All-Star Glitterstarz

[Mamarazzi]

So, update on the Glitterstarz saga. It appears that a very good customer of Glitterstarz called them regarding my post (Mamarazzi is that you? ) , and one of the co-presidents (not the one who had been so rude) called me tonight VERY apologetic. It seems as though their business has grown tremendously in the last year or so, and they are drowning. We had a very nice conversation, one in which she agreed that a customer should at least know when to expect their product. I agreed to wipe the slate clean for our gym if she could agree that from here on out, we would receive better communication on delivery of the products. She shipped our items tonight. I'm definitely impressed with her willingness to make things right for us in this situation. Here's hoping our blingwear is fabulous!!!

Definitely wasn't me, but I'm glad it's worked out! That's the Glitterstarz service I've seen - if something isn't right, they do go above and beyond to make it so!

 

[CHEER4LIFE!!]

So people paid for items and they've still not received them? From last season? Yeah, I don't let stuff go when it involves my money. I would be getting some sort of refund. Sounds like there's been issues, but I have yet to find another company. Ahh, if only I had a pot o' cash and the know how

Yes, one mom is still waiting on an item or two from last season. She just gave up trying, it wouldn't have been me though. I want everything I pay for. We never had issues with garments not fitting or bling falling off. I loved the product we received. Glad you're getting the stuff delivered now, hoping you like the product when you receive it.

 

[xpressjag]

Yes.. We've ordered from them a few times. They started out great, now they are getting really slow with their work. It's been over 2 months. Yet again, another cheer company with poor customer service.

 

[GlitterStarz]

Hi. My name is Elizabeth, owner of GlitterStarz....I have been teetering back and forth, if I should take a business approach to this response, or just give it at wind at LIZ talking.... If you have gotten to work with GlitterStarz, or gotten to know me personally.... I go by LIZ, and I truly am just a "grown up cheerleader" learning to run a business, and provide a top quality rhinestone product..... I am not an industry leading business person, a "know it all" on how to start and RUN a business....

I am learning all of this, as we go, and am guaranteeing everyone of us is giving our heart and soul in this... The last 5 years of my life, have been a whirlwind.... and I have given everything I have to this cheerleading and dance industry. I am 29 years old... with no children.... this is my life at this point.
I noticed this thread on here, and.... my HEART DROPPED.

I truly appreciate this insight that this thread has given me...

If you are interested, I would like to share my story.....5 years ago, my mother and I started GlitterStarz out of my basement..... I was a cheerleader my whole life... went to college, received a degree in Psychology, and started my work career as a case manager in the developmental disability field.... One day I was driving home from my 9-5, and realized.... I NEED to be back in the cheer world.

Called my mother, while stuck in traffic.... and said "I want to start a business"... She without a second, said "go for it".... This is what we did.... The first year, was treacherous, we were doing everything we could to set up at vendor events, craft fairs, school and church holiday functions, and cheerleading competitions...

After 2 years, my mother and I grew to 2 other employees whom were working out of their own houses.... At that point, we needed to find a "little" office space. We found a location in Lyons, IL and moved into about 800 square feet... Every day was a scary moment, on knowing we now have overhead expenses... I worked my little butt off, on making sure we would stay afloat.

Fast forward to today, we are now just hitting our 5 year mark, and moved into a 7,500 sf location!! We just moved into this building in September. It is HUGE, if you think how small an actual rhinestone is, haha.... 7,500 sf is MASSIVE to us...We have grown to 15 on site employees, and a handful more than come in on as additional staff during busy season.... which is NOW....

Today is a bittersweet day, just TODAY we hit order number 10,000 in web orders. Web orders do not include wholesale customers, or phone orders.... This means TODAY we had our 10,000 individual person order a custom rhinestone item for their organization.... Each order, may include a couple different pieces, but we have had 10,000 individual PEOPLE order on our website...In our office leading up to today, we have been preparing for this order, as we think this is an amazing feat to celebrate.... Yet today, I am sitting in my office, typing this, as I hear my employees hustle and bustle with the rhinestone machines pounding away, and the buzzing of the heat presses.....

I say its bittersweet, because never in one circumstance, have I heard so many critiques about our business, the quality, how we run production, and most importantly our customer service....

I saw this post last night, and was thinking what we are doing wrong, what we can do to improve, how to streamline our production a bit better, and most importantly give each order to individual care that it deserves...

These are all BIG issues, and I am not going to give a quick answer, just to give ANY answer.....

