optimization, keyword associations, and positive reviews for potential customers to read.We really really appreciate all of the bloggers and niche community people who voluntarily advertised for us over the past few years. If you contact us via DM in Twitter (@sleepphones), we'd love to talk to you!

RealSleep Collaboration

RealSleep is a well-produced CD of relaxing classical music songs overlaid with binaural beats. We made the mistake of listening to it on the way home from work and had to go straight to bed when we got home. Each song has several refrains, each with a slightly different interpretation of the melody. It's really very lovely. But it's hard to stay awake to fully analyze all of the songs! The CD has been tested in clinical trials and shown to be effective in improving sleep. I also like that it uses classical music because that might make you smarter! In other studies, rat listening to heavy metal can't run around a maze as well as rats listening to classical music.
RealSleep has an innocent quality because it's so peaceful and simple. It is being marketed for kids currently, but I think it works for anybody. We really enjoyed the music, and it definitely made us sleepy!
So here's the list of songs and credits.

Track Length
1. Delta Wave Canon 4:05
2. Subvocalize 6:06
3. Basking Breeze 3:22
4. Maria's Song 4:41
5. Lullaby and Goodnight 5:11
6. Arcangelo's Tale 3:18
7. Evening Joy 3:17
8. Sicilienne Dreams 3:08
9. Night Air 3:19

Original recordings, based on:
J. Pachelbel, Pachelbel Canon for Violin and Piano
Sergei Rachmaninoff, Vocalise for Violin and Piano, Op. 34
J.S. Bach, Arioso
Charles Gounod, Ave Maria
Johannes Brahms, Wiegenlied (Lullaby-Berceuse) Op. 49 No. 4

Credits:
San San Lee - Violin
Bernadette Hoke - Piano
Lance Massey - Additional instruments
Seth Horowitz, Ph.D. - computer algorithms
China Blue - CD art and design
Recorded and and engineered by Lance Massey
Produced and arranged by NeuroPop

Lance Massey is an acquaintance from back in Stamford, CT. He was working at the same place as Jason back in early 2007. I met him at his going away party when he took a job elsewhere. At that time, Jason had just joined the company. So we really didn't know each other well. A few weeks ago, Jason was reviewing the website referrals for SleepPhones and found that a few hits came from Lance's Facebook page. Well, that was quite strange since he would not have known about SleepPhones. But then we figured out what happened. One of the other co-workers who knew both Jason and Lance commented on his post.

Go Nishchay! Thanks to him, we hooked up with Lance, and then we just talked with RealSleep's marketing director David. Some time next week, we'll start selling RealSleep on our website.

SleepPhones Versions

I've finally made a big table listing the versions of SleepPhones we've had since going into business. We've had three versions.

Light Therapy Products

Light Therapy Products is an online company specializing in products for seasonal affective disorder (SAD). They sell various light boxes and sleep aids. We have sold them some SleepPhones at wholesale prices, and they will be reselling SleepPhones over this holiday season. Although the old model of SleepPhones are shown on their website, they will carry the latest black model.

Famous? Maybe one day we'll be as popular as Grasshopper.com

So last week, Grasshopper.com's Ambassador of Buzz contacted me because of my previous post on how cool their new phone system was and how it helps improve our customer service.  Apparently they can help promote our business too! I know they are pretty darn popular with all of the big names mentioned on their website.  I think our most famous contacts would be Grammar Girl and Steven Gurgevich who works with Andrew Weil (one of my idols). We were just lucky to be mentioned in CNN Money and Health magazine. If Grasshopper can help promote our business, it could do wonders! I didn't think anybody read this blog, but even if it's only Google Alerts reading it, I guess that's good enough!

In order for Grasshopper to promote us, we have to give them some material to work with.  Here's what I typed up for them.  It's the same basic story, just condensed, since I like to write in tangents.

I had trouble getting back to sleep after the emergency room called. With my sleep being frequently disturbed, I needed something that could help me fall asleep quickly. I am a family doctor who finally realized how important sleep is after being sleep deprived for many years in school and in training.

Many people need help either with falling asleep or staying asleep. It could be that they can’t stop an internal voice from worrying or an external noise snoring next to them. Insomnia is a very frustrating experience. One usually gets more and more angry as the night drags on slowly, and that makes sleep even harder. To put a stop to the frustration of not sleeping, it would be nice to listen to something relaxing in bed, in comfort, without disturbing any bed partners. I know it works from personal and patient experiences.

We invented SleepPhones because there were no headphones for sleeping on the market. You can listen to anything with SleepPhones by plugging them into your iPod or any other music player. SleepPhones are the softest, most comfortable headphones for sleeping. The patented design is completely unique. Thin high-quality speakers are hidden and padded within a fleece headband made from recycled plastic bottles. SleepPhones are assembled in the USA and shipped directly from us (the manufacturer) to customers via orders from our website. Visit http://www.SleepPhones.com to check out the ultimate sleep headphones.

