Late yesterday morning, Wednesday July 18th, we received an email from Westland letting us know that our Summer 2007 ponies had been picked and were ready to be shipped to us. This shipment is only the 8 figurines, Christmas figurines and all ornaments are not expected to ship until mid-August. Once we got word that the ponies were ready to ship we scrambled to get bids from trucking companies to deliver the product to us. Yesterday afternoon arrangements were made and to the best of our knowledge the ponies were picked up from Westland and should be on there way to us.
It is important to note that most companies selling Painted Ponies don't order enough to ship by truck, they receive there merchandise UPS ground. We discovered early on that when our merchandise is delivered to us UPS ground many of the cartons are damaged. While the figurines are in good shape the collectors boxes are often crushed, dented or torn. We believe this is due to over handling of the cartons, from truck to conveyor belt to another truck and so on and so fourth until the product finally reaches us. By having our merchandise delivered by freight truck the product is handled only by Westland and us. Once the product is picked at Westland it is placed on pallets and shrink wrapped. It is loaded on to the truck and delivered direct to us with no additional handling. We believe that by doing things this way, you ultimately receive a better quality product. Sure, we love selling to you at the lowest available price, but that doesn't mean we're not constantly trying to improve on quality.
Once our shipment arrives we will be cataloging each figurine in preparation for sending your ponies to you with the lowest issue numbers going to the clients that ordered their ponies first. We do this because we know, that to many of our clients, low issue numbers are important. This additional service, not provided by our competitors, is our way of saying "thank you" for purchasing your ponies through us.
