StockPins Blog

After watching the debates last night I wanted to make a public offer to the folks at Barack Obama’s campaign.  I felt bad that Senator Obama was (unfairly in my opinion) berated for not wearing an American Flag Lapel Pin.   So, Senator OBama - if you’ll give us a call or send us a note - we’ll be happy to send you enough flag pins to last the rest of the campaign. 

Just trying to do my part to advance democracy around the world….

~Pinonda

Ahoy - all ye landlubbers and seamen alike - whether ye serve before the mast or in the afterguard - Today be International Talk Like  A Pirate Day!!  Grab some grog and our skull and crossbones pins and party like yer headed to Davey Jones’ Locker! 

As many of our readers know we have live chat to help customers as they browse our store.  One of the neat features of this software is you can see how many customers are browsing at any time and where they came from.   The other day all at once, everything went bonkers.  Thousands of folks stated visiting the store and they were all looking at angel pins.  Turns out ESPN.com had just posted a story  about Nomar Garciaparra wearing one of our pins!

An astute fan had noticed and pointed out to Paul Lukas (Uni Watch and ESPN Columnist) that Nomar has the habit of wearing a “Fairy on his left armband.”   ESPN photo dept went to work and turned up some great shots of Nomar wearing our Guardian Angel (style E08) lapel pin. 

Aparently Nomar’s people have decided to not comment on the pin.  We take the privacy of our customers very seriously and will neither confirm or deny the purchase.    We should note however, that Nomar is not the first celebrity to have been spotted wearing our pins.  Last November Isiah Thomas was spotted wearing our puzzle pin and, truth be told, Hollywood wardrobe departments are frequent customers. 

I hope the pin brings you good luck Nomar and thanks for all the visitors!

~Pinonda

 It’s almost Graduation time and the class of ‘07 will be looking pretty sharp at commencement.  We’re getting calls every day from folks needing pins for graduation ceremonies.  So just in case you need a little inspiration - Here’s a good example from a customer: 

We are a Practical Nursing Program in a high school in partnership with a community college. There is no set pin style for the program yet, since it is only 4 year in the making. So we give our students a Caduceus as a pin for their uniform and graduation gowns.

So in this case they’ve used the Caduceus pin to identify the group of grads who’ve completed this nursing program.  The other common way we see people using pins - is to give them to friends / classmates as a rememberence.  While alot of you will be moving out of State, changing schools, making new friends, experiencing life’s fabulous journeys, pins are a great way to stay connected.  Every time someone wears a pin you gave them, they’ll remember you.    So…

Be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray
Or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O’Shea
You’re off to great places
Today is your day. 
Your lapel pin is waiting
So get yours today!

~sorry - couldn’t help myself - big fan of Dr Suess.

We have been informed by the administration at VT - that the official policy is that they want absolutely no memorial items produced and are using all possible means to stop merchants from offering such items. 

We respect the difficult position that the VT administration is in.   On the one hand the community is looking for ways to express their grief while on the other the administration needs to protect the privacy and dignity of the families. 

We originally designed our pin in response to dozens of requests from members of the VT community.  We regret any inconvenience that this causes to our customers.  Many of you were planning to use the pin in your fundraising efforts to support the victims and their families.  As a substitute we will offer our black ribbon pin at the same special price.   We also are encouraging all our customers to donate directly to The Hokie Sprit Memorial Fund

We ask for your understanding - there are a lot of people trying to do the right thing here and we all just need to find our way through this. 

~Pinonda

This has been an incredibly tough week for everyone.  The tragedy Monday really hit home with a lot of people.  Our hearts go out to all the victims and their families, we can’t begin to imagine the pain that they must feel. 

Since monday we have received dozens of requests for a VT Memorial pin.  We always struggle with such requests - not wanting to offend anyone but at the same time wanting to respond to our customers.  The below exchange between our product manager Steve and a customer pretty much sums up our internal struggle: 

Dear StockPins.  After every national tradegy we’ve had (including 9/11 and Katrina), I have come to your website to see what awareness/support pins you had and have always bought plenty.  After the shooting at Virginia Tech, I came here thinking you might have a support/fundraiser pin for Tech as you did for Katrina and have not seen anything yet.  I was wondering if you were planning to create such a pin or if you might consider it?

Please let me know if you can.

Thank you.

Rosaline

———————————

Hi Roasaline - thanks for writing.  We always struggle with this.  Like
everyone we’re deeply affected by tragedies like this and don’t want to
appear to be profiteering.  At the same time, we do have many customers
who, like you want to be able to show their support for the victims.
After much consideration and numerous requests like yours - we have
decided to offer a special pin.

