Saturday Gift Post--What's Back in Stock This Week.

One of the things that is complicated about gift buying is that there seems to be no electronic ordering option for us, with the exception of Chronicle, as they are shipped by Hachette. This week I finally received a Moleskine order (distributed by Chronicle) that made the rack look pretty again. And last week I received an order of Chronicle and Galison (which just folded into Chronicle) gift items. This pack of  thank you cards from Kate Sutton has proven particularly popular.

I could call in our gift orders, and either do that or email them directly to the vendor, when there is no local rep, but when there is a rep, I choose to buy directly from them, to make sure they get the credit.  Every so often, this can go wrong. For example, we placed a Gund order in December from our rep, only to have her leave the company before the order could be placed. By the time we traced it, our new phone rep told us that the specials were no longer valid and several items had gone out of stock. I adjusted the order (as it was now January) and brought in a few things, such as this basket of small teddy bears. By the end of the week, we should also have rabbits out for our Easter table.

Another weird quirk is that Melissa and Doug doesn't seem to like to take orders by email, but they also have a high threshold for paying our freight, and if we don't take advantage of the free freight, a lot is out of stock and also packed in small boxes, which makes the freight costs particularly high. So the problem is that you email to a general address and it is funneled to your rep, and every so often, that order doesn't get there. But if it at first you don't succeed and so forth, and now we are fully stocked on wooden puzzles and kits, the categories which move the best for us from them, plus yet more Easter plush. I don't think I marked down a single rabbit last year, so I'm having faith that people are still pro bunny for Easter.

Oh, it's too early to talk about Easter, right? No, it's actually only six weeks away.

Now I just have to hope that my reading light order shows up soon. That display is looking rather empty.