Discover Delaware Kenmore N.Y.

I finally got a chance to post the Discover Delaware pictures. What a fun event. We woke up in the morning and discovered it was raining. I told Helene we needed to get a tent twice and both times she said we didn't need one. Morning of the event, it's raining, and I'm out looking for a tent at 7:30 in the morning without a first cup of coffee. Talk about waking up on the wrong side of the bed. I got a tent at Home Depot, came back and set it up, and guess what ? IT STOPPED RAINING !

After that fiasco the event went off without a hitch and everyone had a blast. The sun soon peaked out from behind the clouds, the farmers market was open across the street, music filled the air from various entertainers and Delaware was a alive with all kinds of people walking around enjoying good food, buying produce at the farmer's market, and checking out the various goods and services offered by their community retailers.  The event really was a lot of fun. In between customers I would run out in the street and snap a few pictures.

Here's the tent we purchased and there's Helene setting up with her friend.

The lovely ladies from MOD Dance. These are our neighbours from the dance studio next store. I think they did a performance down the street that I wanted to get pictures of but we got busy in the shop and I couldn't run down there. 

Some of the local entertainment. These guys were really good. They did a harmonizing, do wop kinda thing, and everyone really seemed to enjoy it. I think I need to start getting names for the blog. I also heard a really good guitar player while I was in the shop but didn't have a chance to run out and get a picture.

One of the vendors from the farmers market representing Prudom Farms. At least that's what the sign said on her stand. The produce looked soooo good and fresh. I meant to get back there and buy a few things but we got pretty busy in the shop. I assure you I'll be buying some of this ladies produce this weekend. If you're like me and love locally grown produce you really want to check out the Kenmore Farmers Market every Saturday morning.

These cherries looked so good I had to take a picture, I should of used a different lens on the camera, but don't they look yummy.

Mr. Cool was selling ice cream right across the shop.

A street shot of the vendors and people shopping the Discover Delaware event.

Well, those are a few of the better pictures I took. When the event was over we ordered a pizza from Mike's Subs, they just started selling Pizza, and I have to say, like all their food the Pizza is FANTASTIC ! The Pizza was the perfect ending to a perfect afternoon.

 The Farmers Market runs every Saturday morning on the municipal building lawn where Delaware Rd. and Delaware Ave. meet. If you live nearby you really want to check it out ,the produce is fresh and delicious, and it's a great way to spend Saturday morning not to mention you can stop by our shop and say hi !

Square Not Swiping or Reading Credit Card.

We purchased a square the other day to use at different community events that we attend. This is a really great product once you get it working right. Wherever we are now, we can bill customers with the use of a smart phone. The Square billing device simply plugs into the smart phone, and works like a regular credit card swiper.

I downloaded the app, plugged in the device, and the app recognized the device, but wouldn't swipe the credit card. It would allow me to create a sale manually by entering the credit card information myself, but it would not read the credit card when I swiped it through the reader. I looked around the internet for a solution and really didn't find much information. One suggestion was to turn off wi-fi, I tried that and still no success. Another stated to press down firmly on the device and swipe the card. Ahh hah ! problem solved. The device snapped into place and I realized I didn't have it in all the way.

The device is a pretty snug fit. I never force anything into a slot, or hole on computers and phones. The device must be seated all the way into the jack on the phone. Once I accomplished this the product worked great. Now our customers can use credit cards anywhere we set up shop.

Seeing I didn't find a lot of information on this topic around the internet, I thought I would post it here for anyone that might be having the same problem. I'll be posting a little more information on this device shortly.

Kenmore N.Y. Memorial Day Parade

Kenmore VFW marches past Helene's Mostly Jewelry on Memorial Day.

The Memorial Day Parade. Click the images for larger pictures.

The Memorial Day Parade marched by the store on Monday and we got a bunch of pictures and thought we'd post them here. 

The Grand Marshall of the Memorial Day Parade. Nice Car!

And the parade begins.

Bag Pipe Players marching down Delaware Ave.

