Greetings from Etsy! You asked us to let you know when twistedhandmade returned to their Etsy shop. Good news! This seller is back. Visit http://twistedhandmade.etsy.com
to view and purchase their available items.

That’s Great News!  Twisted Handmade is my favorite Etsy vendor. I happen to not only have purchased several things from this young lady but had the chance to get to know her in person.

If you’re looking for some interesting jewelry with fun packaging, look no further than Twisted. Twisted crafts are upcycle and recycle crafted. You’ll find bracelets made from telephone wires for example.

Don’t leave a comment. Don’t visit another page on my blog.  Go get Twisted now!

Dream Connection Badge

Two of my favorite sites, The Mommy Manual and Artistic Sensations, are partnering to bring you a Dream Connection contest.

They’re doing this to celebrate discovering their own Dream Connection.

From the site: Beginning FEBRUARY 14, 2010, we will be accepting your entries! Write a minimum of 300-word essay about a significant mom-to-mom connection in your life that has had a defining effect on your mothering. Is it your mom, your sister, your aunt, a friend or a teacher? Your entry must also include YOUR $1000 WISH LIST from ArtisticSensations.com. Shop from thousands of items, including kids/teens designer bedding, furniture, room decor, and gifts.

Register now at My Mommy Manual.

Your company claims they can’t innovate. It’s because a) this isn’t that type of business, b) there’s no money, c) time is better spent on marketing via ads etc. That might even be the words coming out of your mouth as you read this.

Seth Godin shares an example to challenge that. Imagine being in airport and hearing music. Normally you’d be listening to canned music of some sort. But imagine now that you’re listening to the music and turn around to see a live band. Yes.Live.Real People.Real Instruments. Seth had that experience.

It leads him to question how your company and mine ‘can’t’ innovate when even an airport can. Did it cost them some money? Yes. Did it return some value? Absolutely. Chance are that Seth wasn’t the only one to notice.

In an age when even busy businesses are struggling, innovation is no longer an option. Even staples can’t count on their customer base for keeping sales up. It’s about the truth of real needs versus a bit of emotion attached to those basic needs. People buy what wins their hearts as much as what’s practical.

Who is your customer? Why do they buy from you? What would increase their interest? How could you spend a thousand dollars to win some hearts? A hundred? How about an intern for a week?

Amazon is my book store of choice. Heck, it’s my vendor of choice on more than books. Price and selection drive that choice. Think then I never visit the local book store. You’d be wrong.

Borders is a place I spend a fair amount of time. Sure, it doesn’t compete on price. The books on hand is of course less than Amazon warehouses. So why is it my favorite local store?

Borders provides a few things that Amazon still doesn’t have.

1) Context – yes, Amazon ‘recommends’ books I might like based on what other’s have purchased that purchased the books I’ve already bought. Of course, lots of those folks could have purchased purple dinosaur books this week. NOT a big interest of mine. Amazon doesn’t have a human placing books together in sets, by similar styles, topics, or authors. The Borders’ staff is always configuring displays where I can find five great superhero novels in one place, or five books on cyberculture. Books at book stores don’t exist in isolation.

2) Browsing – Amazon lets you look at pages in books. Sometimes you’ll get the table of contents. Nothing is as good though as putting your hands on a book and really browsing it. I love reading recommendations by other Amazon users, but checking out passages and chapters myself is best.

3) People – This is a big win some days. They can be somewhat useful for locating a book, they are even more valuable to figure out what book you want based on odds and ends. How often has someone recommended a book to you but you forgot the author, the title, and more. Those fine folks behind the counter are often up on the latest and greatest, and of course each seems to be a book geek as well. If they can’t figure it out, no one can.

4) People – Wait, this isn’t a mistake. Proximity to other book centered folks can be wonderful. The advent of the café in bookstores and extra seating has given them a real community feel. I’ve had some wonderful encounters my fellow searchers as conversations strike up over being in the same section, seeing them browsing a book you’ve just finished, or just running into someone that stands out.

