Blog
Baubles-N-Bling Summertime News July 06 2024, 0 Comments
Summer is finally here! A time for outdoor activities with family and friends, vacations, cookouts and Bar-B-Ques, surfing, pool parties, swimming, mountain climbing, water skiing and more. Summerize your home inside and outside with our seasonal summer home decor and gifts.Accessories bring an atmosphere of relaxation and coziness to even the smallest of outdoor spaces so don't forget a new thermometer, decorative bird house, relaxing wind chimes, and new planters to complete your new look. Check out our New Products collection where you'll find our latest hand-selected accessories. And, of course, no garden is complete without beautiful signs and plaques for your potting bench, garden shed, or outdoor entertaining areas to bring your sense of style and personality to any space. Click here to shop our latest Outdoor and Garden products.
Woodland Decor, Vintage Decor....This is where the shopping fun begins!
Happy First Day of March! March 01 2024, 0 Comments
Accessories bring an atmosphere of relaxation and coziness to even the smallest of outdoor spaces so don't forget a new thermometer, decorative bird house, relaxing wind chimes, and new planters to complete your new look. Check out our New Products collection. And, of course, no garden is complete without beautiful signs and plaques for your potting barn, garden shed, or outdoor entertaining areas to bring your sense of style and personality to any space. Click here to shop our latest Outdoor and Garden products.
Woodland Decor, Vintage Decor....This is where the shopping fun begins!
ANNUAL PROFILE DELETION November 21 2022, 0 Comments
Hello past and present customers! 2022 is quickly coming to a close and we wish you and yours a Happy Thanksgiving and a Merry Christmas!Just a heads up that we are performing annual profile purges that will include customers that have subscribed to our Newsletter or monthly sales emails but have not made a purchase, do not have valid email accounts, or profiles created without any information created on or before 12/31/2018. Our marketing emails are billed by each profile email sent so to keep costs manageable, we delete profiles that meet this criterion from time-to-time. We have removed these profiles as of today but you are welcome to resubscribe again anytime either during checkout while making a purchase or click on the Subscribe button in the lower right corner of any page on the website.
Thank you and happy shopping!
Baubles-N-Bling & Staff
Thank you! July 26 2022, 0 Comments
Thank you to all our valued customers!2021 Year In Review - Going Forward January 31 2022, 0 Comments
We're in our 12th year of business thanks to our wonderful customers like you!
2021 was a difficult year for most small businesses. We were not an exception. We were notified by nearly every wholesale partner that currently supplies our goods that due to increased raw goods costs, production costs, and transportation costs, a sharp rise in wholesale pricing as well as higher shipping costs was inevitable. While our suppliers continue to hold back and are absorbing as much of the additional expenses as possible, an average additional increase of 10-12% has been passed on to online and brick-and-mortar retailers like us. Christmas 2021 was quite a struggle, but we managed somehow, but not without many, many delays. 2022 has started off much the same but rest assured, we are trying to contain costs as much as possible. Unfortunately, we have had to make sacrifices on which products will be available going forward and as a result, we have dropped a few of our product lines entirely as a result of poor supplier business performance, products not selling, or continuous supply chain issues with certain vendors. We hope to find suitable new products lines soon to give us a wider selection of goods that are reasonably priced and going forward, we will deal only with reputable suppliers to provide the best products as the best prices possible.
Products made of raw wood, steel, aluminum, silver, glass, and injection molded poly resin materials are among a few of the categories of products that have proven to be the most affected by increased costs. These increases are three-fold for us as a small business since we are not only absorbing higher incoming shipping costs but also the higher cost of the goods, higher minimums required by our suppliers, and increased outgoing shipping costs to our customers. While we have continued passing our discounted UPS and US postal shipping rates to our customers, we have not increased our tiered shipping rates for the past four years and at this point, we do not plan to increase shipping rates, however, this may have to happen down the road as our current shipping rates barely cover shipping costs in most instances, even for smaller packages of less than 3 lbs. to most delivery areas. Costs of packing materials, tape, and new shipping boxes (required for UPS and FedEx) have also seen sharp increases in costs in recent months. However, for customer shipping that creates a loss of less than $5.00, we absorb the difference in higher shipping from our profit margin rather than raising shipping rates or even higher product prices.
