DryEyeShop Blog — TDEC

As Rebecca mentioned in her utterly delightful ode to databases last week, The Dry Eye Company recently completed a massive migration from one software system to a bright, shiny, new one:Look at how bright the new dryeyeshop.com is! How shiny!Let me repeat; this was a massive undertaking. In the course of around a month and a half, our band of eight learned how to use new software tools, set up our catalog of nearly 200 different products using said new software tools, built an entirely new online storefront, and imported thousands and thousands of customer records and order histories.To summarize:...

I am, almost without qualification, terribly thrilled to have moved our entire business onto new software.It seems as though every day I find new reasons to be happy about the switch. The new software is so much better at almost everything. For internal purposes, it's self-documenting, and the interface is intuitive to learn, and it all Just Makes Sense — so my  staff can do everything they need to do more comfortably and efficiently. Externally, the public-facing pieces at dryeyeshop.com look so much better, and most things work better in so many ways. Most of all, there's just so much...

I'm an intravert.I loathe, abhor, harbor an intense aversion to and go to great lengths to avoid Large Social Events. I'm capable of spending an hour seeking synonyms to express my feelings about Large Social Events.Nonetheless, last Saturday evening I found myself girding my social loins to attend a Large Social Event, to wit, the annual awards gala held by our local chamber of commerce. The Dry Eye Company had been nominated for an award. Non-attendance, in the circumstances, would have felt a little rude.Just to put this in context, a brief word about our town and local chamber:Poulsbo is...

Maybe it’s just me, but when I hear “company Christmas party”, I imagine men in novelty ties, women in sparkly red dresses, too much to drink, and (worst case scenario) karaoke. But not at The Dry Eye Company! Since we’re fairly new to having employees, this is the first time we’ve had our very own Christmas party, and it was utterly different than I expected — in a really good way.We started with lunch at a local Italian restaurant, Sogno di Vino. It was a typical Northwest December day, chilly, blustery, and rainy, so the cozy, firelit atmosphere inside the...