August 4, 2022 - Always more to do!

It's been a year since I've posted tidings -- and while it's not a crucial area of our website, its good to post some updates and insights now and again.

The last year in a nutshell? Very busy. So thank you all for that -- we welcome the continued interest, compliments, well-wishes, and feedback - and are always glad to help! I also truly enjoy the photos our Priests and fellow parishioners send of items reinstated throughout their beautifying or restoration projects. It gives me great joy to see these once 'out of fashion' irreplaceable items appreciated and back in good service once again. I save each and every photo sent.

Speaking of projects, that is what our future here holds... more projects! We have some goodies lined up, and can share a bit of what's coming.

First I have quite a few new additions I'll post soon, altars, statues, lights, crucifix, and a few more -- so keep a lookout!

More importantly we've been having our son help, we *really* need his help, there's so much more we can accomplish with another helping hand. As mentioned in the prior tidings, our family business is quite niche and requires a good amount of both general and specialized knowledge in many different fields. Its challenging to assign the time to train, and overwhelming for him to learn, yet we're working through it and making great progress. Our first project is to redesign the Tabernacle area -- he'll be responsible for photographing, measuring, and making notes on each tabernacle in stock. We'll then start picking other categories of items for him to do the same so it becomes second nature. It may seem a somewhat trivial task, however we have an explicit detailed method that goes far beyond what many would expect.

Categories we'll be looking at after Tabernacles is Candlesticks, Stations of the Cross, Votive stands, Missal stands and Chairs. We'll ultimately work through every category, even though some categories like Statues are fine: we just have many additions to add to the site.

Eventually I'll show him the flow of getting those photos to the website, organizing them on the computer, and structuring throughout so our customers get the information they need in a timely manner. All just a few cogs in our wheelhouse, but it's a great start so far and I'm really glad he's taking an interest -- we'll be around for another 50 years God willing!

August 10, 2021 - Helping us help you!

We've focused our efforts entirely online, which has enabled us to more readily meet the immediate and long-term needs of Parishes and Clergy. When our time was split between visits and walk-throughs yet also having to maintain the critical work necessary, it wasn't practical.  As our workload increased, that split became far more detrimental than helpful -- not only to us, but more importantly to serving all our customers consistently and meaningfully. Once covid hit the pause button, we reevaluated how best to serve our community while cutting unnecessary costs both of time and money. And now things are somewhat back to normal, we are still consistently yet happily engulfed in projects, and would like to address a few important points to help both existing and newer customers.

• Items are sold on a first serve basis, and we're unable to hold items for more than a few days. Even if something is put temporarily on hold, there is no guarantee it won't get sold. We have a varied and extensive workload, and as much as we'd like to hold items, its not feasible.
  
  
• While we are typically prompt with responding to email requests and inquiries, please be patient if you don't hear back right away. And feel free to email again if in a few business days you haven't had a response (check that spam folder too first!). We never mind followups... on the contrary we appreciate it very much --  sometimes items are missed as we go through hundreds of emails each week.
  
  
• Our workload is intense, very intense. However we're a family-owned business with only a couple hands managing every mission-critical aspect. I bring this up to give weight and clarity to the prior points, since much of our workload is not obvious yet necessary and quite demanding. Our list of priority duties include:
  • Email correspondence and followups, we receive over 300 emails per week just to start.
  • Organizing, fixing, cleaning, maintaining, sizing, photographing, listing, packing and shipping items.
  • Administration of our LAN, computer hardware and software.
  • Website creation and maintenance, standards compliance, hosting, cms and applications, backups and testing.
  • Invoicing, billing, record keeping.

Each of those five bullet points is a career and full-time job position currently handled by two individuals. In addition, our site reaches 3,000,000 search hits and 12,000 unique visitors every month, so there's no lack of important work needing done 24/7. While this is often overwhelming, we genuinely enjoy the work, appreciate the customer camaraderie, and are honored to help restore the almost-lost historical beauty and craftsmanship once commonplace And we can't thank you enough! This wouldn't be possible without our Priests, Nuns, Brothers and Sisters who reach out to us -- we're absolutely happy to help.

June 18, 2021 - Summer Update!

With ongoing projects and a significant workload, summer is definitely in full swing! We want to take another moment to thank you for the continued business and well-wishes -- we're humbled by the amount of Priests and parishioners reaching out to us, quite often mentioning that someone they know recommended us: it means a great deal to us, thank you again.

We'll be taking time over the next several months for both projects and leisure, which oddly is often the same thing as we greatly enjoy the work. However being 'full steam ahead' for many years now we need to shore up some projects while embracing activities when possible. We won't be available July 17 - 27, and I'll keep the entry site and email responses posted with updates.