Changes at Windstone

I was just curious if you all have changed your business model. Of course, since I am fairly new to the forums, I am not sure how long you have been offering LP stuff.Yes we have changed! We’ve discovered the whole new (to us) world of selling online, direct, and selling special edition things in our store and on Ebay. Believe it or not, we had no idea that we even had collectors, let alone ones that would care enough to want special lp pieces, until we started this forum and began selling on ebay! We began online by offering some prototype dragons on ebay, just because we didn’t know what else to do with them, and found that people wanted them! We were very surprised!
Now we have shifted from being a 100% wholesale manufacturing company to doing some retail.
In order to not compete with our retail stores, we began producing limited production stuff which is only available from us, and at the same time making production things that are for stores. We do offer production things directly form our online store, but this is only intended for people in parts of the world that have no “real” store to go to.
This forum has been a wonderful help with designing products. I have never before gotten very much feed back about what people like and don’t like about Windstones, except by what sells well and what doesn’t in the stores.

I remember when a bunch of Canadian stores shut down, and they told me that Melody was retired… I am so glad that it isn’t true, and now I have an online store to buy from, rather the drive 45mins-1hr depending on traffic and amount of construction (there are 2 seasons in Alberta, winter, and construction).

When the post office doesn’t input the wrong postal code, of course. When Colin bought me the BG momma coiled they put it in the wrong postal code. Didn’t find it till they FINALLY gave us the tag.

I like that they are doing alot of LP and OOAK stuff but I can’t afford it, so I just get to watch and want. Like those Sunrise laps. A couple more years and I would have one.

Over the years of me collecting it seemed like fewer and fewer places had Windstones and I have to say I was frightened if someday Windstone wouldn’t be around anymore. Glad to see that will never happen now!

Well, I don’t know if I’d say that… I think it’s fair to say that with the sad closure of so many of the retail stores that Windstone isn’t getting any bigger… they are just evolving to stay in business. 🙂

Since I know that your Canadian supplier quit (my mom used to drag me to the trade shows) I was so lucky to find this forum. Google is a wonderful thing. I’ve been able to slowly finish my collection of Peacocks (just missing the kinglet). And I love the fact that you care enough to actually find out what we want.

You have a whole bunch of happy customers spread out far and wide!

That’s true, but I do hope LP sales slow down once the factory is settled. The regular production pieces lose some of their value and fascination when everybody is ready to pounce on the special stuff that hits E-Bay every week.