Powder Matter is back from a long break, which started as a summer break during the summer.
As you might know, but also not, Powder Matter is run by one guy. He develops the formula but also prepares, packages, and ships your orders. Oh, he is also the ‘support guy’.
Below is a very personal note, if you do not wish to read it, skip to the next paragraph.
My mother became sick and was admitted to a hospital. Even though we had decided to stay this summer home and visit my parents, who lived in a country far away, during the winter, hoping to also enjoy some skiing. From the messages I got from my parents, I could not really understand what the problem was, so I contacted some old colleagues. They advised me to come and be with my parents to handle things myself. So we decided to change our plans and went the whole family to my parents, thinking it would be a vacation of one or two weeks.
However, when I got there, it seemed my mother had cancer that was not treatable. The only thing that I was able to do, was to prevent many other invasive procedures that my colleagues had planned for her.
And as a son, all I could do was: be there with my mother in her last weeks, days.
I was unable to do anything else.
My mother passed away. I loved her a lot. I do miss her. And will keep missing her until my time comes.
I returned home.
My wife and children had returned earlier because the vacation was over. My wife, who works as a medical doctor in a hospital contracted COVID from a fellow doctor who had worked a lot with COVID infected patients. With her all of the family. Our sons had the flu for a weekend, my wife had a mild cough and I had no complaints at all. However after my wife tested negative, she tried to work but was unable to because of enormous exhaustion. I was also very tired, unable to concentrate or resume my activities for Powder Matter.
I had no idea how long the situation was going to take, but it took longer than we had anticipated. From half January I was able to work on the facility and the website.
I was unable to concentrate on reading my emails or taking care of financial matters. Also, the goods in the facility had to be refreshed and prepared for action.
The pandemic has changed many things for shipping methods, shipping costs, and how cargo is handled. Another change that I noticed is relatively big, is the changes due to Brexit per first of January 2021.
With these changes, the shipping costs have become substantially higher. Cheaper shipping methods outside of the European Union I had access to, have all been canceled. I still have to figure out the exact details but to be able to ship to the United Kingdom, I need to register my company with the British Tax Service and get a tax ID. So I can pay my taxes directly to the British government. To a single guy company, this is for now too much.
Because the changes were so big, I was unable to restart as planned initially in January. I had to change several things.
If you are outside the EU, one option is to have your goods shipped to a shipping forwarder, such as mailbox.de.
Shipping of the packages will be done regularly, however not like before daily, but more twice or three times a week. This will be the case until the precautions around COVID will be reduced.
The powders:
Until things are up and running fully again, I have reduced the different number of powdered mixes to three. From the powders, there will be only Vanilla, Chocolate, and Unflavored.
The neutral line will be unavailable and be replaced by ‘original’ type flavored products in the next version.
The bars:
Because the bars were very popular, I decided to automate the production of these and purchased several machines to do this. However, until now I have not been able to use it. I need to test and standardize the recipes for these machines and order new packaging material. Until then the bars will be unavailable. However when back, it will be at a very competitive price.
Paypal is a very expensive payment system for non-Americans. They also impose certain strange limitations on users of certain countries. I have been paying a significant amount of ‘conversion fees to Paypal, besides simply the costs I already pay to them whenever a payment is made to me. They demand about 4-5% of a transaction. For outside EU transactions, this is even more like 7%.
Powder Matter is a Czech company and I have a Czech bank account with a Euro valuta. My customers pay me in euros. Whenever I make a payment or want to send this to my bank account, Paypal converts this to Czech Crowns (with a much lower conversion limit than on the open market) and sends it as Czech Crowns. The bank then converts the received money into Euros, against again a lower conversion limit than on the market.
The last time I sent 1000 euros to my bank account, I received it as 910 euros.
Mind please this is beside the costs that the bank and PayPal already make me pay for ‘transactions’.
That is why PayPal payments will not be available in our shop.
Credit card payments and direct bank payments (IBAN) will be available until further notice.
As soon as I realized I was not going to be back soon, I canceled and refunded the orders that had been placed until then. I disabled payment methods but seems people were still able to place an order and pay.
I would like to know everyone that I am not out on anybodys money. Production and distribution of Powder Matter products are more of a time-passing job to me. My lifelong need to be useful to others and provide service for the good of all (wo)men. The limited-time that Powder Matter has been functional, it has only been able to take care of the costs it makes.
I will read through all my emails and contact people personally, who have tried to reach me. Everyone that placed an order will get his order if I am able to ship to that country. If not, I will only be able to refund you your money.
I am afraid it will take some time to read through the several thousand emails I received in the last few months. So please be patient.
To thank everyone for sticking with Powder Matter and the trust that apparently still was there, I will add a small sample of the Dutch Quinoa I use in our powdered mixes (and in the bars).
I would like to thank everyone for their patience and their understanding.
I have been feeling bad about the fact that I have caused my regular customers inconvenience. However, even though I knew the limitations of us humans, I again was surprised, sad, and frustrated to lose my mother. The same feelings I knew from losing a patient that was under my care.
However, what happened the last few months made me realize again how fragile human health is and that I as a human can only care for others as long as my body is able to function.
For our body to function we need to take good care of it. I believe that feeding it good food is part of taking good care of it. I am sure that Powder Matter is good food.
Powder Matter – Balanced & Complete
