We are closed!
Thank you all for your support over the years! It’s been fantastic. If you have a question about warranty then please email rpwarranties@gmail.com. For all other questions please contact me through a message to: connoisseurs@optusnet.com.au. We will be checking that email address once a week until June 30th 2022.
To read about why we closed, please read our comments below.
Thank you!
Despina
The Rapidly Changing World of online shopping
There are many things that cause change. But I think the most outstanding one to me over my lifetime is the momentum of "herd mentality", wholly created today and momentumised by social media.
It used to be "word of mouth" that we relied upon to bring people to physical bricks & mortar stores, helped by mainstream advertising to sell our wares and products! Today it is "word of social media", or "texting", "twittering", "instagram-ming", "facebook-ing" etc., that takes people to digital online stores! But as we have found out digital stores actually don't exist in people's minds - they couldn't care less about them because they are invisible and totally intangible.
Like light from a light bulb - on one minute - gone the next as you or your friend flicks to another light-bulb (screen) moment via social media on your smart-phone to view an intangible virtual product of something-or-other to buy.
This is a new world requiring no "physical face to face contact" whatsoever with any people, no "physical materially locatable shop" needed to visit and no "physically tangible money" required to purchase.
Invisible people - invisible shops - invisible money
Since the beginning of time most of us have relied upon our folks and especially our friends endorsements and passionate persuasive opinions re something we perhaps would like to purchase, use , wear etc., before we show off to the people around us our new "clothes", "toys" or "things"! Our whole identity and security is wrapped up and tied to it.
To think and decide for yourself can be very embarrassing, so most of us let others do it for us as that usually removes the possibility of wearing our own embarrassing decisions. Hence the awesome power of social media and the accelerating strengthening herd mentality created by it forming trend shifts that are now so rapid, we failed to comprehend the impending impact as all our shoppers virtually disappeared without trace.
Like others, it didn't matter what we did to bring our shoppers back and/or get new ones, it seems we were as invisible to them, as they were to us. Nobody saw our signposts and our advertising - why? Because everyone had left town and we didn't know it. Why did everyone leave town? No one really knows except towns are no longer needed to go shopping, shops aren't either, neither are people. It's "light-bulb"(screen) moments we need - flashed to us by our social media friends, most of whom we have never met and don't really know, but what they say just happens to be the most important thing right now in life! Trust me - I'm invisible!
So because we can't see you and you can't see us and because our shop was lost in the digitally invisible world of billions of websites which can only be viewed one screen "light-bulb" moment at a time, the money to survive became invisible too, hence the need to close!
We sadly end 15 years of service and caring for all of our customers and clients.