Video Shopping is probably the next best thing to seeing the product in person.  Shopping for Personalized Christmas Stockings is challenging enough.

 

First challenge is to find a store that has the right kind of Christmas Stocking that fit your holiday decor.

Most Christmas Stocking retailers do not embroider or personalize the Christmas Stockings so you might need to take your stockings to a specialty embroidery shop just to be told they do not embroider on items not bought in their store.

If you do ultimately find a merchant that carries Christmas stockings you like and embroiders personalized names or initials on the stockings they carry, it will probably be a specialty online store half way across the country or continent. So you are left with online shopping alternative.

There is a challenge to online shopping though:

Viewing those product pictures on your monitor….. the thought:
“I am hoping the Christmas stockings will turn out the same way they look online when I receive them…”
…..probably crossed your mind.

So we at Stocking Factory came up with a solution that will further enhance our shopper’s experience, adding a raw video of each Christmas stocking we personalize. It’s almost like being in our showroom and having the Christmas stocking in your hand.  We aim to set up the shopping video featuring each individual Christmas Stocking, including what it’s inside looks like.

We are concerned about the shopping pages loading fast so currently our videos are compressed as much as possible to make them buffer and play as fast as possible.  We know that once you start seriously Christmas Shopping, time is of an essence!

We hope you will enjoy the videos.  You can sample one of the product shopping videos here and then please check out our selection of Christmas Stockings.  We have over 100 different designs in stock and you will see videos added to each and every one of them as we produce them and deploy through our own YouTube Channels.

 

Visit our stores at : http://www.centrinet.com/christmas or our Yahoo store at http://www.stockingfactory.com and if you need help or have any questions feel free to call our friendly customer service at 800-761-XMAS

Check out our Thanksgiving Black Friday / Cyber Monday Sale on Personalized Christmas Stockings.

We appreciate return customers.  Every one of our customers automatically receives a coupon code for their next order.  The coupon code is automatically emailed on the new order confirmations as well as printed on the packing lists that are sent with the shipment.

We have just initiated a private reward program for customers who just purchased from us.  The reward details will be emailed about 10 days after the order is shipped to assure that the order was received first.  Details of the Reward Drawings will be posted on the comments section of this post every ten days.

We have been getting lots of calls about ship dates for our Custom Christmas Ornaments…. the ones we print with logos and produce them in quantity of 50 or more.    Most of our custom ornaments have very fast production time.  It only takes 6 business business to print anywhere from 50 logo custom ornaments to print 5,000 of them!  So if you have an event that is in November and December 2010 free to place an order for custom Christmas ornaments with your image / logo / graphics.  We  offer our custom Christmas ornaments across several of our websites:

Custom Christmas Ornaments at  http://www.centrinet.com/christmas/promotional_products.html

also we have selection of the same Custom Ornaments featured in our FundraisingOrnaments.Com website

and a Christmas Wedding Favor focused site at www.weddingfavor.info

We also offer Expedited production and faster shipping programs for most of our Custom ornaments so if you need your ornaments for event that is in just a few days, be sure to check us out because we can produce, customize, imprint some of our custom ornaments in just 2-3 days and have them on our shipping dock to be whisked away by Fedex or UPS air.

We get lots of calls from customers who previously purchased our personalized Christmas stockings during previous seasons, looking for the same Christmas stocking, wanting to add one or two more.  Often a customer cannot find the matching Christmas stocking because we no longer have it in stock.

I looked around the web and retail stores and could not find a single vendor who would provide an information on the availability of the stocking they currently sell for the future years.  So here we go, we are the first Christmas stocking shop to address this very valid customer need for this important information.

Most Christmas stocking retailers do not manufacture their own inventory and thus are dependent  on the manufacturer for their next holiday season inventory.  If you plan to buy a set of Christmas stockings anywhere, ask the sales person if they will have the same stocking next year.  Most likely the answer would be: “I don’t know” or “Probably not”.  Perhaps you have already gone through an effort to try to find a same stocking your bought 3 years ago and most likely could not find it at the same retailer.