Pretty New Websites by Yahoo and Google Sites

We have more homes on the web for SleepPhones.

This website is designed through Yahoo Sites. Their content management system makes it easy to design pretty simple websites. There is no HTML edit option, so the variations in design are very limited. The payment system is through PayPal and is easy to setup. Again, because it's so simplified, there are no detailed options. Check it out at site.HeadphonesForSleep.com.

Here is the Google Sites webpage. At the minimum we have to hold down the name SleepPhones in all of the major internet locations. It's like trying to get a street corner with parking for a retail store or putting up a big sign. Google Site for SleepPhones

We made these website in order to have yet another way people can find us on the web, emphasizing a slightly different set of keywords.

Random Student at Barnes and Noble

Last night we had about an hour to kill before our dinner plans with friends, so we stopped by Barnes and Noble. Jason's a bibliophile. We have a library with 10 tall bookshelves and no cable TV in the house.

Anyway, we saw a friend (the best cupcaker maker ever - her snickerdoodle cupcake was spotted at the entrepreneurial women's expo) who was knitting at a table there. We have a whole group of cult-ish friends who meet every Monday night at Barnes and Noble to sit around and knit. They even have a name badge and T-shirts for the club. They are called the Knit Pistols. They nearly swept the County Fair's knitting contest this past year, having entered for the first time.

My form of knitting is quality control on this latest batch of SleepPhones. I put on the Velcro cord wrap, check the speaker placement, and make sure everything works just right. I happened to have my bag of SleepPhones with me because I work on this in the car when Jason's driving. So while the Knit Pistol Baking Fool Hannah worked on her flip-top mittens, I worked on my SleepPhones. Surprisingly, Hannah had not heard of our company. So I started telling her about how I couldn't sleep being on call and how I needed sleep headphones. She is so excited about our product that she's going to blog about us now!

Meanwhile, a random student was sitting around, waiting for a friend. She turned around and said, "Wait, what? Headphones for sleeping? I totally could have used them last night." So we got to talking. I showed both Hannah and this student all about SleepPhones and how they are the coolest things ever. I gave the student my card, and she said she was going to tell all of her friends about them. (I've learned by now to always have my card everywhere I go.) Yes!

That was a very productive hour of random marketing at Barnes and Noble.

Grasshopper.com

Grasshopper.com is our business phone/fax system. To be honest, I hate talking on the phone. I always have. I guess I'm much more visual than auditory. We figured we have to have a business phone number and fax number, so we went this this very cheap and convenient option.  We're one of those households that don't have a land line anymore. We both have cell phone numbers from 2-3 moves back, so they aren't even from the same state. Grasshopper with all of the options we need is about $12 a month.  Plus it does faxes - as a PDF attachment to the email, so we don't have to have a land line with a fax machine wasting paper and ink.
Grasshopper used to be GotVMail. This new name is cuter, and I like their new system.  It's easier to make outbound calling card phone calls now.  And for a limited time, I get free voice to text conversion. How cool is that?  That just became available a few days ago, so now instead of having to listen to a message with a pen and paper, ready to write down pertinent information, I can just read it.  We've had 2 messages transcribed by computer so far. One was perfect, barely a mistake. The other was less good, but I can tell what they were asking. I'm debating whether the $10 monthly extra charge is worth it or not when the free trial runs out.
I just dread having to listen to a voice message because I never know if it's a nice message or a complaint or a stupid question (err, I mean, there is no such thing as a stupid question) or a really good question I don't have an answer to. And I'm very sensitive to the accent and tone of the speech too. I have to take a mental timeout after listening to a message just to interpret the emotions in the message, especially if it's a complaint. The detached impersonal standardized text for reading is much easier for me to process.  I wish I could email back to the phone calls so I wouldn't have to muster up the composure for speaking to customers.
I'm a doctor all day long, so I have to keep my composure and exude a certain air of confidence and compassion. While it is a service profession, and customer service does count, I'm the authority in the situation. The personality I assume as a doctor is very different from the subservient acquiescing customer service representative where the customer is always right. And as a CEO discussing deals with suppliers, business advisers (lawyers, accountants, etc), wholesale customers, and business relationship, I am again used to being in charge. When I have a few phone calls a day to return as the nice customer service rep, I have to change my personality so much. And by the end of the day, my patience runs out, I'm tired, and I'd rather eat dinner than call a grumpy person back while being as nice as I would like me to be. When I've called Land's End in the past about placing orders, sizes from previous orders, mistakes in orders, or anything along those lines, I've always been very impressed with the level of customer service. That's why I've been such a loyal customer for so long.  They are always nice, alert, competent, and with excellent follow-through. I try to hold myself up to those standards, but I guess I just wasn't cut out for the sales/customer service field.
P.S. If you have comments or questions, please send us an email. Don't call, because I'll respond slower to that. And we're never immediately available by phone because we have day jobs that take all of our attention during the day.

