Friday, August 15, 2008

What's New with Building New Worlds?

With the addition of the online store and our connection with Finch Family Water Garden in Albany, OR. we have seen a lot of changes this year in BNW. Between the work with the store and running the network we are running full speed this year to make sure that BNW is getting a great start. In addition to the Lemax Spooky Town line I am also offering small display bases that I have done at the store front only right now. This will start off the opening of selling landscaping items later on which we are hoping to offer in 2009. We are still in the planning stages for that though. The Network is going full blast right now with well over 300 members and very high hits a day along with high log ins on the site from our current members. Some of the topics we are getting into now are more about landscaping and additional pieces to buy or make for Halloween villages. The start of the Halloween Village Season took off over night!
Our plans for starting a news letter for Building New Worlds members is still in the works also. There is a lot of work already going into our days here so again this is something that is just in the planning stage. I am working on a test piece now for that to see how weill I can crank one out and still make it worth reading. Remember I am still working for another company while doing all this. They take up a lot of my time but, the bills have to get paid somehow you know.
Over all the success rate right now is on the Network. We are very pleased with that as that was the focus and ground work that starte all this madness. The Network is now ran buy the Admin with me doing some of the back ground work when needed. This is set up that way so that I will still have time to post and give personal attention to memebers rather than being that creator who is so back logged with work that I could not have time for being an active memeber. That is one of the things that sets us apart from the other sites and message boards. Our online community is ran by members not the owners. We have also in the past year started collecting feed back from memebrs on what they want on the Network and how we should go about doing things on there in a way the works for them. This direct feed back has been an impact on not only the content of the site but the look and even how it functions. Members having this control feel more like a apart of the community and are more likely to return seeing that they are a part of something growing as fast as we are.
Our plans for the rest of 2008 are to run the contest this year which will be sponcered by our retail store and to promote this contest highly! We are also working on the database for Lemax collectors which will update all other data bases that might exist and complete them also. To date we believe we have found and listed all of the Lemax collection from its start to date. Other than that we are planning out the road map for the store's 2009 opening and getting some ideas of what we might be selling next year. That is still TBA. Check back with us for more information on that later. Mean while it is back to a busy day here and beating the heat!

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Building New Worlds makes the "Buzz"

Word just in that Building New Worlds was listed in the newest addition of Village D-Lights under the "Just So You Know" section for the Aug/Sept volum! We are very pleased with this information and would like to thank the people at Village D-Lights for that early Halloween gift! While we are on the subject of making the buzz in village collectors news, we are also pleased to report that this week Building New Worlds online Network became now 300 plus members strong and growing. People from all over the world have been dropping in the check out what is going on in our community and the word is getting around that we are out there. Its always a good feeling when your work starts paying off and you see results like we are seeing now with BNW.
Spooky Town season for 2008 has been rocked with interesting new twisted this year. None of which has been more interesting than the "recall" of the Octo-Squeeze and the strange news that this piece was pulled from Michaels Crafts but will be added to the retailer Lemaxvillages.com this season. We are not sure exactly what happened that this change took place but, Lemaxvillages.com should be getting their stock of that piece later this month. Check them out for that piece if you are interested.
Meanwhile we are gearing up of the big push for Spook Town village season 2008. The major store display is getting worked on and we are very pleased with how that is taking shape. Finch Family Water Gardens is looking more like Spooky Town by the day as we see the progress being made with this super-size village!
I would like to take a moment to thank a few people for all their work and support over the past few months while I have been on this adventure of a life time to expand Building New Worlds. James Finch, the owner of Finch Family Water Garden, the admin and members of Building New Worlds and those close to me who have been there to cheer me on while taking on this project. I started out with a very small dream and a small village not so long ago and today I am seeing the start of something much bigger than I can really understand right now. Thank all of you who have been there through out this time and will be there in the coming years for your support and work behind what I hope will be one of the biggest things to hit village collecting since those first buildings came out so long ago.

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Spooky Town Village Season 2008

Building New Worlds has been going through some changes in the past year and they are BIG, very BIG! On May 31st of 2007 we opened up the Building New Worlds online community through the Ning Networks. At that time we started out with a hand full of devoted members and an idea for something new to take village collecting to the next level. On our one year anniversary this year we were over 200 members strong and as of this writing today we are now at 300 members stronger and growing. Along with the start of a open social network for village collectors we also started the retail sector of Building New Worlds with an online store and a store front. As if this was not enough we have started regrouping our dream somewhat and are in the process of redeveloping our inner workings. Marketing and managing BNW in ways that we hope will make a loud noise within the village collecting community. Now we will talk some about these things we have just sprung on you.
First there is the BWN open social network. Manned by a team from all over the world, this network is designed to be a safe and family friendly place for villagers to join, set up their own personal space in the network and get to know more about village collecting while meeting new friends. Building New Worlds network is safe and monitored through out the day to insure that you have a place to go to that is not full of unwanted postings and spam. We take great pride in the vast amount of information stored there.
Members of Building New Worlds can not only feel free to post threads and blogs but they can share video, pictures and even music. There are groups to join and a live chat set up on the network to talk to fellow members about village collecting and landscaping. There are a wide rang of tutorials, threads and groups devoted to teaching new ways to landscape and how to make interesting new things for the villages. We also offer the latest news and information on lighted villages and are open to collectors of ALL types of villages. No one brand is singled out. You can find the Building New Worlds Community at
http://buildingnewworld.ning.com

This year we opened up the retail sector of Building New Worlds with an online store and joined forces with Finch Family Water Gardens in Albany,Oregon to bring you Lemax Spooky Town 2008. We have the complete line of Lemax Spooky Town offered for the year. Along with that we also offer in the store bases created by Neo Dreams for displaying village pieces. These are one of a kind and each detail is hand crafted from start to finish. Our goal in the coming year is to bring the online store into the next level of guest service by offering more products and expanding not only the Lemax lines we carry but also landscaping supplies as well. We seek to become a one stop shop for all of the needs of village collectors. Our online store is located at the following link
http://www.buildingnewworlds.com

Along with all this I personally have been developing my skills as a villager this past year and have made my work very public for the first time. This year if you live in or around Albany Oregon you can drop into Finch Family Water Garden and see my Spooky Town 2008 village in progress as I work on it right in the nursery. If you do drop in please say hi, ask any questions you might have and feel free to take pictures. I love pictures and that is what I am leaving you will today.