Saturday Gift Post--New Boxed Cards and Reading Glasses, and a New Home for Book Seats.

At the same time we are receiving holiday gift items, I have to keep tracking how things are going, what categories are missing, and what's happened to older orders--these are glasses I picked up at the Chicago gift show last August. Their laser-cut design does elicist some oohs. There are three colors available, and we have more sizes than are indicated on our display; most varieties are available in strengths from 1.0 to 3.0 in .25 increments.

I noticed that our boxed cards were looking low, even though I had placed several nice orders...and they hadn't shown up in two months.  In one case, it was a situation where the the order got lost between me and the rep; in the other, there is some disagreement over whether an invoice is due in 30 days when it takes the vendor five weeks to ship. Let me just say that I'm not going to talk about the unglamorous job of accounts payable.  Perhaps someday, somewhere but not here, not now. Let me just say cheers to Amie--she does a great job.

I did receive our Orange Art reorder, simple letter press cards with motif designs, made in the United States of fine paper stock. Our sell-through the first time was strong on the blue and green designs, but slow on the red tones.  I had an interesting conversation with the phone rep (probably the co-owner, being it's a small place) about how the their reds tend towards the "brick" variety, a tone perhaps shunned by some for being too feminine, and others for being not feminine enough.  There's no two ways about it though--their cards as lip-smackingly gorgeous, and I knew that increasing the assortment would jump-start some sales again.  Plus they reduced the item minimum from six to four, which helps.

It was also time to reorder our Book Seats, which were apparently huge in many bookstores last Christmas, so I brought them in in February where sales were fine, just good enough to reorder. Someone suggested to me that we take advantage of the chain and hang them from one of our cases. Anne and I decided it was a good look.  We're still keeping a few on one of our display tables, so that folks can see how they are used.