Newly Added Box on Website

We just added the Follow Us box on our website. It has all of our social media links so you can get the inside scoop and the latest on SleepPhones! I think this Blog covers most of the SleepPhones news, but it takes much more effort to come here than to get the occasional update on Facebook or Twitter.

Google Search

It's always scary for the entrepreneur when the bulk of customers are from one source. If the source goes away, it could spell disaster. In our case, most of our customers find our product from a Google Search. I don't think Google will go away, but our ranking on Google is never a guarantee.  We constantly monitor searches on SleepPhones and the listing for our main keywords: sleep headphones, headphones for sleeping. We've optimized those terms as much as possible in our website so we do show up highly in those searches. That's an achievement not to be taken lightly nor messed with frequently. We'll probably upgrade our website to Drupal 6.0 after the holiday season. Making changes right now that might change our ranking is just too risky, since our December sales are typically double a normal month and help boost our sales for the following year. We're working on bettering our search results in Yahoo, Bing, and Ask now.

eBay Auction for Sleep Headphones

SleepPhones eBay auction starts bid price at $24.99 for the best headphones for sleeping - more than half off!

SleepPhones in Yahoo Store!

We have a Yahoo Store for SleepPhones now! We're trying out this marketing method by creating another website. Perhaps by increasing internet presence and cross-referring to our various accounts, we'll increase our back links and strengthen our grip on our main keywords: sleep headphones and headphones for sleeping. We're also hoping that by paying Yahoo for this account, they will crawl our site a bit more often and rank it higher. So far, it hasn't seemed to happen.
We decided to try it because there's a good deal for 3 months of the Yahoo! store with no setup fees.
We do have the best and only headphones for sleeping on the market today. But we are competing with big names in audio for the attention of search engines. We have to try every inexpensive resource. Amazon has worked out well for us. Hopefully Yahoo! will pan out too for optimizing headphones for sleeping.

Taxes

We've paid all federal, state, and local estimated taxes through the end of the year. Whew! Cash on hand is low, but we anticipate getting it all back over the next 2 months. And I finally filed the 3rd quarter state sales and use taxes too. That's after updating all of my bookkeeping in Quickbooks since July. And I finally learned how to write off bad debt too, thanks to this nice video. A local retail store that sold many local crafts and carried SleepPhones went out of business during this recession, so we are having to write off a lot of money.

Packing Station Organized

Yesterday was a busy SleepPhones day. Jason worked on starting some ad campaigns on Bidvertiser and AdBrite. We found that we were good on Google but not so highly ranked in Yahoo, Bing, or Ask. So we have to ramp up our rankings on those engines.

Due to the more complex nature of our sales now, with multiple options on an item, we have to pack each individually and very carefully. It taking us hours to fulfill orders each night. So I decided to rearrange our packing system. Everything we need is now in one central location and the computer is right there to check orders and listen to Pandora at the same time. I suppose sometimes I might listen to Grammar Girl Podcasts, lectures about business, and world news channels. I'm happy that it's finally all organized in one place. The various components of the packing used to take up the whole house. Here's a picture of Jason looking through the reorganization. We're going to take a break today and go practice archery.

SleepPhones Coupon

SleepPhones Coupon $5 off.

Thanks to Yellowstar2000 for her post about SleepPhones!
Pick the Perfect Gift for the Frequent Traveler
We do have many travelers who find SleepPhones indispensable. They can help drown out noise on the plane, block out loud neighbors at the hotel, and alleviate insomnia with time differences.

Holiday Season Shopping

The holiday shopping season has started. Our sales this past week have started to increase. Although the competition for customer attention is up during this season, people seem to be more open to spending money. We are ramping up our advertising efforts. In a few weeks, we're sponsoring another episode of Grammar Girl. She's touring the country giving out SleepPhones at each book signing location. We're sending out emails to previous customers and mailing list subscribers. We'll do more promotions on Facebook and Twitter too. Maybe local radio. We tried an ad in Newsweek, which was an expensive flop. Haven't seen much results with RevTwt yet. I'm going to work with a local photographer to get more model pictures with the newest design. As we think of more things, we implement those.