Compelling reasons? They are for me. I neglected to mention one other huge reason I still visit book stores – I love the feel of books; the texture of the pages, the artwork, and even the smell. In my mind, those hold an almost mystical place. Amazon will never give me that feel.

Do you still visit real world book stores? Have you gone over to strictly online shopping? If you do visit a store or two, what’s your favorite brick and mortar book store?

Bonus: local to St. Louis? Want to visit a great local bookstore? Try Subterranean Books on Delmar.

One reviewer is right, this is a single idea book. It fleshes out the idea of what sways our decisions, specifically how we are swayed to make irrational decisions.

The authors define irrational as being out of line with well reasoned and logical choices. These are those cases where the pilot takes off without clearance, the woman is tempted to go around a car stopped at a light into oncoming traffic and more.

Explored are a handful of factors that do the swaying. The book doesn’t just list them though, nor are they even in bullet points of any sort. It’s a rather meandering course as we are taken from example to example and back again. It’s as if the authors felt the need to weave a tapestry of thoughts and experiences, perhaps to make the text more fluid. I found it distracting.

In spite of enjoying the book overall, and honestly, having my eyes opened, this could have been a shorter work The references could have been more on point. The sections in each chapter should have been more clearly defined.

If you enjoyed Blink, and books like it, then you’ll enjoy this as well. I recommend the paperback.
It’s also generally an easy read; you won’t need a dictionary to get through this.

Buy Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior.

The folks on Twitter gave me their list of best purchases for 2008.  Do you see yours in here anywhere?

zachflauaus @Tojosan My BlackBerry, MacBook Pro, and Nikon D60. about 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry in reply to Tojosan

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PreppyDude @Tojosan re:best of- 24in iMac, Sony Z series LCD, Pixma M970 & Falk copper cookware about 3 hours ago fromTweetDeck in reply to Tojosan

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Sierrasnowboard @Tojosan : iPhone JetBlue flight to Puerto Rico Burton AK Hover 3L jacket Trek 2300 road bike LG LCD tv about 3 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to Tojosan

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TeriLussier  @Tojosan Chocolate. rich. dark. creamy. chocolate. but I’m a simple girl, with simple tastes. otoh, big diamond was kinda nice…  about 2 hours ago from web in reply to Tojosan

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thenerd @Tojosan my wife bought me a Samsung CLP-310 laser printer for Xmas. IMO it’s a very good printer about 2 hours ago from web in reply to Tojosan

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learningman @Tojosan bb bold, plasma tv, the tennis channel, Apple time capsule, iphone (now deactivated) about 2 hours ago from web in reply to Tojosan

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vannschaffner @Tojosan Best purchase 2008: Giordana bicycle bib shorts. Saved my butt. ;-D #cycling about 2 hours agofrom TweetDeck in reply to Tojosan

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itsjenjen @Tojosan My new MacBook with the Intel Core Duo processor. It rocks! about 2 hours ago from web in reply to Tojosan

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snowvandemore @Tojosan my best purchase — our (2nd) german shepherd dog, Buck. Hands down. Woof! about 2 hours ago from web in reply to Tojosan

These folks were very forth coming.  My personal favorites are the shepherd and the biking shorts.  Notice a trend though. Can you say Apple products anyone?

Thanks for those that participated.

BTW, you can follow these great folks by clicking the links on their profile names.

Happy New Year and here’s to another great year of consumerism.

Inside the SEARS Wishbook — A $500 Grant a Wish Giveaway! – Liz Strauss at Successful Blog.: “Every year when I was a kid, my mom would sit us down with the Wishbook from Sears. She’d have us make list of what we wanted for Christmas…. The tradition came with a solid promise that at least one item on each list would end up under our tree. My list kept me busy for hours — busy dreaming, and wishing, and learning the life skill of filling out order forms.”

