For everyone at Stuller, just as for everyone in the jewelry industry, this is the critical time of year. Once November rolls around, the chips are down, and we are all in. In any number of ways, we’ve been building up to this moment since January, and the time has come to demonstrate what we’re all about.
For you, that may mean putting the finishing touches on an elegant and thoughtfully constructed window display, or putting a last polish on new items before opening up your shop door on a crisp November morning.
For us, it means getting you those crucial last minute items on time, every time.
“We call it the Super Bowl,” says Emily Graffagnino, Director of Packaging and Display at Stuller. “The Holidays are the Super Bowl event of our calendar year.”
Just like players in a bowl game, associates at all levels of the Stuller team go into November planning to leave it all on the field. In some cases, we’ve apparently taken the analogy to the extreme. Stuller lore is full of stories featuring our people getting downright physical in their attempts to ensure that an order makes it on time.
One oft-repeated anecdote, for instance, features an anonymous Stuller associate accidentally tackling a UPS employee in order to pass off a last-minute item. Another story, dating to the early days of overnight delivery, involves a pair of employees driving to the airport and launching packages over the fence to workers in the midst of packing up the Fed Ex jet. One particularly dedicated employee, in yet another tale, purportedly risked life and limb by lying down in front of a departing UPS van in order to convince the driver to accept one last package.
These days, of course, thanks to the various efficiencies we’ve put in place over the years, our associates seldom inflict harm on either themselves or the good people at UPS or FedEx. However, these stories do contain, in miniature, a reflection of Stuller’s history and its mission. Just as the holidays are the culmination of our year, that moment when the package goes on the truck is the culmination of our day, and we direct all of our energies to ensuring that we cross that goal line as smoothly and economically as possible.
This dedication, of course, goes back to the early days of Stuller, when Matt Stuller pioneered many of the conveniences in shipping and fulfillment that have come to be commonplace today.
In 1972, for instance, when Neil Young released the album Harvest and Nixon was president, Matt Stuller introduced toll-free ordering to the jewelry wholesaling business. In 1982, when Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” sold 20 millions albums and Ronald Reagan was president, Stuller debuted overnight delivery and began shipping so many packages that UPS and FedEx had to send planes to Lafayette, Louisiana for the express purpose of transporting Stuller goods. To this day, Stuller is one of the largest UPS and Fed Ex shippers in the Southeast. One UPS employee, ?????, has spent her entire career working exclusively at Stuller headquarters. And just this year, we’ve implemented Stuller First®, a new membership program that extends this legacy of premier order fulfillment.
In one way or another, in other words, we are still lying down in front of the UPS van. These days we do this by finding new systems to manage the vast complexity that arises when the normal 4,000 daily orders spike to 8,000 in late November, but we’re still doing whatever it takes to do our job with rigor so that you can do your job with confidence.
In the following pages, we’ve decided to give you a tour through the little streams that feed into the great torrent of holiday orders—from the call center, to the executive offices, to the shipping room floor. Along the way, we’ve spotlighted certain items that become particular popular at this time of year, just in case you’ve forgotten something and you need it just in the nick of time.