Bye Bye, Jaguar

I hoped I would be posting interesting or meaningful things about my life once I renamed this blog, but I've been busy just coping with my life. I'm working on reinventing some aspects of it - more on that later. Meanwhile, we have sold out of this movable jaguar permanently. I liked his green eyes and curious, somewhat-friendly face. He's been in the store almost since the beginning.

Yesterday I made final changes to Astoria, Oregon, Daily Photo so I could turn it over to Cyndi. Sad, but also a good thing. I'm nearly done transcribing (converting) the text portion of All Eight Went to a Word file so I can take the next steps toward getting it online on Kindle.

My Web Page: Tapirback.com.

Our visit to Safari, Ltd

This morning we were picked up in style by Nicole from Safari, Ltd. for our visit to the company's headquarters. A number of their customers who had bought over a certain amount of their products during 2007 were invited to Miami Gardens to see the facility and meet the people we only knew as phone contacts. The invitation seemed to be both about building a relationship with the customers and getting feedback on proposed products. We were also invited to discuss any issues we had, what our needs were as customers, etc. As a company selling almost exclusively online, we had found that our needs were often somewhat different those of companies selling mainly via store front, and we were happy to have a chance to talk with the folks at Safari. They were attentive and we also learned things about them and their way of doing business that were interesting. We saw a lucite display rack in person that would fit our needs and were able to work out a way to get it from Florida to Oregon. (See the story here!) The women at Safari were extremely helpful about that, and we thank them for our wonderful display rack!

In the entry was a diorama with some of Safari's products, including . . . drum roll . . . TAPIRS!

This big playroom was where we were brought to relax, have a snack, and look over the inventory. It was fun to see everything in person, after buying out of a catalog for 7 or 8 (?) years.

The warehouse was huge. We'd wondered about the actual size of their facility for a long time. This is only one aisle.

One of our favorite of the sample animals was this realistic plastic hippo. After spending a couple of hours at the site, they took us to lunch, then back to our hotel, and later they picked us up for dinner, which was extra good, and of course the portions were of a size this hippo would have appreciated. It was pretty relaxed. Everyone was nice to us, and we had an enjoyable and interesting time. We could now put faces to many of the names we'd been dealing with for so long. We came away with the feeling that this was a company that cared about its customers.