Bag Pipe Players Marching past St.Paul's on Delaware Ave.

Juggling past the store.

 This guy juggled past the store.

Gorgeous antique car drives by Helene's Mostly Jewelry in the Memorial Day Parade.

This antique car was absolutely gorgeous.

My favorite car featured in the parade.

This car was great. My favorite entry in the parade. I think this is a Buick Skylark GS maybe 1971. What a beauty.

The parade was a lot of fun. Hope you enjoyed the pix.

Website Keeping Us Busy

We haven't been posting here much. The website is keeping us real busy. We have the basic template up, and we should be improving it all the time now. We just added our first product to the shopping cart, so if you get a chance stop by the new site and check it. The site is in beta test right now, and the one product listed is available for purchase.

This really reminds me of spring. I wish it would stop snowing and summer would get here !

 Frog and dragonfly salt and pepper shaker now available on our website !

YaY, Today We Started To Ebay !

In our quest to drive our business into the modern digital age, we opened an Ebay account. We will be selling closeouts, special offer items, gifts, watches and whatever else we think will be fun for Ebay. Check us out on Ebay, and local pickup is always welcome.

http://myworld.ebay.com/mostly_jewelry

The Etsy Shop Is Up !

Getting a jewelry store online is a lot of work. We just got our Etsy shop up and running. We are planning on listing all our vintage and antique jewelry on Etsy. Here's a picture of how the Etsy shop looks.

Right now we have about 9 items for sale. We will be adding more. Rich hasn't been real happy with the pictures so he's building a light box this week, and then we will be adding more products to Etsy, and then creating an inventory on mostly-jewelry.com.

If you get a chance stop by the Etsy shop and see some of our vintage jewelry, or if you live in the neighborhood, stop by and check out the items in person, grab a cup of coffee, and chit chat a bit. TTYS.

Lions Club Pancake Breakfast.

Local news for  anyone that follows locally. Lions Club of Kenmore NY, will be hosting there annual pancake breakfast Sunday March 3, 2103 at St. Andrews Church Hall on Elmwood Ave. and Sheridan Dr. in the Town of Tonawanda.

The function will be held 8 a.m to 1 p.m. Prices for adults are $6.00, children 4 - 12  $4.00, under 4 eats for free. Stop by and support your local community and the Lions Club of Kenmore.

Helene's Mostly Jewelry on Etsy !

So we're pretty excited over here. We just got our Etsy shop up and running. We thought it would be a good venue to showcase our vintage jewelry. Right now we only have one item listed, but we will be filling the Etsy shop with all kinds of unique, and vintage jewelry and estate pieces. If you get a chance, stop by the Etsy shop and check it out.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/HelenesMostlyJewelry

Wishing You All A Happy Valentine's !

Happy Valentine's Day everyone !

Update, Mostly Jewelry Online !

So, we haven't been posting here or on Facebook or Google Plus for a little bit.Things have been pretty busy. We registered a domain name and we're getting ready to take our business into the modern age. The basic website template is up for mostly-jewelry.com but we still have to plug in our shopping cart, and products. If your bored check out the new site, and I'll keep you all updated on our progress from time to time.

mostly-jewelry.com

Picture Outside Of New Store

A picture of the outside of the new store. I just needed a place to hotlink the image for the sidebar.

I've Been In Search Engine Hell.

So while I'd rather be blogging about fashion and the latest jewelry designs, I'm still working on fixing all our information in the search engines. I decided to post about it here not so much to complain, but to help other business owners who may end up with the same problem. It also feels good to vent a bit !

Working at this problem 2 days a week, after the first few weeks I'm already seeing a difference in our search results.So lets start with what you don't want to do.

DO NOT DO THIS

Knowing that we were moving I decided to start creating our new internet presence. We never did anything internet before, so I didn't think there was a lot of information on the internet about our company. I also figured the new listings would overrun the old information. This was a huge mistake. The first thing I did was create a Google Plus page for the new business, and a Facebook page for the new business. What's wrong with that you ask ? Nothing at all, but here's how you should do it. LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES AND SAVE YOURSELF SELF SOME HUGE HEADACHES.

