 We have been
offering a Faithful Feeder birdseed card since 1991. Way back then it was
a novel idea. People enjoyed watching the little red cardinal stamp fill up their card as
they made their seed purchase, and most still do. We are actually using a second
generation stamp now, after the first one gave out in 1999. Someday we may donate our
original stamp to the Grand Blanc Heritage Museum (just kidding!). Increasingly
however, people are loosing their Faithful Feeder card, forgetting their card, comments
that border on grumbling about keeping a ton of cards in their wallet/purse, or they
present 20 Faithful Feeder cards and ask us to figure out what free seed they may
have coming to them (which we are more than happy to do).
An idea that started out as a thank you has become a big
hassle for some customers. Many businesses have gone electronic and record spending data
and the purchaser does not have a card to manage, but as you probably know, we try to
maintain a “low tech” approach to just about everything. Personally and
professionally we are frugal; we believe in simplicity and U.S. made products, and because
of this we have been able to pass the saving right along to you. That is why even our
day-to-day seed prices are usually lower than other comparable store’s sale prices.
You may now wonder where this is going, and why we have not gone high-tech. Just the
entry-level cost of a new point-of-sale computer to keep track of information would be
approximately $1,500.00. The cost of training our employees and purchasing the equipment
to re-ticket all our merchandise to accept a scanner is, for us, completely mind boggling.
Our low-tech register and pricing tools work just fine, and who would want to toss out
perfectly-good equipment to gunk-up another landfill? We're also quite serious about
preserving your privacy and security; by not capturing detailed customer purchasing data
there is no information that could fall into hands of evil doers.
Even with some minor grumblings - somehow we have managed to stamp enough cards this
year to have given away 14,392 pounds of birdseed! We’ve
decided to happily continue the free seed program because obviously many people enjoy
having a Faithful Feeder card and we appreciate your continued business and loyalty to
some of the best bird seed Mother Nature has to offer...so keep ‘em coming. And Happy
New Year - now in our 19th year of business!
Louise Dawson
on behalf of the the Naturalists at J.J. Cardinal’s
"Happiness is wanting what you have." |
