Two new signs.

When we first purchased the business we had an old man sign and an old woman sign that were made out of wood. They were super heavy so we decided to discontinue them. Recently we were able to design our own old man sign and old woman sign with the help of Evan at Flamingo Factory. These are much nicer than the old heavy wooden ones.




The really great thing about these signs is they can be used for some many different occasions. They are not limited to birthdays. Want to tell your Dad "Happy Retirement"? The old man sign can do it!

Flamingo socks

We found some really cool Flamingo socks thanks to SockGrams on Twitter. Thought you would all like to see them. http://sockgrams.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_13&products_id=18

Madison Wisconsin's Official Bird

On September 1st, 2009 the Madison, Wisconsin City Council voted 15-4 to recognize the plastic pink flamingo as the official city bird. I too wondered why and went on a fact finding mission of sorts. Here is what I learned.

In the late 70's at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, Jim Mallon and Stu D. Baker became the founding members of the Pail and Shovel Party. In 1978, they ran for student council. One of their campaign promises was to convert the school's budget into pennies which would be spread on Library Mall for students to collect with pails and shovels. They were elected. The pair were responsible for many pranks at the school at the expense of the student government's budget. One of these pranks involved planting 1008 pink flamingos on Bascom Hill in the fall of 1979.


In April of this year, the Wisconsin Historical Museum's Odd Wisconsin exhibit was commemorating the 30th anniversary of the prank with pink flamingo sunglasses for visitors. Doug Moe, a writer for the Wisconsin State Journal, wrote a piece on the museum's exhibit and thought is was a good time to propose making the pink flamingo Madison's official bird. In fact Moe had proposed the same thing in 2006 when the company that created the pink flamingo announced it was closing. Apparently this time Ald. Marsha Rummel thought the idea was worthwhile. She was the sponsor of the resolution. After 5 minutes of debate a vote was held and the pink flamingo won!



UW-Madison student Joan O’Donnell snacks on Bascom Hill surrounded by 1,008 plastic flamingos Sept. 5, 1979.

Lawn Greetings going strong in tough economic times.

We have all heard on the news how bad the economy is and maybe even some of you have been affected by it but there are some industries that are still enjoying growth. One of those is the Lawn Greeting industry. The Lawn Greetings industry is defined as small businesses which help their customers celebrate various occasions and events by renting displays that are set up in a recipient’s yard. The displays vary greatly from giant wooden character signs and small "critter" signs, as they are referred to in the industry, to a wide array of elements for decorating a front yard such as 3D plastic or 2D wood and coroplast characters/shapes that include from the most popular, plastic pink flamingos, to the more obscure, plastic cows or over the hill themes, to the more traditional, stork signs for announcing births.

A recent discussion on the Lawn Greeting Association forums shows that the industry is still growing despite the economic downturn. Seven of the eight companies that commented on the discussion said that they were pleased with the number of deliveries they were doing. Tom of Special-Delivery 4 U in Muskego, Wisconsin mentioned seeing a 25% growth in sales for May compared to May 2008 with an additional 20% in June 2009. Janice of Front Yard Friends in Chesapeake, Virgina said "We had 30 yards in one night plus all of the pick ups from the night before ( 22). I honestly don't remember doing that many before but maybe we did." Cindi from Coastal Yard Cards in Sussex County, Delaware reports a 50% increase in sales for the month of June 2009 compared to last year at the same time. She thinks a new improved website helped with sales traffic. "A good web presence and search engine results are a key factor to getting your business out to the public". Cindi also says that while it is difficult in her area to spread the word about Lawn Greetings due to being the only business of it's kind in more than half of the state, she thinks once people actually see what Coastal Yard Cards offers, they absolutely love it and want to order a rental for their next occasion !

Not only is the industry seeing record sales, there are new companies starting up. Cheryl of Monkey In My Pocket Designs Yard Celebrations in Dutchess County, New York said "I have only been open for about a month so I don't have any of last year's figures to compare but I rented out 26 displays for May and I already have 32 orders for the month of June."

