Monthly Archives: April 2020

Random April Ramblings

I’m curious to know how all of you are doing with self quarantine. I know that numerous US States have closed schools and non essential businesses. I’ve been pretty much hiding in my house since Governor Newsom first announced California’s lock down. When the first case of COVID-19 was announced in Del Norte County, I started to let hubby do all the errands alone. He also handles the retail store’s local deliveries. Originally we planned to do deliveries on Friday and Saturday but I think we may cut back to just Fridays. Would this negatively impact anyone?

Aidan's Toy Trove Free Local Delivery

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The Ragdolls, Abbey and Arthas are bored to tears. Aidan’s cat, Kit, is majorly pissed off that they’re home all the time and I’ve been calling her Miss Grumpy Pants. It also appears to be shedding season. There is fluffy white hair covering everything! Speaking of shedding, Miss Baya is also shedding. She has out shed every horse at the barn 10 – fold and manages to do this every year. Yes, I really did need a hairy Andalusian! If I don’t pick up the hair I brushed off her almost instantly, it all ends up on the barn owner’s front porch, ack! We went on a few trail rides at the beginning of March but now the trails are closed and I really shouldn’t be out of the house so no more rides for a while.

Baya Sleeping

Del Norte Unified School district has done a great job moving courses online. My only complaint is Charter, the internet provider. I think everyone is stuck at home and cruising the internet and boy does it ever crawl. Shipping time has slowed down a lot on both the packages that ship from here and the ones that we receive. I’m thankful to live in a small town where a lot of what we need is still available but toilet paper and paper towels are fairly scarce and for the life of me I can’t find any baking yeast. I even dusted off the old bread maker! And bacon, I’d really like some good bacon ,lol.

Abbey Oops

Breyer wise, the Seattle Soiree event was cancelled. Personally, at this point, I can’t imagine that BreyerFest would still be a go in July. I think that this will depend a lot on the state of Kentucky to decide but even if it does still take place, we’re not likely to attend. I can’t imagine standing in the Special Run line crammed in with hundreds of people or doing room sales at the Clarion with waves of people coming in. Breyer offered a refund to Seattle Soiree attendees or the ability to receive the 2 guaranteed Special Runs and to be entered in lotteries for a chance at purchasing the extra special models. I think that Breyer handled this well and that it would pave the way for a virtual BreyerFest although the task would be much more involved!

Breyer HorseseBay Store

I’ve been listing a lot more Retired and Special Run Breyers to our eBay Store. USPS won’t currently ship Internationally to a number of countries ie. Spain and Italy due to COVID-19. I’m trying to figure out how best to handle this. Oddly, a lot of interested buyers from Italy have been expressing interest in purchasing Breyers! eBay also rolled out a new International shipping option that involves shipping to eBay first and then on to the buyer (this is not the eBay Global Shipping program, we do not use that due to increased cost.) The service offers door to door tracking and insurance. We’re eager to see how long the handful of packages that we have shipped this way take to arrive at their destinations. eBay is also requiring sellers to use Managed Payments starting in July. This will eventually phase out Paypal completely which is both good and bad.

Easter wise, I really wanted to offer some fun premade baskets but ran out of time. We have a lot of fun basket and egg fillers that can be ordered online and deliver for free on 4/10. We have cooler things to fill eggs with than candy!

Free Easter DeliveryShop Easter Basket Fillers

I could ramble on all night but that’s it for now. Once again, thank you every one for your support, stay safe and please don’t hesitate to ask if we can help in any way!

Thank you

COVID-19 Retail Store to Online Store Hiccups

Arthas

Due to COVID-19, our retail store has been closed to walk in customers for over 2 weeks now. School in California has been cancelled for the rest of the academic year and Aidan is home all day. As a family, we’re finally beginning to settle into quarantine. We have been playing lots of board games! We built the retail store’s online website in a matter of days and we’re finally beginning to work out the kinks. We use Square in our retail store and implemented the integrated Weebly online store. To say that it is rough around the edges is a huge understatement. Weebly has been implementing changes almost faster than we can make them. I quickly discovered just how slow and unstable the online store can be and I apologize profusely for this. If it isn’t working for you, please try again in later. I’m hoping that the performance will improve over time. From a personal perspective, I’d like to throw Weebly off a cliff but for now it’s working and that’s all that matters.

When we first built the online store, Delivery wasn’t an option. Now, Delivery is an option but we can’t turn off the Pick Up option. Oi! For now, we are offering Free Local Delivery only. No shipping and no pickups but we hope to expand on this. Deliveries are being made on Friday and Saturday after 4:00pm and we will deliver within a 20 mile radius. We appreciate all of those that have offered to pick up their purchases in person to save us the drive but honestly, at this point, delivery is the easiest option for us. If you need something sooner than Friday, please don’t hesitate to message us and we’ll do our best to accommodate you.

Another issue that we have been dealing with for the past week is the inability for the online store to import categories of any sort. We have slowly been adding categories and populating them but this is very much a work in progress. There is a search function at the top of the website, and while not perfect, we recommend trying it if you don’t see the item that you are looking for within a category. Up until now, we were using Square exclusively for our retail store. When our inventory migrated from Square to the online store, there were no item descriptions and many of the Point of Sale photos were far from pretty. Descriptions and updated pictures are also still being added. Lastly, any item without a photo is not visible in the online store. If you remember us having something and don’t see it, please ask! It’s quite likely that it is in stock but lacking a picture.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to all of our wonderful customers that have purchased from us during these unprecedented times. Stay safe everyone and please don’t hesitate to reach out if we can help in any way.

Aidan's Toy Trove Free Local Delivery

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