The above reminds me so much of being a kid. When my sister and I were young our parents would bring home the catalogs from the big department stores like Sears. Traci and I would sit in the middle of the living room reading through the catalogs dreaming of the wonderful things within.

As a grown man, I still love to browse a catalog when it’s gift giving time. Just now I do it online. Sears has long been online and offering even more choices there than can be found in their corner store.

This year Sears is out to share that joy through offering gift cards through a simple bit of blog magic. They’ve asked a few bloggers to share the wealth by doing a simple contest on their blogs.

Each blogger had to go exploring at Sears and get their own wishes granted, then write about it on their blog. The bloggers then get to offer some prize packages worth $500 to the lucky winner.

One way to enter is to write a blog post about the contest and link back to the post. I’ve chosen Liz Strauss to show some love to as her article really brought back memories for me.

I’m especially fond of the Images, Music, and Words package.

Hats off to Liz and Sears. May they spread much joy this holiday season.

     It’s Mother’s Day weekend, so of course that finds me buying a card on the busiest day for it.  My wife was off to buy some clothes while I shopped for her card.  At her suggestion, I chose the American Greetings store.

     Right away I spotted the perfect extra to go with the card, long stemmed crafted flowers.  Picking those up, I also quickly found the perfect card.  One of my best shopping experiences at a card store. This particular store, though small, is well used by us, so I wasn’t surprised at this. What surprised me was the counter experience.

     The young lady behind the counter took the flowers and the card and began ringing them up.  Still things are fine at this point, but then a 2nd counter person takes her place, and she ran off to the back of the store for something urgent.  I’m still good though, as the new clerk finishes ringing me up, and mentions a discount.

     I told her thank you and then went to use the credit card machine. It was hung up. It showed a total but not the one matching what she’d just said, and the credit/debit click spots weren’t working.  We agreed I’d just let her scan the card behind the counter, and I handed it over.  She decided to check the total first.  That’s when it suddenly went down hill.

     The manager showed and um, how should I say this, ‘took over.’  She took my credit card from the other lady and chastised her, and rudely took over at the register.  The manager proclaimed she’d have to re-ring the whole thing and in a loud voice, declared to the clerk, “..if he’s going to argue about it, let’s do it over.”

     Talk about an oh my gosh experience. To watch her treat this other employee rudely was embarrassing for me and the employee, but to be spoken of in the third person and have it stated I was arguing, was almost too much.  Had they not had my intended purchase behind the counter, I’d have walked out immediately.

     I then mentioned to the manager that things were fine and that I had not argued with the clerk.  She uttered something about having re-ring and had the clerk help her ring the items.  The manager then explained to me how she was going ring the flowers and proceeded to do so.  To wrap up the effort, she grabs a stray sticker off the counter, and was about to ring it up for me too.  She then asked if it was mine. It took me a moment to realize what she’d done and was asking, and to add to the confusion, she asked me a few times repeatedly if this was mine.

     Once I realized what it was, I told her no. She completed ringing it out and read me the total.  It was the same as the previous total.  Again the card reader was hung. I showed her the reader.  Her response? A quick lecture about how they couldn’t reboot the reader until there were no more customers, and appeared to shrug and sigh at that, before asking me for my card again.

     I took my receipt from her, signed the slip and left.  And so here we are.  To the lessons learned during my visit to American Greetings.

• Don’t treat us impersonally or talk about us, we will remember it
• Don’t treat others rudely, we are empathetic and will feel like you did it to us
• Your image isn’t what you sell, it’s how you sell it
• If things don’t work right, it isn’t our fault, and don’t make us feel like it is
• Overall the experience we have should be one that welcomes us back again

     Though not profound, these are key to how you run a blog or a business.  I find I forget about the overall experience at times.  If I want readers back, they need to feel welcome to be here.

     What have your shopping experiences taught you about blogging or running your own business? How would this experience have affected you? Would you shop there again with other choices?  Share with us.

((* the image is by merfam, and is licensed through Creative Commons))