Specialty Retail Editing and Proofreading Services

A customer orders a specialist item that has to come from the maker. They are told it will be six to eight weeks. At week ten they telephone, at week twelve they telephone again, and at week fourteen it arrives. Nothing went wrong that a shop could have prevented — but nobody told them what was happening at week seven, and they will buy the next one elsewhere.

We edit what specialist retailers produce — special order and lead time confirmations, progress and delay communications, deposit and cancellation terms for ordered goods, fitting and consultation records, product and material information for unusual items, care and servicing instructions, and the correspondence that manages a customer waiting for something they cannot buy anywhere else. Our editors work on the months between an order and its arrival.

The special order confirmation and the updates that follow are where specialist retail keeps a customer, and their failure is a lead time given once and never mentioned again. Waiting is tolerable; silence is not. We work through these so the confirmation states what has actually been ordered, in the customer's words and the maker's specification, since a bespoke item is agreed in conversation and remembered differently by both parties; so the lead time is given as a date range with the reason it is a range, because "six to eight weeks" from an unstated start is the first ambiguity and the maker's own queue is the honest explanation; so a scheduled update is promised even where there is nothing to report, given that a customer who hears from the shop at week four does not telephone at week ten; so the point at which the order can no longer be changed or cancelled is named with the deposit consequence, as this is the term customers discover at the worst moment; so any variation inherent in a handmade or natural material is described before it is ordered rather than explained on arrival; so a delay is communicated when it is known rather than when the deadline passes, with a new date rather than an apology; so what happens if the maker cannot supply at all is stated; and so the collection message says what to bring and how long the item will be held. Confirmations written this way survive fourteen weeks.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including order records, supplier information and customer correspondence. We are editors rather than buyers, makers or consumer law advisers, and we offer no view on products, suppliers or your obligations to customers. What we can do is fill the silence between order and arrival.