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Willies Warehouse

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Keeping it Fresh


 CrunchDaddy Popcorn™ 

@ 
 I just hang one of those pine tree shaped car air fresheners in mine...

That's how my good friend and associate replied when asking about keeping your blog fresh.
Wise guy.

Turns out there is a very good article from Inc.Com entitled 

8 Common Mistakes of Company Blogs


Upon review, I am in violation of most of them, so this is a head's up for our pending reboot.
It is my last chance to blame my procrastination and sloth on the Holidays so I will be taking full advantage.

This ties into our website re-vamp as we pull down the holiday items and sign on some new vendors.
Here is a link to our newest partner Baby Gift Ideas. They have some great stuff that we are very excited to offer to our customers.

Time to review and correct the 8 mistakes. 
Hope to see you reading this soon.

-Big Willie


Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Dealing with Aspergers and Autism

Willies Warehouse was founded, in part, to be better able to spend more time at home with our special needs children. One is a College student that has been diagnosed with Aspergers. The other is an high school student with Autism and requires much more direct care and attention.

For those that follow this blog, please know that about every third or fourth posting will be an update on experiences we have been having with our special needs children. Lots of folks are dealing with this growing epidemic and we have found it helpful to share the experiences of others in similar situations.

For now, I am simply recommending a tips link to help those during the Christmas Holidays. It's from the National Autistic Society and they are far more eloquent than I.

To wit.... we offer a shameless plug for items that have helped us.
Anxiety Free Child Program
The Parenting Aspergers Resource Guide

Would post more this time around but, like most of you, am a bit overwhelmed by the Season.

Happy Holidays!

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Stop Black Friday Madness

Did you really subject yourself to this?



We at the Warehouse just don't understand why anyone would subject themselves to mob mentality violence and chaos.. We prefer to shop online from home and have our gifts shipped directly to the house. But even if we didn't....no way we're going out on Black Friday weekend.

Please tell your friends and family to go to www.willieswarehouse.com
We have many personalized and unique gifts that we ship right to your door.
Stop the Black Friday Madness!



NEW YORK (AP) — Pepper-sprayed customers, smash-and-grab looters and bloody scenes in the shopping aisles. How did Black Friday devolve into this?
As reports of shopping-related violence rolled in this week from Los Angeles to New York, experts say a volatile mix of desperate retailers and cutthroat marketing has hyped the traditional post-Thanksgiving sales to increasingly frenzied levels. With stores opening earlier, bargain-obsessed shoppers often are sleep-deprived and short-tempered. Arriving in darkness, they also find themselves vulnerable to savvy parking-lot muggers.
Add in the online-coupon phenomenon, which feeds the psychological hunger for finding impossible bargains, and you've got a recipe for trouble, said Theresa Williams, a marketing professor at Indiana University.
"These are people who should know better and have enough stuff already," Williams said. "What's going to be next year, everybody getting Tasered?"
Across the country on Thursday and Friday, there were signs that tensions had ratcheted up a notch or two, with violence resulting in several instances.
A woman turned herself in to police after allegedly pepper-spraying 20 other customers at a Los Angeles-area Walmart on Thursday in what investigators said was an attempt to get at a crate of Xbox video game consoles. In Kinston, N.C., a security guard also pepper-sprayed customers seeking electronics before the start of a midnight sale.
In New York, crowds reportedly looted a clothing store in Soho. At a Walmart near Phoenix, a man was bloodied while being subdued by police officer on suspicion of shoplifting a video game. There was a shooting outside a store in San Leandro, Calif., shots fired at a mall in Fayetteville, N.C. and a stabbing outside a store in Sacramento, N.Y.
"The difference this year is that instead of a nice sweater you need a bullet proof vest and goggles," said Betty Thomas, 52, who was shopping Saturday with her sisters and a niece at Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh, N.C.
The wave of violence revived memories of the 2008 Black Friday stampede that killed an employee and put a pregnant woman in the hospital at a Walmart on New York's Long Island. Walmart spokesman Greg Rossiter said Black Friday 2011 was safe at most of its nearly 4,000 U.S. stores despite "a few unfortunate incidents."
Black Friday — named that because it puts retailers "in the black" — has become more intense as companies compete for customers in a weak economy, said Jacob Jacoby, an expert on consumer behavior at New York University.
The idea of luring in customers with a few "doorbuster" deals has long been a staple of the post-Thanksgiving sales. But now stores are opening earlier, and those deals are getting more extreme, he said.
"There's an awful lot of psychology going on here," Jacoby said. "There's the notion of scarcity — when something's scarce it's more valued. And a resource that can be very scarce is time: If you don't get there in time, it's going to be gone."
There's also a new factor, Williams said: the rise of coupon websites like Groupon and LivingSocial, the online equivalents of doorbusters that usually deliver a single, one-day offer with savings of up to 80 percent on museum tickets, photo portraits, yoga classes and the like.
The services encourage impulse buying and an obsession with bargains, Williams said, while also getting businesses hooked on quick infusions of customers.
"The whole notion of getting a deal, that's all we've seen for the last two years," Williams said. "It's about stimulating consumers' quick reactions. How do we get their attention quickly? How do we create cash flow for today?"
To grab customers first, some stores are opening late on Thanksgiving Day, turning bargain-hunting from an early-morning activity into an all-night slog, said Ed Fox, a marketing professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Midnight shopping puts everyone on edge and also makes shoppers targets for muggers, he said.
In fact, robbery appeared to be the motive behind the shooting in San Leandro, about 15 miles east of San Francisco. Police said robbers shot a victim as he was walking to a car with his purchases around 1:45 a.m. on Friday.
"There are so many hours now where people are shopping in the darkness that it provides cover for people who are going to try to steal or rob those who are out in numbers," Fox said.
The violence has prompted some analysts to wonder if the sales are worth it, and what solutions might work.
In a New York Times column this week, economist Robert Frank proposed slapping a 6 percent sales tax on purchases between 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving and 6 a.m. on Friday in an attempt to stop the "arms race" of earlier and earlier sales.
Small retailers, meanwhile, are pushing so-called Small Business Saturday to woo customers who are turned off by the Black Friday crush. President Barack Obama even joined in, going book shopping on Saturday at a small bookstore a few blocks from the White House.
"A lot of retailers, independent retailers, are making the conscious decision to not work those crazy hours," said Patricia Norins, a retail consultant for American Express.
Next up is Cyber Monday, when online retailers put their wares on sale. But on Saturday many shoppers said they still prefer buying at the big stores, despite the frenzy.
Thomas said she likes the time with her sisters and the hustle of the mall too much to stay home and just shop online.
To her, the more pressing problem was that the Thanksgiving weekend sales didn't seem very good.
"If I'm going to get shot, at least let me get a good deal," Thomas said.
___
Associated Press Writers Julie Walker in New York, Christina Rexrode in Raleigh, N.C., John C. Rogers in Los Angeles and Terry Tang in Phoenix contributed to this report