That’s where we are different.  One of the reasons we begun to manufacture our own stockings was the need to provide our customers with the same or similar personalized Christmas stocking they bought from us few years back.  It just makes sense when you care about your customers.

When you spend a part of your Christmas decorating budget on purchasing Christmas stockings, have them personalized, it is a good idea to think ahead :

• Is your family going to grow in the next few years?
• Are you planning to have another child?
• Is your daughter or son going to get engaged or married?
• Will your family members visit you for Christmas; and if so, do you want to add a Christmas stocking with their name on it?
• Are your parents or grandparents visiting for Christmas?  Having a personalized Christmas stocking for them might be an unexpected and welcome surprise.  Finding a stocking that would match the set you already have might prove a challenge.

Those are the situations we most often hear about from our customers, when they call in looking to match a Christmas stocking they previously purchased in our online store.

Considering that your family might grow in the near future will save you lots of effort trying to find and match the Christmas stocking set that you already have.

We have many different Christmas stocking designs in our store: some we manufacture or have manufactured for us every year so there is a good chance that you will be able to buy a set of personalized Christmas stockings in that design this year and find a matching one 3 years from now.  Other stockings are sourced by us from other vendors and factories.  In that situation, we do not have control if the supplier will carry the same Christmas stocking design into the next season.  There are many reasons for the particular Christmas stocking design not being available the following year:

• All Christmas manufacturers follow new trends in Christmas decorating and introduce new styles for their products.   With a new style introduction, previous years’ models get retired.
• The materials and fabrics that were available previous season to the Christmas manufacturer may not be available this year, thus the factory is forced to change the existing design.
• That particular design did not sell as many units as other designs so it is being replaced by another Christmas stocking that sells better.

We have a mix of Christmas stocking designs that change from one season to another and also maintain designs that remain relatively same so our customers can match the stockings from previous seasons.  Sometimes, however, the fabric suppplier no longer manufactures the exactly same color shade or composition of the material used in the manufacturing of the Christmas stocking, so in spite of our effort to maintain the same stocking design for our customers, we are left with no choice  but to accept a design that is similar but not identical to the previous seasons’ stockings.

Starting in August 2009 we will enhance our online catalog displaying all of our stockings with additional information that will provide you with the likelyhood of our maintaining the same design/model of the Christmas stocking into the next year.    Each Christmas stocking description will contain the information if the stocking is likely to be available next year or not.  This will help you to make educated purchase decision when it comes to future planning for matching your Christmas stockings as your family grows.

Based on the Christmas stockings you like in our online catalog, you can either choose a set of the personalized Christmas stockings that match, or design “missmatched” set.

If you purchase a matching set and our product information page indicates that the likelyhood of our bringing the same stocking into inventory in the future years is low, we suggest that you might purchase extra one or more or more blank stockings from the same inventory so you can add to your set as your family grows.  We would be happy to personalize your stocking with consistent personalizing in embroidery that matches the set you already have.  Usually we ask you for the original purchase information, such as your name and address or an order number so we could locate the original order in our records and match the embroidery names with the original.  You would send us the blank stocking with a payment for personalizing only and the shipping cost for priority mail USPS and we will add personalizing to the blanks for you and ship them back promptly.  Yjos provides our customers with a nice way to keep the set of personalized Christmas stockings consistent as their family grows.

Another way of dealing with matching your Christmas stockings as your family expands is not matching them at all.  If you have a set that seemingly does not match, then you will have no problem adding a different stocking to the mix in the future holiday seasons.  If you decide for this option, you can still do some matching, for example you can choose all stockings to be same or similar size.  We mainly sell 18″, 19″, 20″ or larger Christmas stockings.   You can see a tip section on how to measure a Christmas stocking.  The 18″, 19″, 20″ Christmas stocking sizes are the most popular, because they are the perfect size for display while they fit enough of stocking stuffers.

