Syracuse Gift Basket Company Inc.

Another item we struggled with was the rolls of bubble wrap we use in our shipping room. They are big - and we didn't have a good way to keep it handy for packing. We created a giant spool by taking a cheap round outdoor patio table and gluing a piece of PVC pipe in the middle...

(Okay, Gift Basket Guru - the next few posts are for you. :-)This is a pic of our main production area that we just relocated to a bigger room. There are a few good, stealable ideas you can see in this shot:1...

Every new year I vow to fix all the nagging little (and big) issues with the business, and this year is no exception. We solved a bunch of them this week:1...

Check out our nifty new sign! I was looking for an "Open" sign that lights up to put in our front window, and ran across this.

Well, we survived our first holiday season in our new location. In some ways, the new spot on Erie Blvd is better - it's more visable and much easier access...WAY better for our customers. Behind the scenes, it was not so good...

The first round of gifts - 92 - is heading out the door today.

No rest for the wicked....we are diving into our next big project. 40 down, 165 to go...

We have a tractor trailer coming today to pick up the first wave of gifts - 9 pallets wrapped and ready to go. I was a little worried about having the space to get these together, but it all worked out fine.

We learned how to wrap boxes on a pallet yesterday...and discovered that, YES, we can actually fit these things out the door.

The boxes are snaking down the hallway...we're running out of room! But the client stopped in yesterday and checked on our progress, and they were totally thrilled. If the program is successful, the next time around it will be about 2000 gifts. Yikes...

And many, many more that still need to be shrink wrapped and bowed. We had a potential crisis yesterday that halted production, but luckily it turned out to be a false alarm. Onward and upward...

We've got about 250 gifts completed and in various stages of production. These are waiting to packed.

We had busy productive weekend at SGB, and we're at about the halfway point with our project. The first wave of baskets are boxed, labeled and ready to go out.