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Village Pride! . . . a Department 56 e-magazine presented by Michael Winters

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We think it is really reinforcing a valid position to become the "Celebrations" authority.  Everybody likes to decorate, and our consumers like to decorate even more.

Here are just some of the ideas we have looked at - if you think about recurring holidays, Halloween, Easter, Thanksgiving, St. Patrick's Day and Valentine's Day.  Everybody has special days - some of those are recurring every year like birthdays and anniversaries, and some are just widespread through the population, like weddings, baptisms and the first day of school.  Then there are those special moments during the year that happen, like the Fourth of July picnic or the end of the summer barbeque.  We think it is our position to go after any number of these holidays.

The second element of our growth strategy is to really maximize the potential of our core channel.  This has been the foundation of our company and we are committed to continue the focus on this channel of distribution.  As Tim said, the 13,00 accounts we have are primarily "Mom and Pop" stores, some larger chains like the Gold Crown Hallmark stores, and most of the major department stores.  What's happening, particularly in the "Mom and Pop" stores, is the continuing attrition, as has happened to many fragmented channels. 

We've put together some new programs to try and stabilize the revenue, and maximize the revenue and profit from this channel. 

We've done some new programs and privileges for the first time.  To be a special account, it has a volume criteria, and we do
special things for these accounts and they have some requirement that they have to do for Department 56. 

We started a new program called
Specialty Retail - traditionally, to sell our product you had to buy everything in any particular village.  For instance, if you wanted to sell something for Snow Village, there would be 92 sku's in that line. 

That's huge, so when you lose an account,
it's really hard to get a new account to take all that breadth of assortment.  So we've developed a way for new accounts to get in, in a much smaller way than having to take 92 sku's. 

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