A couple issues were brought up on customer service, this is going to be the FIRST issue that I address..... In our office, we only have 3 "office staff" employees, that are "non-production" staff....Today I am going to make a conscious effort on what I can do to resolve this issues for the future....

Our office line is 708.496.8004
Our receptionist, Nellie... and our office assistant Ashley.... would be one of the 2 to initially answer the phone..... I would like to personally talk to anyone who has any further issues, and reinforce that I am going to do everything to get our wheels running smoothly...... We literally BOOMED over night (over the last 5 years) and am welcome for any/all suggestions, concerns, or if you just want to chat...

If the fierceboard-ers are so welcome, I would like to invite the opportunity to leave this thread open, so I could keep posts on the progress and the stages of progression on proving to everyone that we indeed care about our customers, the end product of each rhinestone item... and most importantly each and every individual cheerleader....

We are in the business, to continue the growth of this crazy crazy cheer world, and invite every effort and energy on how we can do this together!!!

Thank you for your time...
BLING IT ON!
Liz

 

[Ren]

Can I just say I am so impressed by this. I think this is the first time in a while that a company (or individual) has come out and admitted that there have been problems, but then tried to do something about it. My practice wear is GlitterStarz and after reading this thread I was having qualms about having recommended it to a friend, but on the basis of this post I'm glad I did.
Thank you for actually being a person and not a nameless voice/email GlitterStarz.

 

[cheeraddict]

Wow impressive story! Good luck with your growing business.... Darn cheer mom's....We're the worst

 

[RaRaMama]

I want to personally thank you for making this right. Not because you shipped our items last night, but because you called to talk to me, person to person, to hear me out as a customer and to try and come to a resolution. You obviously are doing something right or you wouldn't have 10,000 customers although I may have come to the board frustrated, I will gladly share this positive experience!

And yes, us cheer moms are the worst. We get a little crazy, especially when other cheer moms are breathing down our necks ;-)

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!

 

[cheeraddict]

I hate to give up my secret, but Rich at Sweatsedo ROCKS! He started with velour warm ups. He said he'd have them by our first competition and he delivered. He does embroidery and blinging. He is now doing our backpacks.

 

[Kissmynfinities]

Our sports bras and bottoms fit VERY tight the shorts are so tight that it makes even the skinniest girls have muffin tops and we even tried on the prototype before placing size orders

 

[Drkilluzionz]

Top Gun is on year two of working with GlitterStarz and directly with Liz from concepts to artwork to sampling and production...we have no complaints from the office end and our parents and athletes love the merchandise.

 

[Luvcheer12]

I am a first time customer of Glitterstarz that has not had the best of experiences as of yet. I am defintely trying to be understanding, but I do not seem to be getting a straight answer to my questions. Each time I call about my order which is now 6 weeks in, I get a different answer. All I am asking for is a realistic answer to my inquiries about the status of my order. I made my 5th follow-up call call today and was assured that my order would be in my hand by this Saturday. We will see. I am in full support of cheer businesses, especially those that are local to me, but my patience is running a bit thin. If it will be 2 more days or 4 more weeks to receive my order I want to know the answer so I can manage what I need to manage on my end.

 

[GlitterStarz]

Hi.... This is Elizabeth owner of GlitterStarz again.... I was going to wait to respond to this thread again until we had all of the new ideas, systems of improvement, production timelines, along with a couple other ideas we are implementing to overall enhance customer service and production, but here I will give a quick list to show what we have been working on..... Given a couple more weeks, I was excited to come in here and SHOW OFF the new and improved GlitterStarz and respond here when all new ideas were 100% implemented and running smoothly.....

To the above poster....Luvcheer12.... please call me directly at 708.932.3866 and I will handle this. From the above post, I can not figure out which team you are with...We will make sure you have your order in time for Saturday, please call and I will take care of this...

Right now just in the 2nd week of January, we are still reeking the effects of taking in too much business in November/December... We are at the tail end of "clean up" work from last year, and all ready and restructured for all new incoming orders for 2013....

Here are the new plans we have in effect for 2013......

1. Hired 2 new "office staff"...
Tiffany she is now a "project coordinator"... To oversee all projects at any given time....She is basically "overseeing" that each one of us are in a respectable timeline of doing our jobs to keep each project on task.... Her email is [email protected]

Amber who is in charge of "timeline customer service" just on a timeline base to give each and every customer the updated information at every step of their wholesale or web order.... Her email is [email protected]

If any emails are sent to them, please cc me at [email protected]
as they are both new and learning... and I am sure I could give light on background information,etc.....

