A picture is worth a thousand words and the social media are proving it. This is a slow sales period for us but we are very busy unloading containers and photographing new items and adding them to our websites. We thought you might want to see some of us working and give you some idea of how our business functions. We have included images from both our Christmas Night and Saint Francis Garden websites.
As you can see we have a lot of fun with our inanimate friends.
As a direct marketing business, selling mostly to consumers, we are constantly trying to identify and focus on what will please our customers and keep them coming back. The solid foundation for this effort is our set of values. This can be summarized quite simply as the paraphrased biblical “Golden Rule” Treat Others as You Would Like to Be Treated. Of course if we didn’t plan, organize and manage for profit we wouldn’t be around to please our customers. Here are the five things we do that we hope please our customers and keep them coming back.
1. Offer Christmas Products They Can’t Find Elsewhere. This is easier to do for Christmas Night because we maintain a sharp focus on large Christmas figures, primarily for outdoor. That means no tree baubles nor tree skirts and no trees either. Just Life Size Nativities, Nutcrackers, Toy Soldiers, Reindeer and other large figures associated with the celebration of Christmas.
2. Provide Superior Customer Service. I answered a customer call the other day and was happy to take an order for 27″ Nativity Set. When I asked the customer (as I usually do ) how he found us, he said we were number two on the Google page but we answered our phone and helped him, which the number one ranked store did not. The term “superior customer service”is a cliche these days as so many companies claim to offer it. Few companies follow all the way through as we do, even after delivery.
3. Offer Good Value. We don’t always have the lowest prices on our products, we offer free shipping on a limited number of products and we rarely discount our product prices. Nevertheless, the product reviews and customer comments seem to confirm that we provide good value. The items which arrive broken are replaced as soon as possible and defective items are repaired or replaced.
4.Maintain High Quality. We have replaced several suppliers who have let their product quality slip, we spot check our incoming shipments and we constantly work with our factories to improve molding and painting.
5. Make Our Products Easy to Find Online. How many times have you entered a key word or phrase online and the search engine takes you to a website which offers nothing even close to what you want, but owes its prominent position to search engine tricks. With us, when you have taken the trouble to define exactly what you want, that’s what you get. No “bait and switch”
So there you have it, an opinionated list of what we see as our strengths. Perhaps you don’t agree and think we are off base or blowing smoke. Please tell us. We really do want your feedback
Contrary to what the National Weather Service reports, I maintain that January and February are the darkest months of the year. Valentine’s Day doesn’t count because lights and lawn decorations aren’t involved.
The Christmas season is bright and brilliant. Outdoor nativity scenes shine across streets, in front of homes, and next to churches. Houses are flooded with twinkling lights inside and out. Colorful reindeer dot snow-covered lawns while each barren tree branch boasts a string of lights.
These magical pools of light illuminate the forgotten streets of our cities and vacant alcoves in our homes. They cast honesty and hope during the darkest month of the year. Even if you tried, it’s hard to find darkness during the Christmas season.
My yuletide creativity was stunted by growing up in a city where delicate white lights were the only acceptable outside Christmas decorations. As a kindergartner, I lobbied passionately for two, fuchsia and gold life-size nutcrackers on our front lawn – a plan that was promptly thwarted by the decorative restrictions of my town’s Historical Society. “Permissible lighting displays only,” indeed.
When I moved 500 miles away to my current residence, the colorful Christmas displays made me feel like a kid in a candy store. The church two doors next to my house erected a stunning outdoor nativity scene that outlined each figure with a delicate thread of white bulbs. The family next door to me proudly anchored a 25-foot fiberglass Snowman with interior illumination on their front lawn.
This exquisitely detailed fiberglass, giant Snowman, who I’ve named Bob, glinted and glistened from the Church lights across the street. And when the sun set each evening his carrot nose shined brilliantly against the snow.
I foster dogs from my city’s Animal Care and Control Center and each new dog seems wary of Bob the Snowman, but only briefly. With enough exposure, each new dog realizes that Bob, the fiberglass snowman is harmless and we continue our walk without incident.
Desensitizing my foster dogs to Christmas season decor was added inspiration for decorating the outside of my house. I drew design concepts and took measurements. Yes, I was going to enshrine my house with enough wattage and Christmas cheer to crash an electrical grid.
One week before Thanksgiving my lights went up. I quickly realized that I lack the balance necessary for safely stringing lights around every outside window, so I concentrated my efforts on my porch. I spent that Saturday tightly coiling any accessible fixture with lights of every color.
