New Shelving!

Look....I know as customers you probably could care less about how our items are stocked just as long as the order is processed quickly and efficiently))) But, if you've ever been a small business owner and do all the work yourself (or just a couple of folks like my husband and me) you can appreciate how much work we've been doing in the shop to re-organize our inventory! So, I'm sharing our handiwork! We're not finished yet, but we're really making a headway in the shop. We're utilizing the "ceiling" space this year instead of expanding the building again. That will probably come with the next year or two. We're hoping for now, this will tide us over for this season anyway. Our Old Word Christmas ornament inventory is well over 800 styles......boxes are lined up in numerical order. Ornaments are kept in the cartons, nice and clean and are pulled by number when your order arrives. These may not look like it, but the shelves are 8' in ht. We have to use a ladder to get to the upper rows....yes, good exercise.....I keep telling myself)) Our ribbon and mesh netting covers one complete wall. The photo is just a partial wall shot. You can't imagine how many boxes I've stacked and unstacked to pull one roll of ribbon! I'm so proud! Pulling the netting is so easy now....I love everything about the mesh netting......they ways we can use it, the colors, the stripes and the styles and we're steadily increasing our styles and colors. It's reasonably priced and easy to ship. I think its one of the best additions we had to the shop. I've just completed the Inge-Glas re-stocking today. Lots of space left for the more than 70 new styles coming in around April.

Next to tackle the RAZ. Huge undertaking, but will be well worth the effort. I just have to mention the shelving. I know this is a plug for Sams, but honestly, they have the BEST shelving in the world.

Gorilla Racks

The racks we're using are 84" (7 ft), 48" wide and 18" deep. They sell for about $60.00 at Sams. The end braces are pieces of steel 48" and 36" in length. They attach making the 7' frame and you place your shelves wherever you want to. We've been taking several cartons and making 8' shelves and 9' since they give us more usable space in the top of our building. It takes about 12 cartons, but you come out with six 8' shelves and four 9' shelves. The shelves are put together using a rubber mallet, no screws, just connect and pound away. The shelf is a nice smooth gray particle board like material that just drops into the frame. Now, I'm not implying that I have been building the shelves, I haven't. The hubby has been doing that and it's a little tricky sometimes to get everything lined up just right, but still.....they make great shelves. They are heavy, each carton in about 90 pounds. After we had made about two trips to Tupelo to pick up shelves and discovered they were sold out, my daughter suggested I go online to the Sams site and see about having some delivered to the store, like Wal Mart does. I told her I had never even seen these online, but figured I'd give it a check anyway. While they have a lot of Gorilla Racks on their website, I would have never found them without the item number. They are listed on the website as Z-Beam Racks. And guess what.....it's not advertised and I don't know if it has anything to do with location (there is a Sams distribution center within 30 miles of us) but the shipping was free! We've been ordering 10 cartons at a time.....that 1,000 pounds! With free shipping! The racks are made by Rapid Rack. Once we're all done with the shelving, we'll have a few extras of the shelf itself and hardware (pieces that you put in the frame to hold the solid shelf). I've been told by Rapid Rack that we can get extra frame pieces so we can make a few more sets of shelving out of our leftovers))) Well, I know this post hasn't been exciting or "Christmasy" but, sometimes you just have to write about real, down home things going on right in your own shop)))