Comments on: Brand Bah Humbug! Scrooge Lives Again at Heath Ceramics

By: Recession Silver Lining: Better Brand Experience at Best Buy, CB2, Corner Bakery and Verizon(?)!

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 22:05:10 +0000

[...] or willing to work within our more modest means (in stark contrast to our recent experience at Heath Ceramics), outfitting the plupart of our new digs in short [...]

By: mhs

mhs — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:09:48 +0000

I am impressed by the commenters’ quality commenting in the wee hrs of Xmas eve. … The environmentally based argument against free boxing didn’t make much sense though.
Perhaps it wld be better to coach salespeople to read the room and not discourage a happy customer on an occasion like this. Stores now regularly give customers a packaging-lite option, and that’s great, but to not more readily accommodate someone who needs the full service seems quite harsh.

By: Brittany

Brittany — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 19:41:21 +0000

Jon: Glad you had such a nice experience with us at DWR, and thanks for the shout out! Hope to see you back here soon

Best wishes for the New Year,
Brittany Gersh

By: Eric_Pinckert

Eric_Pinckert — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 06:44:19 +0000

Thanks for your comment Catherine Bailey, Owner of Heath Ceramics. We’re certainly in alignment with your aspiration for “better quality and less consumption.” In fact, the storied history of your company, its commitment to sustainability and the quality and beauty of your products are what attracted us to your shop in the first place. If you want to encourage lower-impact living, we’re on board! We will not presume to tell you how to run your obviously tremendously successful business. But the fact that your staff and management absolutely refused to budge one iota when we asked them make an exception to your (unstated to us) policy to “lessen box consumption” unless we spent $200 per gift (at which point the theoretical objection would have apparently vanished) is what soured us on Heath Ceramics. This seemed to us to be more a matter of trying to extract an incremental $20 — which really, genuinely surprised us — rather than saving the planet. As brand folks, we’d say if your frugality with boxes really comes from an environmental perspective, make it a point of honor: no boxes for anyone whether they spend $20, $2,000 or $20,000, rather than have what seems to be an arbitrary price cutoff where one finally earns the right to a gift box.

By: cathy

cathy — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 05:45:30 +0000

I’m sorry about your experience, it is certainly not our intent to make our customers feel like we don’t care about them. Our frugalness with our boxes comes more from an environmental perspective, boxes are more expensive then you would think, but it’s not really about the cost. I want to promote less packaging, so we don’t have Heath boxes printed up, and we don’t stock a lot of extra boxes because we offer free gift wrapping in a brown bag, with a rubber stamped logo and some tissue, and a twine bow. It’s not Tiffany’s fancy box for sure, but we’re not a fancy company. For purchases that are not gifts we wrap in newspaper, and try to re-use boxes (it’s the way we’ve done it for 60 years). We also don’t charge extra for boxes when shipping and charge very little for shipping. The only boxes we have in our LA store are shipping boxes, we do use them for gift wrapping when it’s requested, but try to align our policies with our values which revolve around better quality and less consumption. I’m sorry that your experience was a negative one, and that our attempt to lessen box consumption prompted such bad impression and negative review of my company. I do think that our current gift wrapping (in a bag) can be improved (it’s not ideal for larger pieces) and we’ll continue to think creatively on how we can package for gift giving with less packaging, hopefully you’ll have a better impression if you visit again.

-catherine bailey (owner – heath)