We travel a fair amount, so we are always on the lookout for different things we have not yet tasted that fit that criteria. Occasionally, we hear about new things from others, like Jay Olins who collects chocolate bar wrappers.
Once, we had a guy from Finland contact us telling us that he has a chocolate tasting group and he tries to get different chocolate for them to taste, but it is hard for him, so we started trading chocolate for chocolate of stuff that he had trouble obtaining, and stuff that we wanted that we had trouble obtaining.
More often than you'd think, we have been contacted by chocolate makers wondering why their products were not on our website, and we explained that we only put up bars that we have personally tasted, so occasionally, chocolate makers have sent us their products!
And, then there's the "Cookie Man" in Denmark. He is a square dancer (our travels directly revolve around square dancing, since my husband is a very good square dance caller and he is hired all over the world) who brings chocolate chip cookies (and other types of cookies) to all the dances he attends. But he has a hard time finding chocolate chips in Denmark, so whenever we travel to Denmark, we bring him tons of chocolate chips, in exchange for which he gives us chocolate bars. His choices are often not things we would choose to buy for ourselves, and hence you'll find some of the chocolate makers in our database have only one or two entries. These are typically things that the "Cookie Man" has given us and we often rate them fairly low.
Then, we think about seasons. Because we live in southern Central California, there is a very warm period of the year during which we cannot order chocolate for fear of damage from the heat during shipment. So, if something comes out during one of those periods and is a limited edition and is gone before we can safely get it shipped, we miss out. Yes, there is cold pack shipping, and yes, we avail of that when necessary, but in general, it has to be a very special bar for us to order in summer.
