2008 CHRISTMAS SHOPPING TRENDS
Just taking a minute out of our busy day of processing and packing orders to
hourglass timer
mention some of the shopping tends we are seeing.
With the economy in an uproar it was hard to know how people would react and if they would
Big bow Badge Reel
be shopping. We feel that we have the perfect kind of gifts – practical, beautiful and unique. Well, we are happily busy filling orders.
Fibonacci sequence earrings!
We are seeing that our math and science designs are doing well, as is the vampire design – thanks to all the Twilight fans! We are seeing lot’s of sharks and squirrels, too. Things we are getting low on are the stockbroker design, the fashion design and sewing– so people have really been buying based on their hobbies and professions.
Frosty beer pill box.
We have had fun seeing what people have been using the alcohol and caffeine molecular designs for! Our new double designs are becoming popular and it is great fun trying to decipher the meanings – we had one that appears to have been for a DUI attorney!
Sports remain very popular. Lacrosse, rowing and our new athletic shoe are almost as popular as the swimming design. There are also a LOT of ballroom dance fans ordering.
Round interlinking hearts pill box
The one that we have sold out is our interlocking hearts – so Kyle is gearing up and we will have plenty of that design in time for Valentine’s Day!
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SMART GIFT SHOPPING
Bright Christmas Pill Box.
I know that this new round of economic woes has everyone on edge. The concepts are too big to get my head around, except for the old adage of “what goes up, must come down.” All I do know is that it is time to focus on what we need and to spend our money on quality.
To me the best thing about Kyle Design products is that they are lovely pieces of art but useful, too. Functional art is what it is called. The other thing I like is that I work for a woman who has built this business over 25 years. She has weathered these financial storms and kept her business alive and has a real commitment to offering high quality at a moderate price, made in the USA and backed up with good customer service.
The holidays are coming up fast. We have been getting ready for months now because it is our busiest
Click here to see large custom lockets.
time of year. I always start my shopping early because we put in long days at work in November and December. I have a few gifts in my hiding places already, and I have made lists of things to seek out in the next few weeks. Will I cut down this year? Not much. The cuts that could have been made were made in past years. I just try to be smart and look for value
One thing I look at when I am shopping online is the shipping cost. If a site hides the shipping information or pads the cost of shipping, I look elsewhere. I am proud to say we do not charge beyond the actual cost of UPS shipping at Kyle Design. Plus we offer flat rate shipping – so buying multiple items from us is smart.
Click here to purchase money clip with dollar sign.
I think it is smart to shop online, as well. Saving the time and gas and staying away from the crowds is big for me. Kyle Design offers a huge variety of gift options. (We frequently ask Kyle if she has gone crazy because she is always adding new items and our shelves are bending under the weight!) The thing is – last year we didn’t have lockets or long engravable bookmarks, handy boxes and our double design options and now people order them every day! Spend some time looking around our site and you will truly fine a gift for everyone you know.
So, for the holiday gift season coming up, shop smart by spending some time at Kyle Design.
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MORE MUSIC THAN THE GRAMMIES
My husband is a musical guy. He can play piano by ear and read music and is a guitar
enthusiast. Meaning he owns and plays multitudes of guitars, has amps, pick-ups, peddles and all kids of other guitar stuff. He buys guitars, plays them, fixes them up and then sells them to buy more guitars with which he follows the same routine. Right now we have 5 guitars hanging on the wall and 2 on stands on the floor and one in the garage in pieces. He listens to a lot of music and watches music videos and downloads “tabs” which are sheet music for guitar. He especially likes the style of John Mayer and always looks for his performances. We saw him on the Grammy Awards last night.
As a completely unmusical person, I had hope that this musicality would pass on to our children. Not the obsession with tearing instruments into pieces, but the playing music part. Our oldest daughter showed a lot of 
interest in the piano until we bought one. She showed some spark of interest in playing the guitar until we bought her one. Her dad says she keeps it for boy bait. Our son wanted to learn bass guitar and practiced and practiced but managed to learn part of one song. He was invited to practice with a friend’s band once – and that was that. I think he sold it to buy a bike.
Our youngest daughter was a maniac about music. We bought her a little purple guitar but her hands weren’t big enough to play. She wanted piano lessons from the time she was very little. We talked a teacher into taking her on a trial basis when she was 6 – and she did great. The teacher expressed so much happiness at having such a bright
, motivated student. She practiced without complaint, ran through the lesson books with great speed and skill. After 4 years when it started to get harder and harder, she lost patience and interest in learning more. She decided she knew enough and stopped the lessons.
A couple of years later we moved to a smaller house and gave the piano to my sister. Her 3 girls are taking lessons. I hope that one of them sticks with it. I have a nephew who has been playing the viola for some years but he seems to be the only one who has gone into high school playing an instrument.
Funny that so man
y kids given the opportunity don’t want to put the time and energy into playing, and so many adults find so much pleasure in musical instruments. My husband has a new friend and they have bonded through music. His friend has a very fancy drum set, but wanted to learn guitar. They talk and e-mail all the time about music. I think it’s great that he finally found someone to share this love and knowledge with.
Technorati: business card case, card holder, drum set, drums, Grammy Awards, guitar, John Mayer, money clip, music, music lessons, musical, piano, piano lessons, piano teacher, pill box, sax, violin
WINNING DESIGNS
We had the busiest, most successful holiday season ever. We had orders stacked up everywhere with post it notes on them to tell us where they were in the processing line up. By December first we were too busy to take phone orders and we had to stop taking holiday orders two days before the last possible holiday ship date.