Even companies that specialize in birth announcements are doing well according to Amy of Special Deliveries in Pleasanton, California. She says "I am busier than I have ever been before. I don't have numbers, but for the last couple of months I have been doing 2-3 rentals a week (all mine are 1 week rentals)."

There are a little more than 840,000 people celebrating a birthday everyday of the year in the United States. In addition to that there are anniversaries, engagements, weddings, births & graduations throughout the year. Each one of those special occasions is a chance for a Lawn Greeting company to rent a display. It's really no wonder why the Lawn Greeting industry is still going strong and even growing in these tough economic times.

Flamingonapping Foiled!

On Friday July 3rd, our flamingo flock flew out to Pretty Lake in Dousman, Wisconsin to surprise a birthday girl. Since fifty of them went they created quite a scene and had many people stopping by to take pictures and to just adore them in general. According to the customer the lake was packed with visitors and party-goers since it was the Fourth of July. Here is what happened in his words.

"My son and daughter (both college students) had friends over and they camped out in the yard in tents.

On Saturday night, the kids discovered 4 flamingos behind the neighbor's garage -- kidnapped by some of the teenage party-goers next door. They were immediately rescued and returned to the flock. Thinking that all was well, my daughter was keeping a keen eye out not too far from the flock. At about 12:30AM, two middle aged women drove by on a four wheeler and stopped in front of our lot. They sat there for a while in the dark while my daughter crouched behind a car parked near our cottage. One of the women began slowing crawling (army style) from the edge of our our property towards the flock. My daughter popped up and yelled "you better not be thinking about stealing a flamingo!" The two women were startled, laughed a bit and sped off on the four wheeler."

Now that is keeping an eye on the flock. Fortunately there were no more attempts of flaminonapping and the flock returned home safely!

May set a record

Special-Delivery 4 U LLC sets a new company record for set ups. The previous record was set in May 2008 with 27. May 2009 saw a 25% increase in set ups to 36. June has already blown past May but the final numbers will not be in until later this week. Watch here for the news.

Our first baby & toddler expo

Today we attended our first baby & toddler expo. It was held at the Jewish Community Center in Whitefish Bay. It was also their first baby & toddler expo so we were in good company. LOL. Everything went well. We had an awesome location for our booth and were really happy with it. Since it was our first one we learned a few things. One of which is get a bigger booth next time. We had enough room for what we brought but were a bit cramped. Here is a picture of our booth.



As you can see in the picture the chairs were in front of the signs....not a very good idea if we want people to see the signs. Fortunately we had a computer monitor running a slide show of some of our displays on the table so people could still see the displays. Another thing we learned is that big men scare little toddlers. LOL. I tried to hand out smiley face stickers and not to many kids would take them from me. However they were more than happy to take one from Sheri. Go figure. Hahaha.

We will be doing another baby & toddler expo in September at a different location. We are looking forward to that one.

Lawn Greetings are everywhere!!

As a member of the Lawn Greeting Association, I know there are lawn greetings being put up everywhere. We have members from all over the United States and at least 4 other countries. However, I have never seen a lawn greeting in a cartoon. Yes in a cartoon. This weekend's episode of "King Of The Hill" changed that. The episode, "Lucky See, Monkey Do", featured a stork sign in the front yard.

Here is a picture of it.



Storks can be used for more than a baby shower though. Actually most storks are rented to announce a new baby. There is a variety of storks designs available from different companies through out the world. Some (like the one pictured) feature a delivery hat and a bundle while others are more formal and wear a tuxedo. Some wear bowler hats and even princess crowns. No matter the design they are a great way to let the world know about your bundle of joy!!

My video of some of our displays.

We were invited to be vendors at a toddler/baby expo in March so I thought I would do something creative to show off our displays. This is the first video I have tried to make and I will be improving it with better pictures before the expo but I thought I would share it with my readers (thanks Mom!).