Against my shrubs, I stationed my very own white lighting display of a nativity scene. Small bulbs of green, red, yellow and blue flashed rhythmically beneath my porch overhang and clapped my hands with all the delight of a four-year old when I finally plugged in the extension cord.
The volunteer fire department was less enthusiastic about my megawatt display and told me so two days later with a fire-hazard citation warning. I reluctantly removed a third of my coiled lights.
I loved watching my tree lights and porch lights reflect simultaneously off my window. I toyed briefly with the blinking and rolling functions but decided against it after my friend said I shouldn’t let anyone with a history of seizures near my living room.
Perhaps in the summer time I’ll replace them with a set of tropical fish lights. I haven’t decided. But for now, those tiny lights wrapped around the pillars and banister of my porch do a fantastic job of casting warm, Christmas light into my living room.
Our Christmas vacation this year was a trip to The Kiawah Island Golf Resort in the Low Country of South Carolina, not far from the historic city of. Charleston. We took a day to drive into the city, which was bustling with tourists like us and holiday crowds. South Carolina low country has a profusion of churches and Charleston is the same. What is interesting about the churches in the city is the age, history and variety of christian denominations represented.
We first visited St Michael’s Church on the site of the first Anglican Church built south of Virginia. Erected in 1680 as St Phillips Church and subsequently rebuilt several time to replace buildings destroyed by fire or grown too small for the congregation, the current building was opened for services in 1761. The church exterior is dominated by a near 200 ft steeple and weathervane. The interior is very intimate with the native cedar pews almost on top of the altar and galleries hanging over on three sides. The pews have doors at each end, perhaps to ensure the the right people sit there. To the left of the very high pulpit is a small platform where the very small Nativity Set was placed. We thought this an insufficient display for such an historic and inspiring church.
We had been advised to visit the French Huguenot Church, built in the ” French Quarter” of Charleston in 1844. The Huguenots were French Calvinists who faced suppression in France and were very nearly wiped by successive Louis Kings. Growing up English Protestant in Montreal. I can remember being surprised to hear of a French Protestant school surviving in a sea of French Catholics. The present Huguenot church in Charleston, like St Michaels, was rebuilt after a fire and survived damage from the Civil War and the Charleston Earthquake. When we visited, the church was closed for major exterior renovation. Not surprisingly services are conducted in English, except for an annual service in French to celebrate spring.
We then visited the main Roman Catholic Cathedral of St John the Baptist, which is a newly constructed but large and inspiring version of classic church design.As is usual in Catholic churches, there were about five different things going on at the same time. I have always been impressed with their level of activity and utilization of their facilities on days other than Sunday. A very good business model.
We had lunch at S N O B, which is not elitist but stands for Slightly North Of Broad (street). Reservations were required and the food was a wonderful blend of southern and foreign influences.
After lunch we went looking for a Nativity customer who had purchased our Christmas Nativity 40″ and had asked us to drop by when we were in Charleston. The city is a small area and much easier to walk around than drive. Our customer was in a classic Charleston house on a corner of the Historic Area south of Broad Street and sheltered from the street by a wall and wrought iron fence. With luck, we found the creche and had a nice chat with the family. They plan to buy a a larger stable and add new pieces to the Nativity, including the camel.
Now that Christmas has come and gone and the holiday season is behind us, many people start to feel like something is missing in their lives. With the holidays always comes a certain feel – it’s in the air you breathe, it’s in the people you meet, it’s in the home you’ve decorated to be so welcome and warm. It’s the holiday spirit, and when the holidays are over, the spirit seems to disappear with it.
That doesn’t have to be the case, though. The holiday spirit is one that people should work to spread all year long, and it can start with you.
Decorating doesn’t have to just be for the holidays. When you take down the Christmas decorations and your nativity sets, try putting up something else in their place. Maybe keep some white lights around to mimic the ambiance of having a Christmas tree in your home. Keep winter-scented candles out and burning to bring back that cozy, wintery feel in your home. Stick with winter-themed colors (whites, reds, greens, even some shades of blue) when adding decorations for now, and come springtime, switch it up with brighter hues to lighten up your home.
There’s just something about holiday baking that brings the whole family together and really warms up a home. So keep baking! Think about cinnamon breads or muffins – even baking something as simple as blueberry muffins can bring back that warm holiday feel to your house. Gather the kids and make some good old fashioned chocolate chip cookies. Get back in the giving mood by sharing with family members and neighbors.