PLEASE NOTE: We only bill our customers additional shipping fees for larger or heavier items that require over-sized rates or when shipped to an obscure delivery location that dictates much higher costs. We will continue this practice for a long as is feasible. Products that may require additional shipping have a disclaimer in the description, however, combined shipping of multiple items can also create higher shipping costs that are not calculated at checkout. Our shopping cart calculates shipping based on purchase price and delivery region only, without consideration to size or weight. This is not something we can change currently. Please review our Shipping and Handling page for complete details.
We are in the process of adjusting prices for products with all our suppliers and in the coming weeks will be eliminating a few more of our current suppliers while adjusting available product lines for some items that we feel may no longer be practical for us to carry that are creating high-cost freight overhead on incoming merchandise as well as utilizing precious warehouse space. With much regret, many of our most popular items may no longer be available after these adjustments have been made. Some larger items may show out of stock but are actually still available. Because of ongoing high freight costs and other extraneous expenses, these items are no longer profitable for us. We hope, with time, that escalating shipping costs and costs for goods will normalize if and when our economy improves and/or suppliers of these larger items will consider utilizing drop-shipping to avoid or eliminate double-shipping costs.
As we remain a small, family-owned and operated business, we try to make these decisions with our customers' best interests at heart. We want to continue offering a wide variety of high-quality goods at fair prices with the lowest possible shipping costs. While shopping with us, keep in mind that while we can no longer offer free shipping because search engines like Google and Yahoo penalize us by restricting relevancy and viewership on search results when we offer "FREE" anything. This hurts us and other small businesses in lieu of "big tech" helping their biggest paid ads customers Amazon, eBay, and other big box stores that can afford to absorb these costs and who receive much larger shipping discounts due to volume than we do. We are trying our best to prevent being squeezed out of the online marketplace to continue offering our customers fair and honorable pricing and policies without deceptive offers where the added costs are tacked onto the cost of products just for the sake of offering "free" anything. Many of our products are already priced at 20-25% below the manufacturer's retail suggested price to help our customers defray anticipated increased shipping costs. So, while we do not offer free shipping any longer, we do offer lower prices and our fairest shipping rates possible.
As a reminder, all of our products are sourced from American based companies providing American jobs and we plan to continue supporting American owned and operated businesses only. We believe that we can help keep costs down by being a part of the solution rather than contributing to the problem.
We appreciate your business and look forward to continuing to serve our customers in 2022.
Thank you!
Baubles-N-Bling Owners & Staff
Escalating Freight, Product Prices, and Overhead Costs September 23 2021, 0 Comments
CELEBRATE WITH US!
We are now in our 11th year of business thanks to our wonderful customers like you! December will make 12 years in business and we thank you for your continued patronage.
UPDATE ON RISING COSTS
In our last blog post, we discussed the rising costs of goods and shipping. We have been notified by every wholesale partner that currently supplies our goods that due to increased raw goods costs, production costs, and transportation costs, a sharp rise in wholesale pricing as well as higher transportation costs have unfortunately now made some of our most popular products no longer profitable. Due to hyper-inflation, we have made the decision to no longer offer some larger or heavier items in our products lines. These items include iron or heavier metals, wood, and glass items weighing more than 5 lbs. measuring 24 inches or more in any dimension. Items are marked as "(over-sized)" and most require separate shipping due to the weight and/or size and shape. These items are clearly marked on our website. We have also eliminated several product suppliers that have been unwilling to compromise on high-cost shipping options or product minimums.
AFFECTED PRODUCTS
Products made of raw wood, steel, aluminum, silver, glass, and injection molded poly resin materials are among a few of the categories of products that have proven to be the most affected by these increased costs. These increases are three-fold for us as a small business since we are not only absorbing higher incoming shipping costs (two increases just since January) but also additional fuel and distance surcharges with all major shipping carriers. Along with this inflation, we are also absorbing higher office, warehouse, electrical, and labor costs to operate. With the higher cost of goods, higher minimums required by our suppliers, and increased outgoing shipping costs to our customers, we had to make some tough decisions on which products to keep and which ones to no longer offer. Items that are not drop-shipped to our customers by our supplier have been marked "out of stock" momentarily. We hope this will only be temporary and while these items are still available from our suppliers, the overhead costs are just too great at this time.
