About Us- Our Values

During our many years in business, both working for large public corporations, privately owned companies and running our own businesses, we have seen the importance of corporate and individual values on how the company is perceived by its customers and on the success of the organization. Most of us have experienced  “customer service”  with no phone number, no one to answer if there is one, or the endless waits and dead end extensions of a modern customer communication system. Generally, what that ‘”communicates” to us is that the only thing important about us as a customer is when we pay our money and “please go away”.

A recent poll by Young and Rubicam, the advertising agency, discovered that during and  “post recession” consumers were placing more importance on a company’s “kindness and empathy”, “friendliness”,” high quality” and “socially responsible”. It was reported that, between 2005 and 2009, US consumers reported a fourfold increase in in their preference for companies that show kindness in their operations and in their encounter with customers.

Claire and I have always believed that we should treat our customers the way we would like to be treated if we were customers ourselves. Simply put, we believe in the “Golden Rule”-“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. Have we faltered and had glitches in our customer response? Of course! We are human after all.

Nevertheless, we are constantly trying to offer the best Life Size Nativities, Toy Soldiers and Nutcrackers and Outdoor Christmas Decor. We regularly improve on and add new products and we stand by the products we offer. We visibly display our toll free telephone number on our website and we try to answer customer calls, 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. More on this in the next post.

In the meantime, I will share with you the beautiful new Life Size Nativity 15 piece with Stable Item 43151. This set  has a new Ox and Donkey, a new King Balthazar and a chicken!43151st00

Options for Outdoor Nativity Scenes

Ever since Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Claire used live animals and local villagers to stage the Christmas Nativity, Christians in North America and around the world have used all variety of materials and figures to represent the birth of Jesus Christ. These include  banana leaves, wood and straw in Mexico,  carved wood figures in the Philippines, plastic resin and fiberglass statues in the US and Canada and  Renaissance marble works of art in Europe.

Our offerings for Outdoor Nativity Scenes are neither wood and straw nor marble, but rather fiberglass and plastic resin. These are manufactured in Asia using processes similar to building a small boat, which, hopefully will make them durable and long lasting. They are finished with sunlight resistant paint. The figures are fairly heavy, weighing as much as 90 pounds for a large life size King. Nevertheless, we strongly recommend some sort of tethering for each piece to reduce the possibility of damage from tipping over and vandalism as well as theft.

We also offer Nativity Sets with a two dimensional “cut out” look in painted wood. Each of these pieces comes with a base and attachments which can be used to create an attractive tableau in limited space.95200nst

Outdoor Versus Indoor Christmas Decor

60680stFrom the beginning of our business in 1999, we have focused on outdoor Christmas decor.We found that there wasn’t a good selection of large, high quality and durable outdoor figures such as Santa, Snowmen, Toy Soldiers, Nutcrackers, Reindeer,and particularly Nativities and Creche scenes.We have greatly expanded the available  selection of these products and our customers have expressed their appreciation.

Recently, it became apparent that there was a need and demand for indoor Christmas figures that went beyond the traditional “trim a tree” selection of lights, baubles, tinsel, tree skirts, tree stands and Christmas stockings. so we decided to create the category of indoor Christmas decor. We began last year by offering a limited selection of  beautiful, large resin and fabric Nativity figures made by one of our factories. These sold well and we have expanded the Nativities to include plush animals and new Nativity figures such as Shepherds and Angels.

In addition we have designed a wonderful new Caroling Family, with a 52in Father and Mother and a 44in daughter and 42in son. Complementing this family are two resin and fabric Santa and , just for fun, two Jesters.

More on our new items next week.

More About New Arrivals

37005st2A great benefit in dealing directly with overseas factories is that we can design and build new products which we can then offer exclusively. This means that when we experience significant customer interest in a large nutcracker, for example, we can come up with new larger size or different look and expand our business while satisfying customer desires.

We have created a number of new pieces for our Life Size Nativity Set.

We have also created two new six and one half foot (78in) Nutcracker Kings which arrive in early June.

Our First Christmas Arrivals

This is the time of year when we have visited all our factories, approved all our new designs and placed most of our orders. We have been waiting impatiently for our first shipping containers to arrive so we can start shipping our many advance orders for Nativity Sets both indoor and outdoor.Many churches, municipalities and businesses order early to ensure they get their set, because of budget timing or because they were too late deciding last year and we were sold out.

We are very excited about showing our best selling Life Size Nativity with a new King and new larger Ox and Donkey and Lambs.

43151st1Our Life Size African American Nativity has several new figures including a black Gloria Angel and Black Shepherd and is now 12 piece.

We have designed and made a new  five foot Toy Soldier and we have a Nutcracker King coming in a month or so.

All in all, a great time of year for us and our customers

China’s Christmas Industry Predicting Worldwide Inflation?

Many of the labels on our Christmas decorations say “Made in China” but few of us realize that more than 60% of the world’s Christmas goods come from China. The very low profit Chinese Christmas industry has suffered recent difficulties which could predict problems for  Chinese and worldwide manufacturing.

Some of these problems are common to low wage developing countries and include the rising cost of city living as workers move from rural villages with family support and low living costs. Manufacturers in the Chinese Christmas industry have been forced to increase wages as much as 150% and still have faced labor shortages. Factor in the increasing average age of Chinese workers and their reluctance to work long hours for low wages  and live in factory dormitories thousand of mile from their home villages and you can predict more labor shortages for this and other low wage industries. The government has encouraged many factories to relocate inland where cheap labor is more available, but these new locations do not provide the raw material supply, skilled trades and lower transport costs now enjoyed by the ” coastal pods” of Christmas product manufacturers.

