Hi, I’m Tywana Smith and I own and operate TreasuredLocks.Com. Treasured Locks is a small, black owned company that sells high quality hair and skin care products, predominantly for the needs of African Americans and people of color. While most of our products are excellent for all hair and skin types, our focus is to make available the best products on the market to people who have special needs. We know you have unique needs and we are here to meet them for you

We chose the name for Treasured Locks for many reasons. First, like treasure, quality hair care products for black people can be hard to find. As more of us move away from areas where there are local stores to cater to our needs, we find ourselves running all over town just to find the basics. Secondly, your Secondly, your hair or your locks is a treasure to you. Our hair has unique requirements, and we must take care of it properly to unlock the beauty contained within. Treasured Locks was created out of my personal frustration with finding quality black hair care products and information on how to care for my family’s hair and skin.

We began by offering just a few products that I found worked well for me and my family. Over the course of time, we have expanded our offerings and will continue to do so. However, we will intentionally limit our offerings to products we feel good about and would use ourselves. We intend to maintain our boutique-like feel. Our policy is to only offer products we have extreme confidence in. Most of the products you see here are products we use on a regular basis. Our goal is to continue to develop the company to meet your needs. So, please tell me what you like and what you don’t like. If there is a product you need and you don’t see it here, tell me and I’ll see if I can get it for you.

We also want to be a source of information for you. We will post articles we feel will benefit our community. We have links to many sites of interest for black hair care and other needs we feel our clients may have. If you have a site that relates to the needs of our community, please send me an e-mail.

As a Black owned and operated business, Treasured Locks will strive to provide the very best products, service and information we can to our community. Please check back often to see how we are doing. There are four goals we have set for ourselves in order to keep you coming back. We constantly review our practices and products to make sure we are achieving these goals:

• Offer Only the Highest Quality Products
• Provide Fair Pricing and Low Cost (or Free) Shipping
• Provide Outstanding Customer Service
  • Feedback on orders
  • Shipping times
  • Keeping items in stock
  • Provide the opportunity for self-service
  • Responsiveness to inquiries
• Provide Information & Community

One of the most important things we have to do is to be certain the products we are offering do what they say they will do. To meet this goal, we began by offering mostly products that my family uses. We used the SheaMoisture products for more than a year before we opened the store. Even now, everyone in my family uses one or more of those products. Most of the time, we are the “guinea pigs” used to test the products before we offer them to you. Whether it’s a new product we have developed or one offered by another manufacturer, we must be confident in the effectiveness and safety of a product before we will offer it for sale. We will continue to focus on high quality products with a bias towards natural ingredients. We feel you should be able to make an informed
decision before you purchase. So, we list the ingredients and other pertinent information right on the website. We encourage you do to your homework before your purchase and we welcome your questions.

Although we test many products ourselves, we can’t personally test every item. And, not everything works on everyone. So, we also do our own market research. We conduct surveys asking people what they like and what they don’t like. When a manufacturer approaches us with a claim about what their product does, we confirm that with actual experiences of people who have used the products and aren’t afraid to say whether they like them or not. We
welcome your feedback. We’ll adjust our offerings as you vote on what you do and do not like.

Have you ever been to a web site to order something and wanted to know the shipped cost before you went through the trouble of placing the
order? Have you ever wondered why some companies want to add outrageous amounts of money for shipping and handling? They offer what seem like low prices. But, then they charge inflated shipping charges. We worked hard to develop a pricing model that gives you the best possible value, in a structure that is easy to understand. Our product pricing is set to provide you with a fair value for your money. We will not always have the cheapest products. But, we want to have the best value products. Our goal is to offer the best products available on the market, for a good price. We calculate value this way:

Value = Quality / Price

As you can see, value is determined by more than just price. Quality of the product, quality of the service, quality of the shopping experience, all of these things go into the value equation. Natural and hand made products are more expensive than their mass market counterparts for a variety of reasons. Labor costs are higher to hand make products. Natural ingredients cost more. And, natural ingredients have limited shelf lives. But, our customers tell us our natural products are very reasonably priced versus similar quality products on the market. Operating a high quality web site versus one that is just slapped up costs more. And, providing excellent customer service costs more.

Value is not determined merely by Quality, either. We could offer the best products and customer service in the world. But, if they aren’t priced fairly, you won’t buy them. To this end, we do all we can to keep prices reasonable. We do not believe in artificially marking prices up just to have “sales” all of the time. We offer low prices every day. We encourage you to buy multiples by offering discounts on many items if you buy 3 or more.

To keep our shipping policy easy to understand, we have developed a very simple model for shipping. You know when you enter our store that if you are going to place a small or medium sized order, the shipping charge will be a fixed amount. The shipping information page is available from any page on our website. You should see this page for the latest shipping costs and policy. If you place a large order and choose ground shipping, shipping is free. This can result in significant savings for you. We encourage you to place larger orders to minimize shipping costs. One order for three bottles of shampoo will cost us much less to ship than three orders for one bottle each. It will also cost you much less.

Volume pricing inquiries are also welcome. If you want to really stock up, e-mail or call and let us know.

I have ordered items over the Internet just to see my orders go into a black hole. I have waited and waited for things I thought should have already shipped only to call and finally find out they are out of stock. Then, I tried to cancel my order and received the item anyway. This has happened to me on more than one occasion and it’s one of the big fears of shopping on the Internet. While there are factors that are out of our control, we make every attempt to keep items in stock and ready to ship to you. When we simply cannot ship within a few days, we will let you know.

When you place an order with us, you will immediately get an e-mail confirming we have received your order. The email will tell you exactly what you have on order with us, and will show you the contact information we have for you (including shipping address). When your item ships, you will receive
a second e-mail with the ship date and method of shipment. A tracking number will be provided, if applicable.

Our goal is to keep all items in stock. Most orders ship within a couple of business days. If we are out of stock on something, we will notify you and give you an expected arrival time and the choice as to whether you want to wait for the item.

If you are dissatisfied with our service, for any reason, please let us know, so that we have the opportunity to make it right. We realize that keeping you happy is our number one goal and we will do whatever within reason we can do to make that happen.

We realize the most efficient way to service you is to give you the tools to service yourself. You get your answers faster and we can provide them at a lower cost (saving you money). As technology makes advances, Treasured Locks uses that technology to put as much information as possible at your fingertips. In our first four years of business, we have had no less than four major web site upgrades. We provide testimonials for many products, ingredients
listings, instructions for use and FAQs. As new tools become available, rest assured we will leverage them to give you the best experience possible.

However, we know that there are those times when you need to reach out to someone to get an answer. And, we are here for you. The best way to contact us is via email. Secondly, we provide a toll free number for those times when you need to speak with us on the telephone. We answer every email just as quickly as possible.

Urgent customer care issues (like “Where’s my order?”) are answered immediately. While general questions are generally answered within a few days.

Provide Information and Community

In addition to providing you with the best products at fair prices along with great service, our fourth goal is to provide you with information to allow you to make the best decisions for your hair and skin care. Eventually, we would like this to be a place you can come to get all the information you need on caring for your hair and skin. We are making rapid progress on that goal. We are still developing the community aspect of the site.

As we updated our “About Us” page (after just over 4 years in business), we realized that we have made great strides on most of our goals, even while some still have a lot of work to be done. But, we know that we’ll never stop trying to improve or rest on our laurels. Please help us improve by continuing to give us your feedback and by spreading the word about Treasured Locks.

Peace & Blessings,
Tywana

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 21st, 2007 at 7:37 pm and is filed under Our Community, Treasured Locks Announcements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.