DISCOUNTED SHIPPING RATES
While we have continued passing our discounted shipping rates to our customers, we have not increased our tiered shipping rates for the past three years and at this point, we may have to now as our current shipping rates barely cover shipping costs in most instances, even for smaller packages of less than 3 lbs. to most delivery areas. The US Postal Service has announced yet another proposed increase for 2021/2022. And, as we have in the past, if shipping costs are less than $5.00 more than our customer paid for shipping during checkout, we will continue to waive the difference and cover the costs from our profit margin, at least for now. However, the costs of packing materials, tape, and shipping boxes have also seen sharp increases in costs and we are experiencing shortages due to long backorders for paper products in general, particularly new boxes that UPS now requires for all shipping. This is not only expensive but also impractical or impossible with larger special order or open stock items that may or may not ship to us in suitable packaging for re-shipping. We only bill our customers the extra shipping for larger or heavier items that require over-sized rates or when shipped to an obscure delivery location that dictates much higher shipping costs, all described in the product's description. We will continue this practice for a long as is feasible.
While shopping with us, keep in mind that while we can no longer offer free shipping because search engines like Google and Yahoo penalize us by restricting relevancy and viewership on search results when we offer "FREE" anything. This hurts us and other small businesses in lieu of "big tech" helping their biggest paid ads customers Amazon, eBay, and other big box stores that can afford to absorb these costs and whom receive much larger shipping discounts due to much higher volume than we do. We are trying our best to prevent being squeezed out of the online marketplace to continue offering our customers fair and honorable pricing policies without deceptive offers where the added costs are tacked onto the cost of products just for the sake of offering "free" shipping. Many of our products are already priced at 20-25% below the manufacturer's retail suggested price to help our customers defray anticipated increased shipping costs. So, while we do not offer free shipping any longer, we do offer lower prices and our fairest, discounted shipping rates whenever possible.
INCREASED DAMAGE CLAIMS
We have also seen a sharp increase in damage claims with all three shipping carriers as a result of inexperienced and untrained transportation workers, labor shortages, increased shipping volumes, increased shipping delays, lost packages, and packages delivered to the wrong address. While we are not responsible for these issues, it affects our business and our customers so we are doing everything we can to prevent any damages by utilizing the required methods by all three shipping carriers to ensure safe transport of insured packages. While issues arise, please understand that shipping issues are not the fault of the store and once a package leaves our warehouse, we have little or no input on how or where the package is routed once shipped. We ship to the address given by our customers and the system is automated, so please check the shipping address you enter carefully.
CUSTOMER COMPLIANCE
We have also experienced an increase in customers that abandon their orders and/or refuse to pay additional shipping due on items marked as "over-sized" in the item's description. These items are clearly marked for this reason. We encourage customers to email us for a shipping quote in advance of placing an order for all larger or heavier items. Special order and larger open stock items are not eligible for late cancellation or refunds. This is also stated clearly in the descriptions of these items. Late cancellations after an order is packed, weighed, and measured for shipping costs us time and labor, non-refundable credit card fees, and other overhead expenses related to returning products to inventory. For this reason, all customers will now be required to agree to our Terms and Conditions (including shipping fees) when their order is placed. You may review our Terms and Conditions here. The 15% restocking fee (minimum of $10) for late cancellations and returns will now be strictly enforced.
WE ARE SMALL BUSINESS USA!
We remain a small, family-owned and operated business and we will continue to try to make these decisions with our customers' best interests at heart. We want to continue offering a wide variety of products at fair prices with the lowest possible shipping costs while maintaining a decent profit margin.
My husband and I started this business 11 years ago operating in conjunction with our parent company, Buffalo Trader Online - Western Art, Western Decor. My husband has since retired so this is now our primary source of retirement income and it's becoming harder and harder each day to stay afloat in this turbulent economy. We're not Amazon and we never will be so please bear with us through this difficult time in our country's economic history.
As a reminder, we currently seek American-made products where possible and our remaining products are sourced only from American-based companies providing jobs to Americans. We plan to continue supporting American owned and operated businesses only. Please continue to support all small local and online businesses!
We appreciate your business and look forward to continuing to serve you in the upcoming holiday season.
Pray for our nation.
Sincerely,
Denny and Leigh Karchner - Owners & Staff
Baubles-N-Bling
A subsidiary of Buffalo Trader Online
Increased Costs In 2021 June 07 2021, 0 Comments
We're in our 11th year of business thanks to our wonderful customers like you!
Over the last week, we have been notified by nearly every wholesale partner that currently supplies our goods that due to increased raw goods costs, production costs, and transportation costs, a sharp rise in wholesale pricing as well as higher shipping costs is inevitable. While our suppliers are holding back and absorbing as much of the additional temporary costs as possible, an average increase of 5-7% has been passed on to online and brick-and-mortar retailers like us.