Every family has its own holiday traditions, whether it’s putting up your outdoor Christmas decorations together or setting up life size toy soldiers for your annual Christmas party or gathering around the fire for a holiday story. So why not continue the trend by creating some new wintertime traditions? Maybe you take the whole family sledding after the first big snow storm every year. Or maybe you all go to a huge ice skating rink in a nearby city for a weekend every winter. Maybe it’s just that you all sit down and enjoy the same movie on the same weekend of every year. Get creative – and start making traditions that you can keep throughout the winter, not just around the holidays.
Have you ever noticed how everyone seems to be in such a good mood around the holidays? Some of that cheeriness tends to disappear after the New Year as people start to focus on their resolutions and starting a fresh year. Keep that cheer alive. If you start by smiling at 5 people every day, those 5 people will likely smile at others throughout the day, and the cheer will spread as quickly as it does around the holidays. Remember what Christmas feels like, and try to mimic that feeling in your every-day life, then share it with others.
With these few simple ideas, it will be easy to keep the holiday spirit around all year long, and come next Christmas, you’ll be prepared to spread even more cheer than you already have for the past 11 months!
Just in time for Christmas, the New York Times published an op-ed piece by a Canadian wildlife biologist Justina Ray entitled ReindeerAre Fading Into Holiday Myth . Her premise was that climate change and development make it hard for the caribou (also called reindeer) to survive. According to the article, development projects and resource exploration are shrinking their wilderness refuge and roads and other access for resource development are making it easier for hunters to reach the caribou. I guess the controversial Keystone IX oil pipeline project to carry Canadian Tar Sands oil to the US Gulf and the whole Canadian Tar Sands development are part of this dramatic reduction in the Caribou habitat.
Apparently global climate change and instability is also a major factor in caribou herd reduction. In their normal environment, as harsh as it is, who would have thought that too much ice and snow would harm them-but it make it difficult to find their food sources under the snow pack. Combined with unpredictable weather and the increased number of forest fires and tundra fires caused by this, there is much higher calf and female mortality.
Since everybody talks about global weather instability (Global Warming) but nobody does anything about it, global politics will ensure that this source of caribou decimation will only get worse.
And, given that hydrocarbon sources in the Middle East will become more and more unstable and risky, development of these resources in the far north of Europe, Asia and North America, ironically made easier by Global Warming, will continue more rapidly in the coming decades.
Sadly, we must conclude that the decimation of the vast caribou herds once found in Montana, Minnesota, Wisconsin,, Michigan, Vermont,New Hampshire, Maine, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick will continue. A natural result of the growth of human population and human enterprise.
So, along with the historical Nativities and St Nicholas(Santa Claus) and fanciful Toy Soldiers and Nutcrackers we will eventually remember the reindeer as either Christmas Holiday history or myth
Everyone loves a deal! In these days of “free shipping”, “free returns”, coupons and big discounts for internet purchases it’s easy to forget the need to ensure the quality of the set, the continuity of supply and the ability to find matching pieces in future years. I will expand on these three concepts in this blog.
Quality of the Set: The best and most durable of the many Holy Family and Nativity and Creche scenes being offered these days are made of fiber glass and ,with sets up to about 40″ tall ,with a filled poly resin. The fiber glass sets are made in the same way that small to mid size boats are made and are very durable and resistant to cracking or chipping. The filled poly resin sets are also strong, although, pieces over 40″ , in our experience, may become brittle and crack easily. The paint should always be outdoor, sunlight resistant. Painted poly resin figures may need a clear coat sealant.
Continuity of Supply: Many stores and websites in the garden, home furnishing and even discount retailing are offering a few Nativity figures, usually a Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Once these sets are sold, at very low prices, there is no certainty that they will ever carry these items again. That can leave you searching high and low next year and the year after to add to or complete your set.
Finding Matching Pieces. While you may find Nativity pieces of a similar size next year, there is no guarantee that you will be able to complete your set with all figures designed and built to create a complete and integrated scene. It is very likely, that when you do find these pieces, they will cost quite a bit more than your original pieces and will not be offered with free shipping. Respect for a special kind of product and what it stands for as well as dedication to offering the very best quality and service to our customers are more important to us than the latest internet fad.
Just past November 1 and our season is in full steam. Each year is unique and this season is no exception. Our new Toy Soldiers and Nutcrackers are selling very well as are the various Santa, Sleigh and Reindeer sets we put together for this year. Our larger than life and life size Nativities and Holy Families are in demand and we are having trouble keeping up with the orders for our Nativity Stables.