 It will be available online shortly and will be shipping in late next
week.

Thanks for writing

Steve
——————————-

Steve:

Thank you for the quick response.  Especially if it has an element of
fundraising, which I believe you usually do in cases such as this, I
think it is seen as a completely positive thing and not as a way to
“cash in” on a tragedy - so, in my opinion, I feel you have made the
correct choice.

I will check later this afternoon to see if its up yet and place my
order.

Thank you again.

Rosaline

————————–
Hi Rosaline - thanks - It’s a hard choice.

In the case of the Katrina and 911 tragedies we collected funds and then
sent it to the red cross.  In this case I really wouldn’t know where to
send the funds.  Plus lots of people like to use the pin for their own
fundraising or just to hand out to people in the community.  So in those
cases we need to be able to sell them as inexpensively as possible.   I
think what we’ll do is offer the pins as inexpensively as we can so
people can give them away or use them to raise money on their own.

——————–

Good plan - thanks again!

Rosaline

In the end, as you can see we did decide to a Virginia Tech Black Ribbon Pin.  We’re offering it at our lowest possible price for any quantity - because we want as many people to be able to show their support and hopefully raise lots of money.  Please share your stories with us. 

Hi folks, been a while since I have “blogged”. I have been so busy. Keep the orders coming! Today’s topic–Spring! Oh what better time to “sport” your favorite pin and make a big fashion statement. With so many outdoor sports getting into full swing, we have a large assortment of pins to keep those conversations going. Not to mention the friends you could make!  So whether it’s fishing, boating or another kind of sport, search for the pin you can say “wow, how cool” too! Speaking of sports..golf is very near (if not already)…have you seen our Golf Hat / Pocket Clips? Our Divot Tools? Already have a divot tool but need replacement ball markers?–Got ‘EM!  Check out our personalized golf items!

Windows Vista has a new feature that’s pretty cool called “Gadgets”   Gadgets are small programs that run on your desktop.  You can find gadgets for all sorts of interests.   Including - Awareness events.

That’s right - Stockpins has designed our own Gadget that you can download for free!  The Awareness Gadget allows you to keep up to date on all the awareness events going on around the world.  It’ll tell you what’s going on right now and let you scroll through upcoming events.  Wondering what’s up next month??  - just scroll ahead to find out that April is Parkinson’s Awareness month in Canada and Autism Awareness Month in the US.  It also shows the awareness pins and has information about each event and links to the sponsoring group for each event. 

We will be updating the events continually - so if you know of an event please email us the details.   

This was way too funny to pass up! While doing a bit of online research for our awareness month section - I came across this Pee Ball campaign from The Prostate Charity in the UK.

Designed by Sweetapple, Peeball is an innovative, award winning game aimed at raising awareness about prostate cancer in a light-hearted way. All the player needs is a Peeball, a urinal and the need to pee. After removing the Peeball from its box, the player places it in the urinal, takes aim and attempts to destroy the Peeball in the shortest possible time. It is not a diagnostic tool to test for prostate cancer, however difficulty passing urine whilst playing the game may indicate a prostate or urinary problem.

Now I know as well as anyone that cancer is no laughing matter - but it’s great to see a light hearted approach to raising awareness.  Plus - it’s bound to improve your aim!

Hi my name is Pinonda and Im a Podcastaholic. Yes - i admit it i’m totally addicted to podcasts. I listen to them at the gym, walking the dog and during my daily commute. Over the weekend I was listening to one of my favorites - Dishymix. It’s a podcast by Susan Bratton (of Ad:Tech fame) where she interviews various figures in the internet / web 2.0 world and talks about what makes them tick.

She was talking to David Scott Carlick a VC who among other things funded Myspace - and they were discussing the way he’s developed a certain look that people have come to know him by. He wears a black mock turtleneck and a blazer with (drumroll please….) a lapel pin.

They talked about how and why he wears them and I was so psyched because here is a guy who totally gets it! He says (i’ll paraphrase) that he started off wearing a pin with an actual fish that was embedded in plastic. He noticed that it would break the ice with people and made him more approachable. “I Found that a gray haired guy with a dead fish on his lapel was so approachable that it made my life more interesting” People would come up to him and say “what’s up with the fish?” From there he started collecting pins and basically has one for every jacket he wears.

That’s exactly the effect that pins have that makes them so much fun. And that’s what Im trying to capture in this blog. Stockpins customers have tons of great stories like that to tell and it’s fun to hear one of the big dogs acknowledge the role lapel pins can play in connecting people.