WOW
There are always surprise sellers. This year the ballroom dancing design
was a big hit – who knew there were so many dancers out there? I guess the Dancing with the Stars producers knew! Swimming was bigger than lacrosse And almost as popular as last year’s newcomer – rowing. Yoga started moving up late in the month. The perennial favorite Pig design was still popular, and so were spiders and mice. The other big surprise were the flasks for knitters! Knit one, purl two, sip , sip.
We had few complainers – a lot of nice people who took out time to let us know they loved their products and once our vendors started sending us chocolate – a very happy, hard working staff.
Technorati: animal gifts, ballroom dancing gift, custom gifts, Danicing with the Stars, knitting flask, lacrosse gift, mice gift, mouse gift, pig gift, rowing gift, spider gift, swimming gift, yoga gift
SHOP SAFELY ON CYBER MONDAY AND EVERY DAY
Just in time for what the media calls “Cyber Monday” the CBS program 60 Minutes reported that your credit card is more secure on an internet site than in a store! The report centered on an investigation into the TJX corporation which owns TJ Max and Marshall’s stores. They and many other retailers use wireless internet connections in their stores to submit credit card purchases. These can be easily tapped into from outside the store! From there, identity thieves could hack into the corporate data base and steal credit card information and other personal information.
The benefits of online shopping are many. Small websites like Kyle Design do not retain any personal information about out customers in a database. One the credit card is charged, the information is deleted. We use a wired internet connection so an identity thief would not be able to tap into our computers from outside our studio. Our shopping cart management is off site and very secure with the latest encryption software. We also subscribe to Hackersafe which scans our site daily for any possible intrusions by computer hackers.
So feel safe shopping with us – and enjoy the season!
For more information on internet shopping, see our Squidoo pages.
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HAVE A GREAT ONLINE SHOPPING EXPERIENCE
Online shopping is big. I have been doing it for years and when I came to work at Kyle Design I was very comfortable navigating the website and helping our customers.
Since most of our products are semi-custom, there are a LOT of choices and options. Kyle has worked very hard to make the website both comprehensive ( the information and descriptions of the items) and easy (to choose options and proceed to checkout.) We recognize that there are questions which arise and we answer our own phones in the studio in order to offer the best customer service.
What many customers loose sight of is, as a web based business, we are set up to receive orders over our website. We do not have phone banks of “operators standing by” to take orders. There are 2 or 3 of us in the studio jumping on the phones while doing our other work. And as the holidays loom closer there is a lot of work to do just to get the orders out – the orders that came in through the website! So we have found it necessary to add a service charge for phone orders.
So please understand that while it may seem easier to call that 800 number listed on a website, please place your order on the site. The transaction is perfectly safe and the credit card data you send is encrypted so it can’t be stolen. In fact it is safer than handing your card over to a store employee. and if you still are not convinced, place your order as “pay by check” and call us with the credit card number.
Now think about it – you wouldn’t look around the shopping mall and then drive home
and get on the phone and call Macy’s to order the blouse you liked. NO! You would buy it while you were in Macy’s! Shopping on a website like ours is just like shopping in a store – so call us with a question or to make sure we are a legitimate company. But please place your order on the website.
Technorati: custom gifts, customer service, e-commerce, place order online, questions, safe online shopping, secure site, shop online, web shopping, website, computer gifts, shoe gifts, pill box, stamp holder
MANY GIFTS OF ART AND DESIGN
I don’t know what it was, but I wanted to learn how to make mosaics. So I read books and internet sites and asked questions on forums and finally just jumped in and did it. In many respects my early attempts are my favorites because I didn’t overthink the look – just totally enjoyed the process. Over time I have learned that free form “design” is really what I am best at – representational art is best left for actual artists!
I am so happy working for such an artist. I love having a bit of input here and there without being required to actually create the design. I am required to be more tuned in to pop culture stuff because I have teenagers and I have a lot more time to read and search the net. Kyle and I discuss what I think are opportunities for new designs. And then sometimes I get to see them added to the site and then SELL. So cool.
Every year I try to get an ornament for my kids to represent their activities, etc. I was
complaining to Kyle that I couldn’t find a rowing ornament for my daughter M who rows for her college team. So Kyle created one! And this Poker Ornament was what I gave to my son Z to represent all his manly pursuits.
It’s fun to be able to choose gifts for everyone one while you work. I pack orders and see the cool stuff our customers choose and I start making mental lists of what I’d like to give friends and family. My kids have given gifts of bookmarks and compacts and flasks. I am the back up engraver – so I can even engrave the gifts myself!
I have learned a lot by working for an artist and from pursuing my desire to find the “artist” in me.
Technorati: artist, bookmarks, compacts, design, flask, gifts, Meaningful Gifts, mosaics, ornaments, poker, pop culture, rowing, teenager gifts
YOU ALWAYS REMEMBER YOUR FIRST POST
Hello out there. This is my first post, my first blog. I have been reading blogs for a while now and it does inspire me and made me want to join in. I work for Kyle at Kyle Design. Her blog is Color Style Kyle. She blogs about being an artist, her inspirations and family and how she brings it all together. We have talked about blogs from the point of view of the employees here in the studio. Especially when we have had a run of wacky phone calls. Or are ranting about the general frustrations of dealing with internet shoppers. So that is a starting point.
I love art both functional like Kyle’s and decorative. My home is filled with color and art. I collect art glass. I have purchased art at street fairs, galleries, on eBay and from friends. When I can’t buy it I try to get an image of it to savor.
I also am a self taught mosaic crafter. I am not an artist! But I love the craft of mosaic and I am good with color and design and it is a great hobby.
Where from here? A bit of the art in everyday life. Some insight to the life of an e-commerce worker. A lot of excitement about Kyle’s work. A peek at mine.
Technorati: art, artist, customer service, decorative art, design, e-commerce, employee, functional art, internet shopping, mosaic, stamp box
My Art Filled Life 