HAPPY EARTH DAY

Welcome back to the Milk Crate, and Happy Earth Day. I'm not going to make this a long entry, but just wanted to remind everyone what Earth Day is all about. Earth Day is a day to remind everyone what their responsibility is to the planet. The Earth has given us everything that we have, and will give us everything that we will have. The only problem is, it's been a one way street as far as most are concerned. We have done nothing to give back to the Earth all that we have taken from it, and Earth Day is a day to remember that. If you see a piece of trash on the ground today, pick it up. If you see someone about to throw a glass or plastic bottle away, remind them to recycle it. Don't squander the gifts that Mother Nature has provided for us all. Instead of picking a flower today, plant one. Instead of take out food sold in non-biodegradable containers, buy yourself some fresh fruits and vegetables. Instead of driving around wasting gas today, take a stroll and enjoy the Spring air.
Earth Day only comes once a year, folks, but Vermont Woods Studios is committed to making every day one where we fulfill our commitment to the planet's continued health. All of our furniture is made from wood harvested here in the United States, using sustainable forestry practices. Going "green" is something that all companies seem to be working towards nowadays. We started as a "green" company, and are proud to continue to offer only "green" products, made by local craftspeople.
Enjoy Earth Day, everyone, from all of us here at VWS. Until next time, this is Brian M. signing off. Time for our corporate wellness walk around lovely Vernon, Vermont. I wonder what great discounts we'll dream up on this walk. Check back to find out !

Vermont-Made Furniture Sets .... Matches Made In Heaven

Greetings from Vermont, and welcome back to the Milk Crate. One look at the beautiful picture above, and you can see where our artisans get their inspiration from. Our woodworkers all have their small shops, tucked away in the depths of the mountains here in Vermont. These breathtaking views are something that they get to enjoy on a daily basis and it provides them with the inspiration to create these magnificent, heirloom quality furniture pieces that we offer at Vermont Woods Studios.

Our craftsman do such great work, that we are diligently working each day to think up new and inventive ways to present them to our customers and also ways to make purchasing easier. A recent hiking trip that our owner took provided her with some "divine" inspiration. While looking at this heavenly landscape where thousands of trees seem to be one grassy knoll, where hundreds of hills and valleys become part of one giant mountain, the idea dawned on her. Why not offer entire sets of furniture, rather than one piece at a time, and offer the entire set at a discounted price.

You are probably saying to yourself, this is not a new concept. That much is true, but we are not your typical furniture retailer. We don't sell mass-produced, or assembly line products. Our goods don't come out of a container that was shipped in from overseas. Each piece of our furniture is made to order, meticulously crafted by hand, right here in Vermont. To offer an entire set of this quality of furniture at the discounts that we are now offering is completely unheard of, until now.

Our pieces typically take approximately eight weeks to craft. Our customers are more than willing to wait for their furniture, because they know that their piece is being worked on by skilled professionals and is being given the utmost amount of tender loving care. With these new furniture sets, one might ask, would I now have to wait even longer to receive this order due to the number of pieces involved? The answer is no, and as a matter of fact, you'll actually be able to get the furniture faster than ever.

In our constant monitoring of trends in our business, we see what pieces are the most popular, and compare those figures to the statistics of the craftspeople we represent. We've taken this information and worked out a system that allows the most popular and frequently ordered pieces to be available on a faster turnaround. This means that you get the same hand-crafted, custom-made furniture in half the time, and at the same time you are able to take advantage of deeper discounts then ever before offered by Vermont Woods Studios.

These discounts are truly a godsend, and will certainly have you hoping that our owner goes hiking more frequently. Check out the Dining Room Furniture Sets page on our site today, and check back regularly, as we plan to expand this page in the immediate future. We will also look to put together a Bedroom Furniture Sets page as soon as we have adequate time to review the applicable data. There are also plenty of other pieces on sale at our Furniture On Sale page. Until next time, this is Brian M. signing off from the Milk Crate, wishing you all a heavenly day.

We Don't Make Mistakes....We Make Bargains

As I sit down to write my first entry here on the Milk Crate I feel compelled to tell you that contrary to popular belief, we here at Vermont Woods Studios are not perfect. Like most people, we are susceptible to making a mistake here and there. The difference between our staff and the rest of the mistake making world is simple. Typically, when somebody makes a mistake, it means that rectifying said mistake is going to take a great deal of effort to do. We take a completely different approach here at VWS. Instead of trying to fix mistakes, we let our customer's fix them for us. This may sound like us simply passing the buck, but in actuality, it's hundreds of bucks that we're passing. Let me give you an example.

A natural cherry bed gets ordered in the wrong size from one of our local craftspeople. Rather then going through any issues with returns or credits or anything along those lines, we simply order a new bed in the correct size. This "mistake" is now ready to ship, but to who? This is where our customers come in to play, and how our passing the buck makes problem solving a simple task.

John Q. Customer is browsing our site, and decides to check out the Furniture On Sale page of our website. He is looking for a new bed made from sustainably harvested wood, and was wondering if he could get a great bed, handmade in Vermont, at a discounted price. Call it luck, call it a mistake, call it destiny, call it what you will, but the bed we ordered in the incorrect size is just the right size for him. This new customer now not only gets a beautiful bed, made right here in the Green Mountain State, at a discounted price AND gets to circumvent the 7-10 week crafting time on an heirloom quality piece of this nature. He doesn't get to customize the piece, but he doesn't need to. He doesn't want to wait 9-14 weeks for delivery, and guess what, he doesn't have to. In addition to all these benefits, he also gets to save a few hundred dollars off the retail price. Boy, don't you wish we made more mistakes !?!?!?

The fact is, these types of errors do not happen very often. We take our ordering process very seriously here at Vermont Woods Studios because our customers are entrusting us with their dreams. You visualize your home and the way you'd like it to look, and then you call us to make those dreams into a reality with custom built, hardwood furniture, that is built to last a lifetime. We pride ourselves on being able to perform this service for our customers, but the fact remains, we're only human. We urge you to take advantage of our mistakes and capitalize on the discounts that our mistakes bring about. Bookmark the Furniture On Sale page of our site and check it regularly. Not only do these "mistakes" wind up there, but we're constantly offering selections from our catalog of hand-crafted hardwood furniture at discounted prices. All of our prices include white-glove shipping and setup in your home, something you will not find from other furniture retailers.

Look for more posts here on the Milk Crate in the future from me, Brian M, regarding any and all new developments on the Vermont Woods Studios horizon. We're constantly evolving and changing the way we service our customers and I will be sharing these changes with you through this blog, so stay tuned.