Simon Says

Here at Simon’s Stamps we celebrated Halloween yesterday with a downtown trick-or-treat! There were tons of fun costumes including Mario from Super Mario Brothers, Superman, Spiderman, & even a vampire or zombie – or two!

We got in the spirit of the day – and seeing as Halloween is the favorite holiday of more than half of the employees – it was easy!

First off, Simon wore a festive cowboy hat and, along with his daughter Eva and wife Beth, gave out hand stamps for $2 – or free, only if you were wearing a costume, of course!

Kat, the Gryffindor student, passed out candy to the kids along with Production Manager, Angie – Countess of Darkness, Gene – our resident Renaissance Man, and Melissa – our Gypsy Sorcerer!

Even our USPS & UPS carriers joined our festivities!

We had a great time at Simon’s Stamps last night and we wish all of you a very Happy, and safe, Halloween!

In case you’re wondering what our old friend (and former employee) Anne Thalheimer is up to, you should check out http://www.mymonsterhat.com.

Anne

We’re in the process of installing an extended validation SSL certificate for our site. In a few days, you should start seeing a green browser address bar when you reach the secure areas of Simon’s Stamps.

Our main server at simonstamp.com will be moving to a shiny new datacenter in Los Angeles. It’s very secure, and has unbelievably good connections to data lines from China, Europe, India, and the Americas.

We may be unavailable for about an hour sometime on Saturday. Not to worry.

In my last post, I wrote about Emmy Bean, who’s heading to New York City to curate an exhibit on toy theater. But we have an employee who’s going much farther.

Will Killingsworth is a musician, and his band has lined up a tour. Naturally, we gave him a month off, how could we refuse? He’s playing in Australia and New Zealand!

When he comes back, he’s moving from his home in Amherst. Oh, yes, he’s also moving his recording studio. Guess he’ll be busy.

Don’t worry, though, we still have enough rubber stamp makers to keep us going.

One of our employees, Emmy Bean, is away for a  few weeks. We’ll miss her, but she has a good excuse – she’s curating over 100 exhibits at the famous
“Great Small Works Toy Theater Festival” in New York City.

This amazing event features shows, workshops, cabaret and a temporary museum (that’s Emmy’s department.) BTW, a “toy theater” is just what it sounds like – a little tiny theater, often made with paper and cardboard, with puppets or stick characters. Invented before television came along, they’re experiencing a revival. The link above has more info, including dates, times, directions, etc.  The exhibits are free!

As a class project, Simon Alciere created a site called stampguide.com. It’s an old fashioned directory of art rubber stamp sites.

Unfortunately, the world changes fast, and Simon has been slow to update the site. The latest, coolest art stamp sites can’t be found there anymore, and dead links are accumulating. We need to improve the site, or else give up on it. Does anyone have any suggestions of what to do with it?

(Gulp!) We’re getting ready to completely redo a big part of our website. All the code that allows you to typeset, upload graphics, and complete your order will be improved.

Why are we doing this? Well, the old code sometimes slowed down, and we’ve had complaints. But the big reason is that we want to offer our customers more stuff. Instead of just rubber stamps, we want to make engraved signs, awards, plaques, personalized gifts, etc. We actually already do make these things, but most people don’t know about it because we haven’t put them up on our website.

This looks to be a big, expensive (for us) project, but we have high hopes. Stay tuned.

A long time Simon’s Stamps employee has a 4 year old daughter who goes to the excellent Cushman Scott Children’s Center, in North Amherst, Massachusetts. Unfortunately, the school needs money, for building repairs, heat, and teachers’ health insurance (very expensive in Massachusetts.) Of course we made a donation, but the school needs big bucks, which we can’t afford. So we found another way to help, and you can join in.

We’ve created a special website, CushmanMall.com. Next time you’re doing some online shopping, just visit the Cushman Mall, and and click on one of the links to merchants. When you complete a purchase, the school gets a commission, anywhere from 1% to 28% of  the total. There’s no extra cost to you – you just visit the merchant’s regular website. Their server keeps track of the fact that we sent you.

We’ve gotten over 80 merchants signed up. They include WalMart, Lands’ End, ebay, amazon.com, itunes, The Sharper Image, buy.com, Target, 1-800-CONTACTS, Academic Superstore, Sierra Trading Post, Overstock.com, Magic Cabin, Lillian Vernon, Sears, Spring Hill Nursery, net flix … you get the idea.

So you can help kids – and we’re not even asking you to write a check! Just visit CushmanMall.com before your next online purchase.

A while ago, one of our customers, St. Helena Olive Oil Company, called with a special request. Even though it was afternoon (at least here on the East Coast), they needed some stamps made. And they needed them overnight, for a big project they were doing tomorrow.

Well, we did some quick figuring, and we were able to say yes. We made their stamps, and drove them to the UPS depot at 7:00 PM, just in time to make the truck to the airport.

 Well I guess they appreciated it, because they sent us a gift. A big bottle of one of the best olive oils I’ve ever had! It went on our bread, popcorn, vegetables and potatoes pretty much every day. Highly recommended. Check out their website: St. Helena Olive Oil Company. If you’re in the neighborhood, tell Roselle and Peggy that Simon’s Stamps says Hi!