Our Christmas and Artisan Nativities from Joseph’s Studio are starting to move well and this later action is normal for the smaller Nativity sets. 
What is surprising is the slow sales of our beautiful Fabric and Resin Nativity and 2D Wood Nativities. Watch for a promotion on these shortly!
We wanted to share with you a wonderful testimonial that we received in September from a Church in South Carolina.
” We received many compliments on the pieces purchased last December. These new pieces, which are beautiful beyond words, will really add to the scene. You need to see them to appreciate the quality of these figures. Pictures just do not do them justice -……………….Thanks for all of your input and help——–Not sure how to do the rating, but all would be 10!”
Thank you Jo Helen!
I don’t think anyone follows the current trend of shopping malls and stores – that is, putting out Christmas displays next to the Halloween candy! (Yes, I’ve seen it, and I’m sure you have as well).
But how early can you put out your outdoor nativity set and various other Christmas decorations? (Make sure to follow the plastic reindeer rule!)
Traditionally – at least in my area, and the area that I grew up, most will wait to start putting up decorations until after the Thanksgiving Day Parade in Manhattan, or the lighting of the tree at Rockefeller Square – this year the tree lighting is on November 30th – so at the end of the month.
But when you put up your Christmas display (including your outdoor nativity set) what do you include? What gospel tradition do you follow?
As I’m sure you are aware, there are a good number of different depictions of the nativity. Perhaps the most interesting to me is not the difference in the two Gospel traditions (the inclusion of the shepherds and the angel, or the three Magi and the star of Bethlehem) but the difference in the nativity between the Eastern Orthodoxy and the Western traditions.
In the East, the focus of the birth is more on the fact that the Christ child is mortal – Mary is usually depicted as laying down after the birth in the East. In the West the focus is more on the divine aspect of Jesus Christ – Mary is usually depicted as sitting serenely with the Christ child on her lap.
Or, you celebrate the nativity in your own way, mixing and matching traditions and including those things that have personal meaning to you – that is what the holiday is all about, after all – finding personal meaning in the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ.
I’ve seen nativity sets with saints, or within elaborately constructed buildings; I’ve even seen nativity sets that include Elvis!
Whatever nativity set that you choose to depict – be it as elaborate and grand as the display at the Vatican, or something more light-hearted like the Christmas villages, make it your own, and enjoy it!
But my question stands – how soon is too soon to create your Christmas displays and put up your outdoor nativity scene?
On the second day of Autumn it may seem too early to look ahead to the coming winter and the winter weather forecast. Nevertheless, we have to plan our Christmas decorating with the expected weather in mind. The Farmers Almanac 2012 winter outlook (FarmersAlmanac.com) says “Get ready for a winter of crime and punishment”
To summarize the predictions from the Farmers Almanac, the East will have very wet and stormy conditions with above average temperatures and a lot of wet snow. This forecast will also apply to the Eastern Great Lakes and the Southern Plains. Below normal temperatures will dominate the Northern Plains and the Western Great Lakes, while the rest of the country will have a normal winter except for the Southeast which will very mild and wet.
So, with the upcoming winter predicted to be “an unusually tough one” for most of the country, how should we plan our Christmas decorating. One suggestion is to bring some of your outdoor decorating inside. A beautiful and inspiring alternative to our many Life Size Decorations and Outdoor Nativity Sets, Scenes and Creches is our Life Size Indoor Nativity Sets and Scenes. Designed and fabricated in the Philippines by skilled designers and crafts people who are also devout Christians, these unique resin and fabric and plush figures will help you celebrate the true meaning of Christmas and will offer your church an attractive alternative to the Nativity display.
Regardless of the weather predictions, many people will still set up beautiful outdoor displays. We suggest that you be sure to tether your taller figures and displays to the ground with posts and guy wires to ensure they are not toppled by high winds and wet snow. Clean the snow off your figures and spotlights and try to ensure that you painted fiberglass and resin figures don’t get frozen in or are left in standing water as this amt induce cracking and chipping of the paint. When you bring your figures and displays in at the end of the season, be sure to wipe them with a damp cloth without using detergent or liquid cleaner. Do not power wash any painted fiberglass or resin figure as this can strip the paint from the surface.
The Christmas Season is a glorious time of year for children, families and Christians of all churches to celebrate. A little advance planning can make your decorating less stressful.