2. Implemented a new online CRM and project manager computer system where ALL customers are imputed as contacts first to have correct contact info/shipping addresses, and where notes can be added on accounts, sizes uploaded, artwork approvals, which will all make ease for "re-orders". This new online system also has a calendar integration to tie to different projects, which seems pretty basic, but this is the key to our success..... Within this, we set "landmarks" to each project....Acknowledging and keeping on with the "landmarks" will keep with the expected delivery date...

This system once we have it set up to our standards with current productivity, will be able to output and tell us IF we can take any more certain orders at that point, and the EARLIEST realistic date that the completed new order can be delivered before payment is received....

3. A NEW website with a new "store" and "merchant account" features, in which this new merchant account can EASILY filter the sorted team online orders. This new "store" and "merchant account" has features that are beneficial for us on ease of shipping information whether it be a team order, or single order... has back-end features that will easily correlate all orders so we can pass all necessary information for each webstore to the coordinator of the webstore with ease..... With this of course comes a WHOLE NEW web design using Java Script, and we are calling it a whole new "shopping experience"....

4. An online design portal where teams and individuals are going to be able to design their custom Creation Collection pieces, and custom warmup designs right online and receive an instant proof.... Our custom sports bras through our Creation Collection and our warmups are 2 of our biggest selling lines through GlitterStarz and this online portal will be a "fun experience" for the customer and at the same time set ease for the production of each order....

5. Completely separated our production lines from online retail webstores, our wholesale orders for proshops, wholesale orders for warmups, and our custom Creation Collection sports bra line... Up until this point, they have all filtered through the same pipelines and basically "bottlenecked" at production... We have internally restructured to make sure these are all on different project pipelines...

These are just some of the MAJOR things that we knew we needed to take action on after this last "busy season"/ Holiday rush..... Last year for 2012, was the first year that us as a small business hit that little "1" number that every business strives to hit in sales.... We are proud of that, and really value every customer that has got us thus far... It is time for us now to take it to the next level, and guarantee the service that each of you deserve.... Through the growth, we just needed the proper guidelines, and procedures in place to guarantee the structure within to deliver a wonderful BLINGING product with amazing customer service....

This next post on here.... I do not want to be EXPLAINING our ways of improvement, with patience and understanding.... we will be SHOWING our ways of improvement.

Thank you for all support thus far, better believe 2013 is going to be a rockin' year.
Let's do this!

Liz
708.496.8004
[email protected]

 

[codycheerbabex]

My team received all of our practice wear and warmups from them a few weeks back, and nobody's had any issues what so ever. They fit great, they're really comfy, and because they couldn't ship out all of the duffel bags in time for the said date, they sent a free bow to everyone that ordered them! For being an international team ordering from America, everybody is very pleased. Thankyou GlitterStarz!

 

[HeatUniqueJ]

We got our Teamwear right before Christmas and it looks amazing, we love it and we did not have any issues with it aswell! We are definitly thinking about working with Glitterstarz again in the Future! (and we are also from Europe)

 

[BelieveinM.E.]

I appreciate Liz taking the time to respond, unfortunately, my program is no stranger to calling about customer service issues. Our program is very tiny, especially compared to a lot of the programs that use Glitter Starz.

I will be the first to say, I LOVE their product. We've never had a problem with any of the merchandise that has been sent. It's been great quality, rhinestones have lasted pretty well considering what our girls do in the practicewear. This last web store we did have a mispelling of a name and a rhinestone missing on a shirt, and some parents were sent the wrong log (However, the new logo looked fantastic) but, other than that, I couldn't give much complaints on the product.

The customer service issue is something that we have dealt with. We really felt the "small gym" syndrome, feeling that our smaller orders were not worth the effort or time into keeping in touch. We did once, receive impecible customer service, right before we had a camp with a big name team that also uses your service-which made our "small gym syndrome" even worse.

My suggestion is communicate. For us, that's all we ask. If the webmaster is unable to get something completed that was promised, a call the second this is realized to let us know would change a lot. We may not be 100% happy about it, but it's better than being ANGRY because no one let us know, and sometimes when we call, we're made out to look crazy for calling twice or three times to check on things because we never get call backs as promised. Also, looking back in e-mails and previous conversations to make sure things are done as discussed. Or if there is a question on an order, call someone to check instead before going ahead with the order.

I'm not surprised business is booming, as I said I love the product. It would be nice if the customer service didn't have to slack because of it. I hope things do get better in the future, as I would love to continue to use you as we grow.