We know there are some incredibly interesting jobs out there, jobs that we’ve all dreamed of. Secret shopper for Neiman-Marcus. Rolling Stone reporter assigned to hang with Jay-Z and Beyonce. Taste tester for Ben & Jerry’s. Ski instructor at Aspen. Personal Assistant to Bradley Cooper. Those are all good, right?
Yeah, we’d like one of those. We’re pretty sure we could be VERY helpful to Bradley Cooper. But since we don’t get to hang with celebrities, we’re going to go out on a limb and say that working at Pick Up Sticks is pretty crazy amazing. It’s never boring, it’s creative, it’s relaxed, and, honestly, it’s almost always fun. Here’s a quick look at what we do all day, some days. Other days we sit around the studio and brainstorm while eating taquitos from The Foxy. Just another job hazard – great New Mexico fast food.
The above photo is Candace and Leigh dressing Judy up for her wholesale show debut. This is just one example of how we load her with Pick Up Sticks. . .we’ve seen lots of different pictures of our customers’ own Judy and we’d love to see more. If you’ve perfected the Judy-loading method, let us know your secret. As far as we can tell, you’re all doing a great job of creating your own beautiful versions.
“Which wholesale gift shows to attend? Who is going where? Where should we stay? How should we get there? And most important of all-what great restaurant do we get to try while we’re there?” These are just a few of the questions that get asked and answered daily at Glena’s desk. Other tasks like talking to Sabrina on the phone about the creative process, paying the bills, payroll, inventory control, design decisions, and bookkeeping are just a few of the jobs she tackles. If there’s a number to be crunched, Glena is the girl to do it. Just hand her a pile of data and she’s a happy camper (there’s that finance degree showing itself. . .). Of course getting to come to work every day with her dogs, her Mom, with Candace and Leigh and with Treyla, the newest Pick Up Sticks girl, is the biggest treat of all. (Hmmmmm. . .would you like to see a post on the “Dogs of Pick Up Sticks”? I’m thinking YES.)
Ever wondered how the “pulling and checking” process works when you order? This is Leigh checking an order she’s just pulled from the stacks of bins of inventory behind her. Those bins hold every single charm in our line. Leigh picks up the order from our fancy printer, walks to our “Walls of Bins” and removes all your charms from their assigned bins. From there, the charms and trinkets go through a two-pronged cross checking process. Leigh and at least one other Pick Up Sticks girl look over your order to insure that it’s shipped to you as quickly and accurately as possible.
Check out that great orange wall. We are all about color and whimsy at Pick Up Sticks.
Here’s a glimpse of Candace at the heart of the studio, on the phone, typing an order. Behind her is our handy-dandy fancy printer that basically does everything except pick up lunch from Twin Cronies Drive-In (more of that New Mexican fast food). It not only prints your typed, emailed, or faxed orders, it prints our catalogs, the post cards, bio cards, images for studio use, AND your order forms (whew)! It is possibly the hardest worker in the studio!
By the way, Candace is wearing the 30” Small Link Chain with a AN058 Grow Strong Charm.
Judy isn’t the only display that gets a face lift before a new show season begins. The display boards have to updated with all the new season’s designs. Glena is somewhat of a p-touch (label maker) guru, so she get the boards measured, p-touched and ready for Candace and Leigh to pin all the new charms and trinkets on the boards.
Here’s Candace attempting to organize the board that holds the potential/proposed new trinkets. This highly systemized process (most days) is studied intently and rearranged daily to make sure we’re creating the perfect trinkets to go with all our photo charms. How are we doing with that?
And finally, here we share with you the highlight of our day. Leigh (lucky Leigh) is handing your orders over to our favorite FedEx driver(eat your hearts out ladies)!!!
We didn’t get a chance to include a picture of Treyla in this post, but plan to do an entire blog post introducing you all to her soon. Hopefully she’ll agree that working at Pick Up Sticks is almost always entertaining and interesting!
We love what we do. Now if we could just get Bradley Cooper to drop by with a couple of pints of Ben & Jerry, life would be perfect.
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