New SleepPhones Website

We've finished upgrading our website.

There are many more CD's for you to choose from now. My favorite is Dr. Gurgevich's Sleepy Time Hypnosis, so it's on sale right now. There are also a bunch of accessories to go with your SleepPhones. The accessories are especially great for gifts!


On the back end, the website is now running Drupal 6.0 instead of 5.0. The catalog feature is new, and we now have the ability to have affiliates. We're going to test out the affiliates feature during the rest of this weekend. Next week, we'll get all of our affiliates signed up. There have been many people asking to work with us, but we've had to wait until this was ready. Other than a glitch in the ordering process this morning, the roll out has been pretty smooth!

UPC Symbols

We've taken the plunge. ... We're getting a UPC symbol. To do so requires signing up with the GS1.org. I don't know how they can call themselves a ".org" when their fees are so incredibly high for very little service. Maybe they do provide some services, but I certainly don't see the justification for a "membership" fee of $1600 for a small company that just needs a few UPC codes. The whole thing is a huge scam. They recommend you getting the UPC codes printed by professional companies, but concede that you can just print it on your home laser printer. They also sell their mailing list. There is an opt-in or opt-out for the mailing list, but I'm sure they make a hefty sum just with the mailing list. Really, if it's a non-profit "dot org," then they must have billions in their coiffures or be extremely inefficient.

Amazon.com is requiring UPC symbols for the new products we want to sell on there now. So that's the immediate reason we're getting it. Plus, we will probably have some retail agreements coming up in the next few months. If any of the agreements are with big companies, we will definitely need the UPC symbols. I suppose it also adds legitimacy.

Oh, just in case you were thinking of just doing a Google search on UPC, you may see a list of companies that will give you UPC symbols. They may not be legitimate companies. Some are just UPC printers - again, you can print your own. You don't need a special printer. Some will sell invalid symbols. So the proper way to go is with the rip-off GS1. It's like with filing patents - there's no cheap way of going about it. You have to do it properly, the first time.

Happy Valley Communications

We're very fortunate to be working with Happy Valley Communications, a student-run marketing firm at Penn State University. Each year, they select some businesses to help with marketing and promotion. Their services are completely free! Donations are accepted, if we find their services valuable. SleepPhones will be working with them this Spring semester. We are very lucky to be right next to a fantastic University that can offer these types of resources. Even though the students are all very bright and busy with classes, they find the time to get some hands-on experience in marketing. Most of them are communications or marketing majors, and some have previous work experience in the field. They have written a couple of blog posts regarding SleepPhones already. So far, they have helped critique our website, making it a bit more user-friendly. They've also made many suggestions of possible contacts. Just meeting with them has made us aware of new avenues to explore and given us renewed energy for old unfinished projects. We hope that they will be able to make some big contacts for us this semester!

New Fleece Samples

We have some new sample fleeces from Polartec! The orange and green are from recycled plastic. We'll be working on making these into sample SleepPhones and RunPhones. If you are a friend, family member, or long-time SleepPhones customer, you're first in line to try these out! I'll probably announce in the newsletter when the samples are ready.

Pictures of Snow!

The early February 2010 back-to-back Mid-Altantic Snow Storms will likely go down in history as a pretty memorable event. Shipments out were delayed a few days. And instead of yoga for exercise, my physical activity was shoveling a path to the mailbox and a path for the mail lady. Many interstate highways around Pennsylvania were at least partially closed. The number of inches of snow is close to breaking all-time records for February, even though we're not even half way through the month. Thankfully, the sun has come out for a few days and helped to melt some of the snow.

Here's a picture of our mailbox at dusk, along with the trees and hills to the East.

Meanwhile, my gardening friends and I are just itching to get some potting soil from the store... it's time to start the early seeds!

Picture from the Health and Fitness Fair

Here's a rare picture of Jason and me posing together. This was in front of our booth at the NBC 4 Health and Fitness Fair in Washington DC a few weeks ago.

A Small Mountain of Envelopes

Well, shipping was free if we ordered 3000 envelopes! Ironically, shipping can be quite costly for bulky shipping supplies... so here they are. Oh, yes, there is also the leaning tower of 8x4x3 boxes. One day, we'll be able to use them all up. The bag in the front is full of lavender sachets.