We hope this enhancement to our online catalog will result in overall savings and better customers satisfaction.  If you have additional comments and suggestions on this topic please feel free to leave your comments in the comments area on the bottom of this page.

Past few seasons we have added customer convenience / interaction features to our websites.

With every new interactive feature, the server that powers the website has to work harder.  The more customers on the website – the larger demand on the servers to keep up.

Sometimes we hold off on publishing some special features for a reason.  It is better to have a fast website where customers can find what they are looking for and check out quickly …who needs additional frustrations while Christmas shopping online, right?   But as internet changes, so do the demands of our clients,  who come to expect a certain level of conveniences added to their online shopping.  We usually pride ourselves on bringing the best website features to our customers!

Our customer can design a Christmas ornament online in our Online ornament designer: You can design ornaments from individual elements or use our Christmas ornament pre-design templates.  Our brides, for example, love to design their wedding favors ornaments online for their Christmas wedding guests.   The customers who shop for our Christmas stockings can now personalize their Christmas stocking online and preview what the personalized stocking will look like before they add it to their shopping cart.
These are really terrific features and our customers love them.

Such features add convenience and enrich your shopping experience.  We on the other hand try to make sure that our servers are able to keep up with very high demand and present these interactive features without delays in page loads.  During the Christmas season we have thousands of visitors on our websites at any given time.  So our preparations for smooth online shopping season begin early every year.

One tool we utilize is load testing on the server for http://www.centrinet.com/christmas .  Load testing simulates traffic of number of visitors browsing any specific page on our website at the same time.   We also run different page optimization tests, to see where we can improve our site download times so the visitors with slower internet connections would not be left out.   We intentionally employ only well established browser technologies so our visitors do not have to download additional browser plugins.  For example, our  preview  of embroidered names on Christmas stockings is coded in technology that does not require flash plugin for a browser, so customers without flash plugin can still enjoy previewing the personalization on our Christmas stockings.

Each section of our website does different task and we work dilligently to make the web site and service as fast and responsive as possible.  We hope that our customers will have a pleasant experience shopping with us.  If you are one of our customers and need help with any aspect of our site, please feel free to use the contact us section of our site, where you can find our email, address and phone numbers.  You can also post any comments and suggestions regarding our website here.

We receive a lot of requests for Christmas stocking and other Christmas decoration donations during the holiday season.

Sometimes we have purchased inventory that is not suitable for personalizing or does not fit into our product mix. Other times we have just a tiny quantity left from the past season which is unsuitable to present in our online catalog the following season since the quantity left is too small. As we personalize our Christmas stockings, at times we make a mistake: customer ordered personalizing in script font but our production personalized it in block font, so we also have some perfectly good personalized stockings which are not suitable for sale.

So we take all these odds and ends and send them to the organization in need of Christmas stockings as a donation when they request it.

Past couple of seasons the requests exceeded the availability of what we can donate. Perhaps it’s these tough economic times. So we came up with an idea: why not ask our website visitors to send in their old stockings since they are purchasing new ones?

Or, if you are a crafter, visiting our site and feel like making some Christmas stockings that will go to a good cause, make some Christmas stockings and send them to us.

We can in turn combine our overstock and the Christmas stockings you send in and together we can make a difference donating them to the needy or a good cause.

Here are some examples of the type of requests we received:

…we are trying to give our homeless and need family students Christmas Stockings. I was wondering if you would know where I could get some donated Christmas stockings? About 350 of them. Thank you for your time.