Products made of raw wood, steel, aluminum, silver, glass, and injection molded poly resin materials are among a few of the categories of products that have proven to be the most affected by these increased costs. These increases are three-fold for us as a small business since we are not only absorbing higher incoming shipping costs (since the 4-7% increases in January 2021 with all major shipping carriers) but also the higher cost of the goods, higher minimums required by our suppliers, and increased outgoing shipping costs to our customers. While we have continued passing our discounted shipping rates to our customers, we have not increased our tiered shipping rates for the past three years and at this point, we do not plan to increase shipping rates, however, this may have to happen down the road as our current shipping rates barely cover shipping costs in most instances, even for smaller packages of less than 3 lbs. to most delivery areas. Costs of packing materials, tape, and shipping boxes have also seen sharp increases in costs. However, for customer shipping that creates a loss of less than $5.00, we absorb the difference in higher shipping from our profit margin rather than raising shipping rates or even higher product prices. We only bill our customers for larger or heavier items that require over-sized rates or when shipped to an obscure delivery location that dictates much higher costs. We will continue this practice for a long as is feasible.
We have been ensured by many of our suppliers that these price increases due to hyper-inflation in a post-COVID economy will be temporary and lower prices may come back when the "new normal" has settled things back down with the economy and foreign trade. And, of course, the geo-political atmosphere we are currently experiencing is also causing increased concern for the cost of goods globally in an unfair trading market with much market insecurity and concerns of higher risks.
We are currently adjusting prices for products with all our suppliers and in the coming weeks will be eliminating a few more of our current suppliers while adjusting available product lines for some items that we feel may no longer be practical for us to carry that are creating high-cost overhead on incoming merchandise as well as utilizing precious warehouse space. With much regret, many of our most popular items may no longer be available after these adjustments have been made.
As we remain a small, family-owned and operated business, we try to make these decisions with our customers' best interests at heart. We want to continue offering a wide variety of goods at fair prices with the lowest possible shipping costs. While shopping with us, keep in mind that while we can no longer offer free shipping because search engines like Google and Yahoo penalize us by restricting relevancy and viewership on search results when we offer "FREE" anything. This hurts us and other small businesses in lieu of "big tech" helping their biggest paid ads customers Amazon, eBay, and other big box stores that can afford to absorb these costs and whom receive much larger shipping discounts due to volume than we do. We are trying our best to prevent being squeezed out of the online marketplace to continue offering our customers fair and honorable pricing and policies without deceptive offers where the added costs are tacked onto the cost of products just for the sake of offering "free" anything. Many of our products are already priced at 20-25% below the manufacturer's retail suggested price to help our customers defray anticipated increased shipping costs. So, while we do not offer free shipping any longer, we do offer lower prices and our fairest shipping rates possible.
As a reminder, our products are sourced from American based companies providing American jobs and we plan to continue supporting American owned and operated businesses only. We believe that we can help keep costs down by being the solution rather than contributing to the problem.
We appreciate your business and look forward to continuing to serve our customers.
Baubles-N-Bling Owners & Staff
Annual Winter Sales Event February 03 2021, 0 Comments
Winter is a great time to do a deep cleaning and redecorate your home. It's cold out and let's face it, you can only read so much or watch so much TV. Now is a great time to freshen up your kitchen and dining areas with some great new decor items. A simple change of accent colors, accents, deep cleaning, and re-arranging can give your home a whole new look.
For a limited time, save 20% on select Kitchen & Dining Room decor. Choose from our large selection of canisters, drinkware, salt and pepper shaker sets, paper towel holders, wall decor, baskets, signs, and more.
Valentine's Day Specials - Our entire selection of gold and silver jewelry is also on sale through the month of February. Go shopping here.
FEBRUARY'S FEATURED PRODUCT
From our family to yours, we wish you a safe and healthy winter season and a wonderful Valentine's Day!
Click here to start shopping now!
This is where the shopping fun begins!
Baubles-N-Bling Emails December 12 2019, 0 Comments
The most important reason for having a valid email is to notify you of your order status. A real email address is required to ensure you can be notified if there is a question or issue with your order. Due to limited man power during the holidays, we do not call customers. No one likes email spam. We understand. We hate it too.
This is the main reason we only send out 10-15 promotional HTML emails per year, all planned a year in advance. These email offers only go out to people that have requested Marketing or our Newsletter and submitted their email to receive them during registration or manually with our Subscribe link. We do not share our customer list with anyone.