Whether you asked them to or not, Google and Facebook probably have a basic page already set up for your business. BEFORE CREATING A GOOGLE OR FACEBOOK page , do a business search on Facebook, and do a business search on Google and see if they have you listed already. If they do , you want to claim those pages, and not create new ones. I repeat CLAIM THOSE PAGES. If you create new pages the search engines will continue to index the old information and you will have two listings, one with good information, one with bad information. Getting these additional pages deleted has proven to be very troublesome. This took several attempts to fix in Google and I'm still trying to figure out how to fix this with Facebook without overwriting our good page.

Here's what you should do !

Find your business on Facebook and on Google, claim the pages, and edit the pages and correct the information. Doing it this way will save you a lot of time and aggravation.

Now for the mapping services. All the search engines basically feed off each other. I decided to straighten out the mapping services, such as Google Maps, Map Quest, Yahoo Maps etc. This did help but Map Quest isn't very helpful on verifying the business. I'm still waiting on getting the information fixed with them. Once you straighten out the mapping services a lot of the listing services will start to fix themselves. This is where a lot of these companies get there listings from.

Next your going to want to get your new address out on the internet. Create a blog, part of the reason we created this. Leave your address on there somewhere in the description, and add it to a blog post. This will get the new information indexed in the search engines, and help push some of the bad information down a bit. This also works with Pinterest, Facebook posts, Google plus posts, etc. DO NOT GET CARRIED AWAY, if you do this too much the search engines will consider it spam and it will be counter productive to what your trying to achieve. Two maybe three posts like this should do the trick. Add your address to your Pinterest description, do a Google Plus post announcing a special offer with the new address, and maybe a Facebook post in the same fashion. THAT'S IT, you can always do more down the road.

Now here comes the fun part. Go to the search engines and type in your business name. Look for the listings that have the incorrect business information. Your looking for places like the Yellowpages, Superpages, Yellowbook, 411, etc, etc. These are all the companies that were kind enough to list your company on the internet whether you asked them to or not. Now you get to claim each one of these listings individually. Some will have a phone number to call, some will have a page to verify your information, and some will just let you change all the information without anyway of verifying whether it's accurate or not. Isn't that lovely !

This is what I've been doing in my spare time over the last several weeks. There are companies out there that claim they can fix this problem for $400.00 and up. However, I decided to go about this on my own. I'm starting to see results, and with a little patience anyone can do this. We now have about fifty percent of our listing accurate, and I'm going to start focusing on this just a couple times a month. I think within the next 6 months, the majority of this problem should be taken care of.

If your business has run into a similar problem, feel free to post any questions in the comments, and I'll see if I can help.

Update and Some Pictures Of The New Store

Happy New Year everyone. It's a bit late, but things get crazy around here during the holidays.

We've been busy trying to straighten out our address information in the search engines. We never tried to have a web presence at the old location, but now that we moved we thought it was time to get with the modern age and start to build an internet presence. Amazingly, this doesn't stop the search engines from indexing your company information.

We discovered that our address and phone number is incorrect in just about every search engine on the internet. Apparently all kinds of companies list your personal business information on the internet whether you asked them to or not. So now that we've moved we have to fix all this wrong information. Blah !

Anyway, everything else is going great here. We love being in Kenmore, and everyone has been very welcoming. The new store is doing great, and we're starting to increase our product line and become more of a jewelry and fashion boutique. You can tell by the pictures that we have a lot of space to fill. We plan on carrying more gift items, and we're getting an island in the center of the store that will hold all kinds of men's and women's fashion accessories.

Here's some pictures of the inside of the new store.

Entrance of the store.

Here's where the fashion accessory island will be going.

Different side angle.

If you haven't stopped in the new store, stop by and check us out. We now have all the fine jewelry that we carried in the past with a new line of fashion jewelry and some cute designs made by local designers. Thanks for taking an interest in the blog and hope to see you soon in person.