SleepPhones in Tanzania

Wow! We have a SleepPhones order from Tanzania! We've had some orders previously from South Africa, but this is the first order from another country in Africa. We have a particular affinity to Tanzania because they produce Tanzanite, which is a lavender-colored precious stone. I have a few Tanzanite items of jewelry, including my engagement ring. And we like just about anything lavender. I didn't use to own any lavender clothing until we started SleepPhones. Since then, I've had a good excuse to buy lavender outfits - for work, of course. This person ordered a lavender sachet. I wonder if Tanzania's port is as strict as Australia is with dried plant materials. We can't ship lavender sachets to Australia because they would just cause the box to be opened and the sachet removed.

Anyways, Tanzania's a really cool country. It's home to the tallest mountain in the Africa: Mt. Kilimanjaro, the origin of the Nile River. It borders Lake Victoria, the largest lake in Africa, and Lake Tanganyika, the deepest lake in Africa. It contains much of the Serengeti plain, where many Discovery Channel and National Geographic people spend their time capturing images of the wildebeest. Dr. Jane Goodall spent her days watching chimpanzees there. It's the idyllic African Safari location.

View Larger Map

Lavender Accessories

We are going to bring more high quality, all natural lavender accessories to the SleepPhones website.  We in the process of working with a local vendor to provide these products.  The vendor is a one-woman shop.  She has similar beliefs as I regarding skin and hair care products.

I believe that anything applied to the skin and hair should be at least somewhat edible.  That is, if I can eat olive oil, coconut oil, and lavender tea without getting sick, then I can apply it to my skin. If I don't eat petroleum, I won't apply petrolatum to my lips or skin. If I don't eat artificial (lab chemical) fragrances, FD&C Yellow No. 5 , or titanium dioxide, then I won't put it on my skin. Lye (originally from wood ash) is needed to render oils into soap and is the classic method of making soap. The soap we sell will be a lye-rendered vegetable-based soap that won't kill your child if accidentally eaten.

The skin is our body's biggest organ and it is very much in constant contact with our environment.  It absorbs and takes in as much as it puts out.  Shining sunlight on it helps our bodies create useful vitamin D. Rubbing poison ivy on it will cause an itchy rash for many people. Putting medicine on a patch of dry eczema can heal it. The skin has pores that secrete oils and salty sweat.  It releases water as a by-product of metabolism. The skin regulates our body temperature by opening and closing pores, controlling blood flow, and sweating.  It is not just a piece of dead leather to be scrubbed for cleaning and crudely oiled and painted.

There are many lines of products available claiming to be all natural. I think that it's a step in the right direction. But ideally, products applied to the skin should be of the same quality as what we eat because they are absorbed just the same.

Products on Amazon

Having a sales channel through Amazon is quite beneficial to our business, and I highly recommend it for small companies with new products like us.
Here are the drawbacks.

1. They take a huge chunk of our profits. We have to pay them 15% of the selling price and more from the shipping.  
2. Plus, there is a $40 monthly fee for the listing.  
3. They pay us every 2 weeks, so the cash flow can be tight if depending solely on their check.
4. We use Fulfillment by Amazon, so we have pay to ship a big box of products to them.
   

Here are the benefits.

1. It is one of the biggest retailers, so many people shop there.  Since we have a unique relatively unknown product, having it in a giant retailer is very cool.  People browsing through their "virtual shelves" may come upon our product.  If they don't buy it through Amazon, they may follow the links to come to our website.
2. Amazon has many promotions, gift certificates, free shipping incentives, and other methods that encourage people to buy there. It's marketing that we don't need to do.
3. You can get a sense of your competition and collaborations after a while.  There is a section of the page for "People who looked at [your product] also looked at...." For example, our biggest competitor would be a pillow that I will describe as little as possible. Our biggest collaborative sale is with the Delta Sleep System, a CD.  It's tremendous market research. You just have to figure out how to use that information.
4. For us, it's one more sales channel that is relatively hands-off.  Using Amazon Fulfillment, we just ship a big box of SleepPhones to Amazon, and they will ship them to customers for us. Any returns also go through them. If we have an emergency and can't be at home to ship out SleepPhones for a few days, they will always be there for customers desperate to get some sleep.
   
5. Customers buying through Amazon are encouraged to write comments about your product and company.  Since we sell a great product, our reviews have been very positive. If I saw our ratings, I would be curious about the product because everyone loves it so much.  If someone writes a negative or misinformed comment, sometimes other customers will even post a followup comment correcting them.
6. Most retail shops request the standard wholesale price, which is 50% of the suggested retail price. 20-25% is a lot less than 50%.
   

So despite having to give Amazon about 20% of every sale, it is a great retail sales channel for a fledgling company.

Amazon

We've only got 1 Gray Small SleepPhones left on Amazon.com in the inventory they have stored in Indiana.  We've just been too busy to pack the old SleepPhones to send in to them.  So we've converted most of the availabilities back to being fulfilled from us for now.  As soon as Amazon received a stash, we'll convert them back to being fulfilled by Amazon (which qualifies for free shipping and Amazon Prime).