I am a wife of a deployed soldier. I am an active member of our Family Support Group and also am a leader for the group. I am in search of stockings that we can get to fill with goodies and send them to our guys who are currently in Iraq. Our family support group is gathering goods and monetary donations for help fill the stockings. Do you sell stockings in large amounts? We are looking for approximatley 180 of them

Would you be willing to make stockings for our national guard unit?
They will be deploying to Afghanistan in the spring.  It would be great if you could donate 100 or so.
For our families!  Thanks for your consideration…

…if your company would be able to once again donate any Christmas stockings for the ‘Support the Troops’ project we sponsor here …. We provide support to 250 soldiers, and we could use about 150 more stockings. Last year you were very generous in your donation, but I was hoping you might be able to assist us again this year …

Our school St Francis Xavier will be integrating Easter, Christmas, and New Years Around the World as the theme for 2008-2009 school year. We would like to know if you can donate any display ornaments or discontinued garths, wreaths, pictures, easther bunnies, eggs, etc. from your company or ornaments of different countries. This writer would like to know if you can send us any brochures of these events in your country

My family and I are adopting a group of soldiers for Christmas and would like your help in making this endeavor a success. We need 15 empty Christmas stockings to ensure that each person in the squad receives their own.  Would your company be able to donate a couple stockings to help make this a success?

Let’s combine our resources and together we can make a difference. During past 20 years we have donated what we could but have not made a focused effort to streamline our donations. The donation requests usually come during the busiest time of the year for us, so it was always a great challenge to keep the pace with timely shipping to our customers and manage the “extras” such as donation requests. Thus this year we designed our donation program early so we can effectively donate what we can.

So if you wanted to send any extra Christmas stockings you have around the house or make a few for the needy children or our troops :

Send the Christmas stocking donations to:

Stocking Factory
960 Bay Dr
Summerland Key, FL 33042
Mark the box: STOCKING DONATIONS

We shall warehouse your donations and combine those with ours and make sure that these stockings donated from the heart will make happy Christmas where it counts the most!  We will make sure they are well packed and ship them safely to their recipients. Shipping costs to the recipients of your/our Christmas stockings are rising but we utilize post office and are very good at getting the best rates, so so far we have been able to pay for the shipping expenses when we donate our stockings.

If you are an organization in need, please post a comment on this page and also please email us with your request through our contact form page. We will monitor both email and this page for requests.

Help us to spread the word so those who are in need would learn about our help effort! Post about our Christmas stocking donations on your Website, MySpace, Blog or favorite message board.

You can also follow us on Twitter to keep up with what we are doing now.

We believe that communication is critical to full customer satisfaction.

That’s why we maintain a comprehensive array of ways for our customers can reach us.

Aside from email, the most critical aspect of communication carrier is a phone service. We have a number of traditional land lines which are integrated with modern internet based call routing features.

These additional features allow us to expand the availability of customer service during the holiday season. We get more incoming calls in one day during November than in a whole month of May. Naturally, the demand for our personalized Christmas stockings and ornaments is at it’s peak during that time of a year.

For a seasonal business like ours, it is important to be able to expand and contract our phone lines so we can handle the busy times without experiencing the cost of extra overhead year round, thus keep the product cost to our customer as low as possible.

Google just announced the availability of Google Voice. This service is based on call routing/forwarding of an incoming call to one or more phone numbers.

This is a critical feature that helps us satisfy the increased demand for incoming phone lines. Let me explain. As a seasonal business, we need to be able to answer over 100 times the incoming phone calls in October/November and December. It would not make sense to pay for many additional land lines year round as we aim to keep the product cost to our customers as low as possible. So here is where Google Voice comes in. Adding a single Google Voice phone number lets us expand out phone system by as many phone lines as needed without having to go through the expense of “hard wired” integration into our office phone system. A customer calls our Google Voice phone number and Google Voice is capable of ringing as many phone numbers as we program into this setup: so it can ring all of our land lines, cell phones, internet based phones and thus our customers can reach us even during the busiest times. We love adding customer convenience without taxing the customer with additional costs.

You can phone us at: (305) 745-2681 : Main Office Number (800) 761-XMAS : Toll Free number which rings our office lines, cell phones, etc… (305) 851-5679 : Google Voice number which rings our office lines, cell phones etc… which is usually programmed to ring our back up numbers when all traditional incoming lines get busy.customer-support-team on SKYPE international customers to reduce their costs to reach us as Skype to Skype calling is free.

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