Pink Flamingos in a movie!!!

FITCHBURG, MASS. (Feb. 3, 1:15 p.m. ET) -- Garden ornament aficionados may soon be flocking to movie theaters to see a three-dimensional animated movie starring garden gnomes -- but also including the iconic plastic pink flamingo.

The flamingo designed by Don Featherstone is a member of the cast of the film Gnomeo and Juliet, which is due to hit theaters Feb. 11. The flick is a take-off on the classic Romeo and Juliet romance and pits rival garden-gnome families as the key characters.

Don Featherstone, who designed the flamingo for Union Products Inc. in 1957, attended with his wife Nancy, the film’s world premiere in Hollywood last week and was thrilled by what he saw.

“I’m very happy, they did a nice job,” said Featherstone, who did not want to reveal too much about the plot.

However, it just happens to have a pink flamingo named Featherstone as one its characters. And if you watch the Touchstone Pictures trailer about the movie, you’ll see the flamingo in some of the clips.

Gnomeo and Juliet was directed by Kelly Asbury, who also directed Shrek 2. The voice of the flamingo is Jim Cummings. Elton John’s music is a big part of the show.

“It’s got great music -- the old classics like Crocodile Rock. His music really blends in,” noted Featherstone.

Featherstone said that he got a call abut two years back from the production team, asking to use his name and the feathered bird in the film. They also obtained permission from the company that owns its licensing right, which is currently Cado Products Inc. of Fitchburg, Mass.

The animated flamingo impressed Featherstone, who recently turned 75.

“They did a great job. The flamingo is mine down to the last feather. The only thing they did was with the eyes. They wanted bigger eyes that could turn so that they got better expressions,” he said.

Featherstone said that he sculptured about 750 different products during his days at Union Products. He said that his goose and his swan both outsold the pink flamingo, but the flamingo continues to garner the most publicity.

When his signature started appearing on the pink flamingoes in 1987, he had no idea that it would lead to a film character called “Featherstone.”

“We’re really excited about it,” said Cado President Bruce Zarozny.

He said that Disney Enterprises Inc. gained permission from HMC International LLC originally and that the agreement was carried over when Cado acquired the rights in 2009 and formed its own Union Products division. He said that Union Products, a division of Cado, will be listed in the film’s credits.

The injection and blow molding company is proud that the original Donald Featherstone pink flamingo will be in the movie and has updated its packaging for the release. They’re prepared in case interest rises in the manufactured product.

“It’s just one of things that is neat for the community. As a company, we’re hoping more retail companies jump on board. It is a great item,” Zarozny said.

Article can be found here :Plastic News

Super Bowl XLV Special

We are running a Super Bowl XLV Special! For every order placed between 1/24 - 2/6. Your name will be entered in a drawing for a gift certificate for a FREE future display. Orders can be for anytime. They do not have to be delivered during the promotion dates.

Helping the Milwaukee Ronald McDonald House.

From the Milwaukee Ronald McDonald House website.

In the early 1980s, a small group of dedicated volunteers set out to build the first Ronald McDonald House in Wisconsin. The need back then was heart-wrenching. Families literally had no place to stay while their seriously ill child was being treated at Children’s Hospital or another Milwaukee hospital. The outpouring of support was remarkable. So much so that when we opened in Wauwatosa in 1984, we called it “the House that love built.” Today we serve families in ways we could have never imagined 25 years ago. During our early years, it was typical for guest families to spend a few nights, perhaps a week with us. Our 25 bedrooms proved sufficient for awhile. Then, over time, medical advances, the kind that save the lives of children who would not have been saved two decades ago, began requiring extended treatments. Yet doctors and nurses told us their young patients showed the best signs of healing when they could spend time away from hospital rooms in a more homelike setting surrounded by family. To accommodate these families, we expanded the House, adding an extended stay wing with 13 two-room units. We also renovated the existing House so that every family staying with us could have a private bathroom, a small amenity it may seem, but one that means a great deal to our guest families. These renovations have continued to make our House the best “home-away-from-home” it can be. Since the House opened in 1984, over 31,000 families from 568 Wisconsin communities, 48 states and 26 foreign countries have stayed at our Ronald McDonald House. These families are facing the worst crisis of their lives. Their child is seriously ill, and their lives are turned upside down. We may just be the only bright spot in their entire day and we take that responsibility to heart. We are a home-away-from-home, a place where kids can just be kids, and parents can lean on each other.

In October 2010 we had the honor of working with them. We were contacted by a representative about doing a display for a 6 year old boy that was staying at the Ronald McDonald House. Of course we said we would be glad to. After some phone calls back and forth we were set to do it, until we heard the weather forecast for the week.

The meteorologists were saying we could expect wind gusts up to 70mph. The stands we use for our displays can't handle wind that strong so we decided that we couldn't set the display up outdoors. We asked if it would be possible to put the display up somewhere indoors. After some consultations with other people at the House the rep let us know that they were having some sort of get together and didn't think that an indoor display would work for them. So it looked like we weren't going to be able to do the display.

A couple of days later we heard from the rep again, she wanted to know if we could do the display on a certain day (the little boy had gone out of town and was coming back that day and the Mom really wanted the sign for the little guy). Fortunately we were picking up the display they wanted on that day. So we could put it up right after we picked it up from the customer that had it. The little boy absolutely loved the sign! His Mom was thrilled we were able to do it for them too.

Helping the Milwaukee Ronald McDonald House was a really great experience. It is definitely something that we will do again if they want!!!

This is a test

I read a blog today where the author mentioned that he could post a blog and it would automatically be posted to Facebook and Twitter. Since we (ok really it is just me) have been wanting to find an easy way to update our blog, Facebook fan page and Twitter more often. I thought I would try it for our blog. This blog post is a test to see what happens. If you would be kind enough, I would really appreciate it very much if you would leave a comment so I know that it worked the way it was supposed to. Please leave the comment wherever you first saw this. Thank you all very much. I hope this works.

Local News!!

We made the TMJ4 TV news at 4:40pm yesterday!!! We did a set up at the station for their Sales Manager's birthday and they talked about the display and wished him a happy birthday. Very cool. We are working on getting a copy to put on the site and the blog. In the mean time here is a picture of the display.

Website Stuff

Yesterday and today, we made some improvements to our website. The biggest change has been that we now have a customer testimonial page. These are unsolicited comments from some past customers. Check it out here www.special-delivery4u.com/testimonials/

The other two additions to our site are on the navigation bar on the left side. We added links to our Twitter feed & Facebook fan page. Check them out www.special-delivery4u.com

2010

We are off to a good start in 2010. So far we have had 14 displays this month. Including one stork for a newborn. We love helping to celebrate the birth of a new baby! Looking forward to doing more of those throughout the year.

We redid the website this weekend. We are hoping that it makes it easier for our site visitors to view. If you have any comments on the website please send us an e-mail to service "@" Special-Delivery4U.com Don't forget to remove the quotes and spaces.

We are going to be purchasing all of the inventory from a company in Ohio in February. When we go to pick up the inventory we plan on getting together with some other owners out there for lunch. It should be a fun time!!

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.