After the gift buying frenzy NZ Prints re-opens after the Xmas break

Xmas is always simply hectic. The sheer volume of gifts to be carefully packaged and dispatched on time not just in NZ but around the world makes it a real test of our systems. We make mistakes occasionally but our dispatch team will always try all alternatives to keep the customer (or gift recipient) happy if something has gone wrong. Xmas 2011 was Prints.co.nz's busiest ever with orders volumes up around twenty percent on 2010 albeit with a slightly lower average order amount meaning only a modest increase in print sales by dollar value.

After safely navigating through the Xmas gift season (our busiest time of the year) it was lovely to receive some complimentary emails that had been sent to our customer service team while New Zealand Fine Prints was closed for the Xmas/New Year holiday. Our favourite this year was the gift buyer who emailed us back "Thank you heaps. This picture brought tears of happiness to the recipient. Print is top quality, beautifully packaged with prompt delivery". Art is such a wonderful product to be selling - and to be spreading NZ's artistic culture onto walls everywhere with every print we sell is part of what gets us to work in the morning.

After a very eventful eighteen months in Christchurch with the ongoing earthquakes and our distribution and gallery moving from our home in Hereford St for nearly 50 years due to the quakes we look forward to 2012 being more benign for our staff and their families. This writer is looking forward to working on a series of NZ artist and print-maker profiles for NZ Art Print News (starting with controversial printmaker Lester Hall) and we are cataloguing our latest series of vintage NZ advertising posters, plus new prints from Dick Frizzell, Greg Straight, Fane Flaws and prints of landscape paintings by Wellington painter Ernest Papps.

And on a completely different note one of our staff snapped this incredible example of a NZ vernacular wooden picture frame while on holiday in the Marlborough Sounds. We are not sure if the framing style is one that would have a broad appeal in the framed wall art market today - but full marks for workmanship and dedication.