October 14, 2022

Hey Missouri Star family! This is Al, the computer loving son of Jenny’s :)

Well I’m bringing you some updates on the tech side of things, I didn’t actually do any of the work, that was Casey and his team of magical wizards that actually build the stuff, but I’m excited to tell you about what they’ve been up to, toot their horn if you will.

So, fresh off the presses today is our Machine Quilting Tracker!

You all remember the online pizza tracker right? It was a warm hug on those long nights of studying in college :)

Well, a lot of the questions we kept getting around the machine quilting process got us to the whiteboard designing a solution that felt a lot like that. “What if you could just see where you were in the process?” or “Wouldn’t it be cool if you could see your quilt going through machine quilting like a pizza getting made?” or “I want a donut”. 2 of the 3 of those statements got addressed in this new design, and if you have a quilt that you’ve mailed in, click the "Track my Quilt" button on your order page to go see yours, and if you don’t, just imagine what this would look like if it was your quilt!

The nerdy part of this is getting our big backend system to track the quilt from receipt (you send us a package, we open it, inspect it, connect it to an order in the system, and we’re off) then tracking that from step to step in our system.

If you know our machine quilting department, they see a lot of quilts, so that’s a lot of scans to tell you our customers what’s going on.  

In the beginning this was a little spreadsheet, then it became an insanely complicated spreadsheet, and now it’s an insanely complicated … but elegant … big block of code to connect everything that happens in the quilting room with your individual order. Plus it needed to be fun to look at (cause why do it if it’s not fun?)

Off the presses for a week or two, Shipping Bundle

Did you know we now let you bundle your shipping. Meaning you can order the daily deal today, choose the bundle shipping option, and we’ll hold your order for 7 days starting ….. Now. So then for the next 7 days, any order you place that you choose bundle shipping, it just goes in that basket and we’ll only charge you shipping once (or not at all if the bundle total is over the free shipping threshold). Just choose bundle shipping and you’re set.

The nerdy part of this is taking an order, decrementing inventory so the system doesn’t oversell, then holding that in our warehouse where the bundle builds and builds. Then, like magic, 7 days later, we move the entire thing into our normal flow so your order gets picked and shipped. The other hard part is managing the shipping, making sure you don’t get overcharged and managing the discounts when you earn free shipping.  

The team did an amazing job here, super proud of this one getting out the door, as it’s literally the most requested feature for over a decade. Thanks for loving it!

So there’s a couple of cool features for you to enjoy, we have some great ones coming up (check out the new daily deal page this weekend!!) and I’ll be back in a few months for another update!

Love: Al, Casey, Alex, Jonah, Jim, Leland, Darko