Author: pickupsticksjewelry

Sylvie from On a Limb – Our Testimonial Contest Winner

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We’ve heard lots of great stories from Pick Up Sticks retailers and customers, but never one like this. So we had no choice but to choose Sylvie, the adorable, smart, hard-working 13-year-old from Summerville, South Carolina, who WORKS FOR PICK UP STICKS CHARMS.

Yep, we said that right. Sylvie works for the sole purpose of adding to her Pick Up Sticks collection. When her employer, Heidi from On A Limb (onalimbflorals.com), e-mailed us with her story, we had to know more. So we called Heidi to get the low down on Sylvie.

“Not your typical 13 year-old,” Heidi says, “in fact, like no other 13 year-old you’ve ever met.” Evidently Sylvie came into Heidi’s shop last spring, wanting to buy an expensive Mother’s Day gift for her Mom. When she saw the price tag, Sylvie asked if she could work to pay it off.

Heidi put her to work scrubbing floral buckets, sweeping and taking out the trash. Heidi was leery of hiring someone so young, but Sylvie proved to be an amazing employee. And once the Mother’s Day gift was paid for, Sylvie asked to stay. Seems she’d had her eye on the Pick Up Sticks display.

Pick Up Sticks Jewelry Testimonial

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Recession Proofing Your Business – Connecting with the Customer

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The Lipstick Factor. Price Point Matters. Both are concepts that will hopefully help you figure out how to get through these interesting economic times with style, panache and success. And both are concepts that we’ve blogged about recently.

There’s more. Of course, there’s always more. There are a thousand ideas out there designed to make your retail space more appealing, telling you how to rearrange your displays, how to dress your windows, how to create an atmosphere that practically pulls the wallet out of the purse for the purchase. We’ve been reading those, trying to glean the most relevant info just for you. And we have a few ideas we’re going to pass along in our next “recession-proofing” post.

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Desere and Erika – An Amazing Pick Up Sticks Story

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Frequently, a customer sends us a story about their Pick Up Sticks jewelry that truly touches our hearts. This is such a story. In fact, we all had to stop what we were doing for a while after reading this. We received this e-mail from Erika Martinez in December 2009, and are proud to share it with you. Thank you, Erika, for allowing us the honor of being a very small part of memories with your cousin.
Desere and Erika wearing their Sole Sisters charms

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For Mother

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Everyone has something to say about Mothers. Abe Lincoln said, “All that I am or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.” Tenneva Jordan said, “A mother is a person who, seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie.” Milton Berle said if evolution really worked, why was it that mothers only have two hands. Dorothy Parker said “The best way to keep children home is to make the atmosphere pleasant – and let the air out of the tires.” And one of the Golden Girls said “It’s not easy being a mother. If it were, fathers would do it.”

But one of our favorite quotes about Mothers is from Zora Neal Hurston, who wrote “Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to ‘jump at de sun.’ We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.”

It’s one of the ultimate universal truths. We all have a mother. Some amazing, some okay, some that are the bane of our existence. Regardless of how we feel about it, we all have a mother. And Glena and Sabrina were lucky enough to have their very own special “Mother.”

Glena and Sabrina's great-grandmother - known to everyone as "Mother"
Glena and Sabrina’s great-grandmother – known to everyone as “Mother”

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What’s In a Name?

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Pick Up Sticks. We’re asked all the time how we came up with that name. And we thought fessing up would be a great way to begin one of our blog posts. But of course, we want to save that story for the end of the post – the best for last and all that.

Before we give you that tidbit, we want to talk about blogging. We are, first and foremost, family. As most of you know, Glena and Sabrina, the owners of Pick Up Sticks, are cousins. Practically sisters. So similar in appearance that frequently customers will initially meet Glena in the booth during show season, and then come back later, mistaking Sabrina for Glena. If you’ve wandered the website, you’ve read their bios (about which we’ll do an in depth post later. . .). I can tell you, as their pal the Blogwriter, that these girls’ creative business streak goes way back. I have a lot of stories, but we’ll save those for later.

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