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

No Christmas until AFTER Thanksgiving please.

Willies Warehouse is an online retailer for unique and personalized baby gifts and we love our holiday shopping madness as much as the next Capitalist.
BUT MOVING HOLIDAYS UP MUST STOP.

At this rate 'Christmas in July' will no longer be a figure of speech. I actually have family members that are considering moving Thanksgiving dinner to Saturday so that they can get in on the early Black Friday sales.

Willies Warehouse likes their Holidays where they fall. I don't care if we have to work on Monday and have a Holiday on Tuesday. I want my Parades on the day they are supposed to be. Not the weekend before or after.

Holidays used to be special. Everybody had the day off and almost everything was closed. Now the family can't be together because , inevitably, somebody has to be at work. Nothing shuts down. Nothing special anymore.


I used to hate the customers that would come to shop on Holidays.
" I can't believe they're making you work on a Holiday", they would say.
I'd reply, " I can't believe you're shopping on a Holiday and making my Boss make me come in".

So in support of my 16 year-old self, The Warehouse would like to actively encourage you to stay home with the family. Unplug. Hug your kids. Enjoy life at a slower pace for a day. It's a Holiday.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Holiday Shopping Time

www.willieswarehouse.com

Bi-Polarization

Being a small business owner is making me bi-polar.
For those of you who don't know, Bipolar disorder is a condition in which people go back and forth between periods of a very good or irritable mood and depression. The "mood swings" between mania and depression can be very quick.
In the past few days I have been on a roller coaster. One day we have record sales, the kids are well behaved and I get a turn on the tv. The next day...disaster. Problems with credit card processing, web site has broken links, can't get the Amazon account up and running, kids are a pain in the behind.


Wah.


Still wouldn't change a thing. Despite the cash flow crunches, a home office overrun by children and my 'honey-do' list piling up, being a truly 'free' man with a growing business in a bad economy makes me appreciate how far www.willieswarehouse.com has come these past few months.


I would like to thank our past and future customers for making this possible. And I would like to apologize in advance if I happen to be cranky when you call the customer service line. I probably just spilled coffee on my pajamas..

Friday, October 28, 2011

Our Shopping Cart Dilemna

So the big question we have for anybody out there..... why so many filled shopping carts on the website without a purchase?
Full disclosure, we are a relatively new online retailer here at www.willieswarehouse.com. But our research shows that we have products that people like at competitive prices.
So is it the shipping costs?
Just Shopping?
Dead Links?
Not loving the product mix?
Please help us out. We are sincerely committed to bringing you the best service possible. Sometimes we get so close to this we can't see the forest for the trees.
We may even throw in some free shipping if you post!