The emails contain special discount codes, coupon codes for our special deals, and other events not found on the site. We also do this for our Facebook page occasionally, so get on over there and friend us up for bigger savings! Visit us on Facebook at: facebook.com/baublesnbling
If you no longer wish to receive our Marketing or Subscription emails, just hit reply with the word REMOVE in the subject line or body of the email and you will be removed before the next marketing event.
Be very careful not to mark us as spam if you have or will be ordering from us, as this may prevent your order emails from reaching you. Entities like AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, and Hotmail have their own modules in place that will completely block an email from even making it to your junk mail folder if they think it's spam. It is always best to add our email address, info@baublesnbling.com, to your address book or safe senders list to prevent important order information from being lost. Since email is our primary source of communicating, it is important that you provide us with an email address that you actually check frequently.
Some mail houses will actually put a block on a URL if too many people mark an email as spam, which is a tremendous feat to have removed. This means that anyone emailing us from the blocked mail house address (i.e. johndoe@aol.com) can't email us and we can't email them. Most people don't realize that by marking an email as spam, it's potentially getting that URL blocked from that entire mail house. The user simply thinks they're marking it as spam so it goes to their junk mail folder instead of their inbox. We encourage you, however, to mark unsolicited emails that are actually spam as appropriate.
It is our goal to keep our customers, not drive them away. Your personal information will never be shared or sold. No one likes a spammer, period. We want you to know what to expect from us so there is no question about what we are doing with your information. If you have any questions, please visit our Contact page to get in touch.
Thank you for shopping with us.
From our family to yours, Merry Christmas and best wishes for a prosperous and happy New Year.
Baubles-N-Bling Staff
Visit our parent company, Buffalo Trader Online, for the best Western Art and Western Decor
Annual Bath Sale July 25 2019, 0 Comments
For a limited time, save an additional 20% off select Bathroom Decor. Savings are immediate when you add items to your shopping cart. NO DISCOUNT CODE NEEDED! Sale prices apply only to items in the Sale category. Hurry, these offers are for a limited time only and tend to sell out quickly. Sale ends 8/15/19.
Click here to go shopping now!
Thank you for your business and continues support.
Baubles-N-Bling & Staff
CLEARANCE SALE January 03 2019, 0 Comments
CLEARANCE SALE!2018 was a fun-filled year of changes and a handful of new suppliers with fantastic new products for our customers but as with every year, we have too many of some items still left in stock
Mother Nature is teasing us all! April 20 2018, 0 Comments
Hasn't this been a crazy Winter and now what is suppose to be Spring?Winter Sale is happening now! February 03 2018, 0 Comments
Winter is a great time to do a deep cleaning and redecorate your home. It's cold out and let's face it, you can only read so much or watch so much TV. Now is a great time to freshen up your kitchen and dining areas with some great new decor items.
For a limited time, save 20% on select Kitchen & Dining Room decor. Choose from our large selection of canisters, drinkware, salt and pepper shaker sets, paper towel holders, wall decor, baskets, signs, and more.
From our family to yours, we wish you a safe and healthy winter season!
Click here to start shopping now!
Enter current discount code: WINTERSALE20 during checkout when prompted. Discount code only works on products in the Sale category.
Celebrate Small Business Saturday on November 26th November 14 2016, 0 Comments
It's that time of year again to show small businesses some love! Whether you're an online shopper or you prefer to personally shop inside your local storefronts, remember that small businesses make up a very large sector of our American economy. Behind those small businesses are your neighbors, your friends, and jobs for local communities. When small businesses succeed, your communities succeed so please support your locally-owned and operated small businesses.
Click here to go shopping now!
Thank you for your business and continues support.
Baubles-N-Bling & Staff
Welcome to the new and improved Baubles-N-Bling February 25 2014, 0 Comments
Welcome to our new look! While the products, service, and overall presentation is still the same, we now have a great new shopping cart and checkout system that will not only improve your shopping experience but will also provide security and assurance of safety shopping with us. Your privacy is our top priority.You'll also notice great visibility of our products, features that allow us to give you not only accurate product information regarding size, weight and shipping cost but also information to help you shop smarter.
We look forward to servicing you and hope you will find these new changes an improvement over our old system.
Thank you,
Baubles-N-Bling Owners & Staff
4051 Madison Street, Ste #7
New Port Richey, FL 34652
Baubles-N-Bling is your one-stop shopping headquarters for Woodland Decor and Vintage Decor