Brrrr

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" is a quote that is generally applied to postal workers in the United States. Tonight it applied to Special-Delivery4U!!! We had a set up in Germantown tonight. Sheri and Ashley went to do it in -24 degree windchill. Yes that is 24 degrees below ZERO. That is really really cold. Hopefully the dinos will not freeze. LOL.

Some small things.

Wow, I hope I never ever get another computer virus again!!!!!! We got one that was so bad it was locking the computer up before it could even start. This computer had a ton of information on if for our business so it was really a major concern for us. Fortunately we have some friends are "Computer Guru's" and were able to help us get up and running on the kids computer. That lasted until Christmas time when we found a new computer system under the Christmas tree. But we still had the problem of stuff on the "bad" computer. Turns out that something we did with the hard-drive while it was installed in the temporary computer seemed to clean it up. So I was able to get some of the important stuff off of it. I will be working on cleaning it out completely in the next couple of weeks. Lesson learned? Have a back up. Another thing we found under the Christmas tree was a 320GB external hard-drive (Thanks Russ!!!). So now everything gets backed up routinely.

We have had a great year so far!!! I know that we are only 6 days into 2009 but we have already done 2 yard card displays and have 3 more scheduled for this weekend. This is a huge increase over last year! We have had to make a change this winter season though. We are not able to include the light and extension cord because of the ground being frozen.

Don't forget to check out the count down clock for lawn greeting month on our site. www.Special-Delivery4U.com

Flamingo Rods

I should have blogged about these before and I am sorry that I didn't. Better late than never as they say. So what exactly is a flamingo rod? To truly understand them you need to know that most 3D plastic flamingos come with two legs and they are a pain for a flocker to have to hold them and put the legs into the ground so that flamingo will stand tall for the world to see. Here is a picture of what a normal flamingo looks like.


As you can see there are two legs going in different directions. Add to that the fact that the legs are not attached to the flamingo very well and you have a problem. I can't tell you how many times we were in the process of setting up a display and one of the legs would fall out of the flamingo. Or worse bend as we were trying to push it into the ground. It would often take us 15 or 20 minutes to put up a display with flamingos.

(Picture from FlamingoRod.com)

Now that all of our flamingos have the flamingo rod installed it is much easier to do a set up. No legs falling out or getting bent. It is as simple as pushing down on the flamingo or the rod. One really cool feature of the flamingo rod is the flamingo will spin on there. Giving it a life like quality. We also like the fact that there is a bend at the top of the rod which makes pick up easy too. Simply pull up at the bend and it comes out of the ground.

If you own flamingos but they don't have flamingo rods you need to get them. They will save you time. We all know that time is money so you are saving money as well. Go and get them right away.

Not just for beginners.

As a member of the Lawn Greeting Association we were given access to a new e-book that has been developed for the lawn greeting industry by Jane from Phoenix Storks. First let me say that I wish this e-book had been available 2.5 years ago when Sheri and I started looking into the industry. It would have made our research so much easier. We researched for over a year before we finally made the decision to start our business. As it turned out we were able to purchase an existing business instead of starting from scratch.

With the e-book we would have been able to go into business much sooner than we actually did. There are a ton of resources in the book that any one interested in starting a lawn greeting business should have at their finger tips. In the year of research that we did we still missed some of things that Jane shares in the e-book. It is a fabulous e-book at a reasonable price.

It covers everything from the money making potential to how to market your new business. Jane talks about how to deal with competition (the lawn greeting industry has an interesting perspective on competition) and some tools and hardware you should have on hand during a set-up. She breaks down industry terms into easy to understand words. There are over 50 links to industry resources in the link section alone. That is not counting the links that are throughout the rest of the e-book. After reading this e-book if you don't have the knowledge and tools to start a lawn greeting business then you were sleeping through it!!

We have owned our business for almost two years now and I still learned from Jane's e-book. There are some marketing strategies that she shares we will be implementing in 2009. Which is why I titled this post "Not just for beginners." Even if you have been in business for years you can still learn something from this e-book and you will have bunch of resources all in one place already organized for you.