May flowers greeting to all my friends of the Featherstones Comfort Pad!
So much going on – where do I begin! Well, first, yes, lots of May flowers! Our gardens are popping this year after being ignored last year as we focused on the Comfort Pad’s launch. Felt good to get back out and dig around in the dirt!
But we had to handle one other thing first. After over two years of being careful, Scott and I came down with COVID last week. I can say this somewhat lightheartedly, because we didn’t get difficult cases. I had headaches and a cough for a couple of days, then it lightened up – I was mainly tired, and boy, did I sleep! I tested positive three days in a row while Scott was negative (he kept attributing that to his “Yankee constitution”), but on my fourth day he was struck (he had said no matter what, he wasn’t about to stop kissing me good morning and kissing me good night 😊). He’s still testing positive as I write this and coming back from being mainly tired and weak, no other real symptoms. He should be mostly over it when this is sent out. I’ve hit 10 days and Scott’s close, so we’re just about out from under its eerie shadow.
Our country hitting the 1 million COVID deaths milestone is a difficult reminder that this is still a deadly disease, and even though the pandemic message is being toned down, it’s still important to be careful. Actually, our county here in Massachusetts is back in “the red” along with neighboring counties, and while it’s good to know hospitalizations and deaths have diminished significantly, people are still getting sick and some are dying from this. So, be careful out there!
~~~~~~~
On the Comfort Pad front
This week we’re introducing a new Comfort Pad style to the lineup – it’s called Teal Waves, and it’s just been put up in the online store. Here’s a pic. That gives us four versions of our Performance Fabric Comfort Pad and two of the Pleather, which pretty much represents the demand for the two styles.
We have had a nice response to our Mother’s Day Month promotion of the Comfort Pad line, which we announced a couple of weeks ago. We’re so into our moms (hi up there!!!) that we thought it would be fun to celebrate Mother’s Day all month with a 20% off promotion. If you would like to take advantage of it, just go to our online store at https://featherstonesinc.com/comfort-pad and enter promo code “mothers20” at checkout (some on this email already have, and we greatly appreciate it!!!). It applies to your entire order. And we will ship for free to anywhere in the USA!
Last item about the Featherstones LLC online store – if you like your Comfort Pad and haven’t yet, please go to its page and leave a review and rating. Consumers rely on reviews to help make buying decisions. Reviews are very helpful in our online marketing, and I greatly appreciate it!!! Scott reports that the website is getting good traffic, so we’re hoping for more buying decisions.
~~~~~~~
Big news update!
Okay, so now this is super exciting! As I’ve mentioned here, a major Boston hospital has thoroughly tested the Comfort Pad for use in its MRI Department. The technicians loved it and reported that many patients said it made their MRI experience much more comfortable, in several different applications. Well, the hospital invited us to apply to become an approved vendor, and just this week I signed a 15-page vendor contract! And trust me when I tell you – we had no idea what half of it even meant!
We had our attorney review it and we made a couple of changes, which were accepted. The main news is it’s being reviewed by the hospital right now, and presuming it’s approved, we’ll finally be authorized vendors. There is a clause about keeping the contract’s content confidential, so we don’t know yet if we can say what hospital it is in this kind of forum, or if that’s just for publicity. We’ll push that button once we’re approved. And one way or another, we’ll let our friends know the final results! Presuming our acceptance is followed by a purchase order – which we believe will happen, from all the conversations – we’ll be using this as a springboard to other businesses in the institutional marketplace. Our business plan has always been based on Featherstones LLC appealing to both an institutional market and a consumer market. Is that finally happening? Fingers crossed!!!
Featherstones LLC YouTube channel
You should see a graphic here (hopefully! lol) of one of our “snippet” videos that our friend Wes, an awesome videographer and former workmate of Scott, made for us. It actually should be a live link that, if you click on it, will go to the shortie video on our new Featherstones LLC YouTube channel. Scott’s been loading our snippet lineup on it, along with the 2-minute video on our website. Just search Featherstones LLC at YouTube if you want to check them out.
The purpose of our snippet videos is to describe a problem, offer a solution, establish my credentials, and make a call to action. All in about 15 seconds! We use them in social media marketing. Short videos are hugely popular in social media, so we’re riding that wave.
He’ll also put up a couple of testimonial videos and more of those as they happen. If you would like to make a quickie testimonial video on your phone and send it to us to use in promos and add your voice to our YouTube channel, please email your video to leigh@featherstonesinc.com. If it’s too big a file for your email service, you can easily send it via WeTransfer or DropBox or Google Photos. Scott’s a big fan of WeTransfer – easy and intuitive he says.
~~~~~~~
Hungry? Recipe of the month time!
For our recipe of the month, I decided to offer the dish I made for Scott on our first get-together at my home during our early dating, all the way back in 2016. I invited him to Sunday jazz brunch and made a first for me – which came out great and clearly won his heart – lol! I’ve made it and variations of it a few times since. So, for your May cooking and entertaining funness, here’s my (actually, Martha Stewart’s) Smoked Salmon Frittata.
Smoked Salmon Frittata – served hot, serves 12
Ingredients
12 large eggs, beaten
1 cup heavy cream
4 ounces goat cheese, crumbled
1/2 pound smoked salmon, chopped
3 scallions, sliced 1/8 inch thick, white and light-green parts only
3 tablespoons chopped fresh dill
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper (I use pepper to taste – which means a lot!)
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 red onion, finely sliced
Directions
Combine eggs, cream, goat cheese, smoked salmon, scallions, dill, salt and pepper in a bowl, set aside.
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Melt butter in a 10-inch nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add red onion; saute until translucent, about 5 minutes. Reduce heat to medium low. Pour reserved egg mixture over onions; cook, pulling back edges with a rubber spatula, until it begins to set, about 15 minutes. (I just throw it all in together and cook it, comes out great! lol)
Bake in oven until set in center, about 20 minutes. Transfer from over to a board. Let cool 5 minutes; run a spatula around sides and underneath the frittata and ease out of pan onto the board. Cut into 12 wedges. Serve.
I love to serve this with fresh berries and almond croissants. (We have the best French bakery about 4 miles from us.) For Mother’s Day brunch I made this with lobster tail – yes, delicious!
So, after our jazz brunch? We went for a lovely walk near the bay on a gorgeous October day, and hours flew by! And the rest, as they sort of say – is making history! Married 4 years on New Year’s Eve! 😊
See you next time!
To your comfort!
With love,
Leigh
PS: Please remember, you can follow the Featherstones Comfort Pad pages online: @featherstones.comfort.pad on Instagram and @FeatherstonesComfortPad on Facebook. I post twice a day Monday through Friday. Thank you!!!