February Give-a-Way: 4 Winners will get the Lynne Canyon Cable Sweater

Since our January Los Angeles-specific give-a-way excluded quite a few people because of location, we've decided to give away 4 products in February!

When we bought out much of HTNaturals remaining inventory, we ordered the cute Lynne Canyon Cable Sweater in Black and Purple.  Unfortunately, we wound up with just 1 Black in size Medium and 1 Purple in size Large.

So we're giving away these 1-of cute colors.  Of course, we don't want to leave anyone out, so we're going to give away a Small and an XL in the Heather Grey color as well.

We'll have 4 winners overall:

• Size Small in Heather Grey
• Size Medium in Black
• Size Large in Purple
• Size XL in Heather Grey

TO ENTER: Leave on comment on this blog post by midnight Feb 13th.  You must include the Size you want to win and an e-mail address or phone number so we can contact you.

We'll pick the winners on Valentine's Day!  The winner of each size will be drawn separately.

Please note that since the sizes are different colors, we won't be able to change the size for you.  This sweater runs fairly true to size in the body but is very slighly wide in the shoulders.  It works great on its own or as a layering piece over a tank or cami.

Go Green Expo's Eco-Winners - Lucky 13

Here's a look at our booth from Los Angeles' Go Green Expo this weekend.  It was a fun (and exhausting!) show.  Since there were several other clothing vendors, we decided to feature just lingerie.  Pants to Poverty's Angel Wing and Angel Print panties were the biggest hit of the show.

We got some great new product ideas that we hope to carry in the near future and made some friends along way.

Our free ticket winner, Veronica, enjoyed the show with a couple of friends.  Here they are visiting our booth.

As part of our onsite show promotion, we raffled off a $50 Gift Certificate to our store to one lucky person who signed up for our newsletter.  We had 178 entries ranging from 2 - 179.  (We accidentally printed the "Name" and "E-mail" headers on line 1, so there wasn't a #1 space.)  We used Random.org to generate a winning number.  The winner was Anne Hanson, an early sign-up at #13.  Congratulations, Anne!

January Give-a-Way: 2 sets of 2 Tickets to the Los Angeles Go Green Expo

We're excited to start off our 2010 Year of Give-a-Ways with 2 prizes.  We're giving 2 people each 2 tickets to the Los Angles Go Green Expo at the LA Convention Center. 

HOW TO ENTER:  Just leave a comment at the bottom of this post by Monday, January 18th to enter the drawing.  You MUST provide an e-mail address or phone number for us to get in touch with you to let you know you've won. 

(If you don't want your e-mail published, leave a comment with your name and then send us a separate e-mail via our Contact Us form with your contact info.)

Drawing will be held on Tuesday, January 19th.  Winners will be notified on Tuesday and have their names added to the Comp list so they'll need only show up at the door with ID.

While we know this particular prize does limit the prospects of who may be interested, rest assured that the rest of the year's items will be available to a wider geographical audience.  However, we're so excited about this expo.  It's been a while since we've done a large, live display.  We'll be focusing on intimates, so if you've wanted to see some of the Love Nature line in person, now is your chance.  If you're planning on attending and would like us to bring something specific that you've been meaning to try on, just call or e-mail us in advance and we'll be happy to have it with us.

In addition to all the great booths and eco-shopping, there will be awesome guest speakers including Ed Begley Jr. and Mariel Hemingway.

I hope to see you there!

2010: The Year of Give-a-Ways!

We held a few raffles and give-a-ways last year and we learned two things. 

1. Give-a-ways are fun!
2. Our customers love them.

So we've decided to make 2010 the year of give-a-ways.  We're going to be raffling something off or offering up something for free at least monthly.  (Maybe more often if we can get some of our vendors on board with our ideas as well.)

Stay tuned, our first give-a-way will be announced this weekend!  :-)

Product Shipping - Environmental Considerations & Customer Satisfaction

FaeriesDance.com ships everything through the US Postal Service.  Both UPS and Fedex have better tracking information and more integrated web-based solutions which would make switching to one of those carriers faster and more efficient for our office staff.  Unfortunately, there are 3 big downfalls to both of those options. 

First, both UPS and Fedex are more expensive than the US Postal Service when shipping small items to individuals.  If you're shipping large freight and/or mostly to business addresses, that is not true.  But for us, the good old USPS is cheaper for more than 95% of our everyday shipping needs - including overnight.

Second, while this may seem odd, USPS is actually faster for standard shipping than either of the other carriers. Priority Mail is a standard mailing option that generally takes 2-3 business days to anywhere in the country.  Faster, cheaper shipping generally makes happier customers, so those are both good points for us.  And despite the jokes often heard about their reputation, we've not had a single package "lost in the mail" within the US since we've been in business.

Finally, although UPS and Fedex have been "greening" their trucks and delivery methods, the fact is that the US Postal Service visits almost every household in America every day anyway.  I live in a community with 89 homes.  USPS delivers to at least 80 of them every business day, whereas I've often seen the UPS and Fedex trucks come into the community to deliver a single package.  I have to believe that a lot more fuel is being wasted on "special trips" to single homes here and there rather than just adding a package to a destination that is already being covered.  (Though in truth, I have no data to back this up - but it seems sensible to me.)

This year we're trying to ship more items in the cardboard envelops rather than the Tyvek bags whenever possible.  Besides the flat rate cardboard being slightly less expensive to ship, it is easier to reuse and recycle.  We are happy to point out that all of the USPS shipping supplies have achieved the environmental cradle-to-cradle certification for sustainability and health concerns.

Also, don't worry if your package comes with some packing materials or even bubble wrap.  All of our packing materials (except the recycled tissue paper we wrap undergarments in) are reused from shipments we get in.  We like wrapping purses with metal zippers as well as jewelry in bubble wrap.  Even though we don't use very much, early on we found we wanted more bubble wrap than we were getting.  Then a local tech company moved their offices and I got a great idea.  After the move we asked them what they were going to do with their packing supplies.  They were reusing boxes, which is good, but they were going to toss out the mounds of bubble wrap and packing materials they had purchased just for the move.  Viola!  We scored enough bubble wrap to last us for years to come and diverted it from becoming a big landfill mess.  We also bring all packing peanuts we get in to a local mailing center for reuse.  We hope you reuse the packing materials you get from us as well.  Most of these things can be reused again and again.
We're happy to hear suggestions on packing and shipping.  One person suggested we try Freecycle to get reused packing supplies.  We've posted want ads, but thus far haven't had any response.  We're always looking for new ideas to minimize waste though; so keep the suggestions coming. 

Happy New Year everyone!