Rising material costs are also pressuring the industry. Commodity prices, led by oil and copper, are increasing worldwide. Rising oil prices impact on the transport cost of everything. In addition oil is the feedstock for many plastic resins used in the manufacture of many Christmas articles. Raw materials are estimated to make up 40% of the cost of Christmas products.

Since  profit margins are so low in the very competitive Chinese Christmas business, these problems could become the “canary in the coal mine” for many industries worldwide as China, with its huge demand is driving up commodity prices and exporting inflation and low wage jobs.

The Christmas business will likely continue to be centered in China as no other low age country has the labor supply, concentration of efficient factories and industrial infrastructure to support mass production. Nevertheless, countries such as Vietnam, Bangladesh and even the the Philippines and Indonesia will experience a rapid growth of low wage jobs.

If you disagree, please comment.

Crime Doesn’t Pay?

We recently were involved in an interesting and funny story involving impetuous youth, citizen aided law enforcement, sweet (and tough) victims and perpetrators who “fessed up”.

We had a call from a nice  young man who said he is treasurer for a college fraternity in the Midwest. He wanted to purchase one of our lighted outdoor decorations and have it shipped to a lady in the same town as the college. He referred to the need to replace a lighted decoration that had been damaged by some of the members of his fraternity. He arranged payment and asked for shipping confirmation, which we always provide.

The next day, I had a call from the lady with the damaged Christmas decoration, who gave me the rest of the story. It seems that her decoration was one of several that were stolen in this town before last Christmas. She was upset and prayed for the return of her piece. In the meantime a neighbor, walking their dog late at night, noted the license number of a suspicious car, which was traced back to the college fraternity.

Two boys at the fraternity admitted to stealing a number for Christmas decorations and the fraternity offered to replace any damaged pieces. The boys were charged with a class C felony and will be disciplined by the fraternity ethics council. The nice lady says she feels sorry for them.

The lady’s husband was unable to repair the returned decoration so the fraternity is purchasing a more expensive piece from us to replace it. Finally, the nice lady  said that her church needs a new Nativity Set. Since she is on the committee and now knows about us, our website and our selection of Lighted Nativity Sets,  she will likely buy one from us.

Our thanks to the fraternity!

A Visit for New Products

We just returned from an exciting and tiring trip to our overseas factories. Aside from many long flights, our main memories are of the skilled and creative factory managers and their dedicated and hard working supervisors and employees. We actually participated in the creation of the final specifications of a resin and fabric Caroler  group, item 60680 (picture and link to follow), as well as an all resin Caroler set for outdoor use , Item 32700 (as above)

We were presented with first approval pieces of a new King, Ox and Donkey for the 54″ Life Size Nativity and we had the fun of adding final decorative touches to these items  We had the fun of approving the new sleigh and finding a Santa for the new Santa and sleigh set and the wonderful new Nutcracker King items 37005 and 37006 which will please a lot of people.

Our approach to direct marketing to consumers is to offer a certain number of new products each year and to continue to listen to our customers regarding improvements  to existing sets and items. I think we are doing this and sales seem to indicate that it is appreciated.

We will continue to update you on these developments. We expect to start receiving replenishment stock and new item in shipments arriving May 15 and continuing through the summer.

A Recap of 2010

Looking back on 2010, we see  a difficult year. Most of our problems were caused by shipping. Not only our import shipping by steel container but also our truck shipping to our customers.

Import shipping became increasingly expensive as shipping companies claimed shortages of steel containers and not enough ships. It’s funny how these became available if we agreed to pay much higher prices. Add to this the very high cost for random government inspections and we were hit with a 40% increase in these costs.

The cost of LTL truck shipping to our customers increased dramatically in 2010. We lost our favorable treatment for residential delivery and the use of a the lift gate and the trucking companies arbitrarily added costs over and above their “usual” 5.9% annual price increase. Of course the “temporary fuel surcharge” continues to climb. I’ll bet that even if diesel fuel fell to $1 per gallon, this would still not disappear.

Many importers of Chinese made Christmas goods reported late and incomplete deliveries. Fortunately, we have most of our figures made in the Philippines, so we had few problems other than shipping delays.

It was the kind of year you would expect as the world economy slowly exits the “Great Recession”, but the tactics used by the shippers and suppliers makes one cynical and I don’t want to become that way when we design and sell such beautiful and inspirational figures.

Developments at the New Year

Now that the rush is over and we are (mostly) out of stock, it’s time to consider some developments that will likely impact our business in 2011.

The first is the economics of ocean shipping. As you may know, we import most of our manufactured statues from the Philippines and China by shipping container. After a disastrous 2009 where the ocean shipping industry claimed losses of US$ 15 Billion, they started their recovery by raising rates by more than 25% in 2010. With tight capacity, these rates held in 2010. They are now proposing increases for 2011 of as much as 18% for high season (June15 to Nov30) container shipping.

There are two factors impacting this proposal. The first is reported by The Economist magazine on Jan 1, 2011, regarding growth in the world’s fleet of cargo ships. Growth in capacity for all forms of cargo shipping has stayed high despite the word wide recession. Even though world seaborne trade declined by 4.5% in 2009, the world’s merchant fleet grew by 7%. For 2011, container ship capacity is forecast to grow by 50 million tonnes. Offsetting this increase in ship capacity is the continued shortage of new steel shipping containers.

More on this as the season proceeds. In the meantime we have to err on the side of caution in our cost forecasts