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Two relatively new commercial labels for retail shopping entered my Tiffany Keys Crown key pendant recently: "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday." I'm sure you have seen these terms used ad nauseam in retail news stories. I'll briefly explain these terms and give you a novel third term I am proposing shortly.

The first label - Black Friday - applies to a day of frenetic buying activity, usually on the day immediately following Thanksgiving, whereby devoted shoppers drop enough dough to cause several major retailer balance sheets to produce black numbers, i.e. to become profitable.

Cyber Monday is a neologism coined by the U.S. National Retail Federation a few years back as a result of observed online sales rising rapidly on the Monday following Black Friday. The term "Cyber Monday" is still gestating but that need not concern us here.

In my view, the day after Christmas day (usually called "Boxing Day" in the U.K.) should be named "Returns Day." On this day, shoppers and gift recipients would be able to return items purchased or given as gifts between Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day (plus or minus three or four days) with no questions asked.

I'm sure FedEx or UPS could set up several temporary storefronts in shopping malls to handle the deluge of returnable items. The process would work somewhat like getting a medical prescription filled at a supermarket pharmacy. All the work Tiffany 1837 cuff be done by the staff of what I'll call "The Returns Store."

You would take in the return items and their packaging. The Returns Store staff would figure out the refunds and shipping costs, obtain a Returned Merchandise Authorization (RMA) number, print shipping labels, box the returns and send them, and you would walk out with a check or credit card refund.

Contrast this simple, straightforward and efficient process with a typical returns procedure for an Amazon "storefront." Just in case you are not familiar with the storefront concept, let me explain as briefly as I can. Storefronts are electronic online retailers whose products are displayed on Amazon's website in the same style as Amazon's goods and are processed just like any other items.

The differences are that the shipping and handling are done by the storefront and any returns have to be processed by the storefront employees according to that company's own policies, which can be, and often are, very different from Amazon's policies. This procedure can work well but it can also be a nightmare for the purchaser.

Let me give you an example that I had to deal with recently. I am omitting the actual name of the storefront to protect the guilty. I'll just call it the "storefront." The process began with reviewing my Amazon account to find the storefront's return polices. This consisted of a full page of single-spaced tiny type - Sections (a) through (m) with detailed descriptions of getting an RMA, restocking fees, unacceptable returns and much more.

I followed the storefront's instructions to the letter. After three 800-number calls (long waits), I obtained an RMA, boxed up the product, and dropped it off at the local post office. Cost of shipping: $9, time expended: about three hours. All this for an item priced at $20! I did get an acknowledgement that the storefront had received the return but after a month had passed I had yet to get a refund. Bricks-and-mortar stores are looking much better at this point.

As I was preparing to say "Never again!" to the Amazon storefront method of online shopping, I came across an article in The Wall Street Journal (page R7, Nov. 30, 2009) entitled "Get Smart About Product Returns," which should be required reading for marketing, sales, and support managers in both online stores and conventional retail operations.

The authors, two business-school professors, show how a carefully crafted returns policy can be a revenue generator Somerset basic hoop earrings than a revenue drain. Such policies can build customer loyalty and increase sales, say the authors, by actively managing returns and providing first-class service.

 

Nov. 1--The autistic teen hiker from West Virginia who was found after getting lost in the wilderness will get a Project Lifesaver International locator bracelet today.

The mother of Jacob Allen, 18, of Morgantown, W.Va., said Tuesday she is thrilled to be getting one of the wristwatch-size radio beacons. The device helps emergency agencies trained by the Chesapeake-based search-and-rescue group find a missing person Return to Tiffany heart lock charm and bracelet.

"We have been looking for something for a long time," Karen Allen said from

her home. "I figured the technology was out there somewhere but we couldn't find it."

A West Virginia law enforcement agency that recently joined Project Lifesaver and a Pittsburgh-based autism group donated the device and waived the monthly fee for the service.

Jacob Allen got lost two weeks ago while he was on a hiking trail with his family in West Virginia's Dolly Sods Wilderness Area.

Hundreds of volunteers and trained professionals looked for him for days. The search was complicated by the fact that he does not speak.

He was found four days later, less than one mile from where he walked off the Paloma's Zellige bracelet.

During that time, deputies from the Monongalia County Sheriff's Department were being trained in how to use the radio signal tracking device. Around the same period, a searcher from Pittsburgh told Karen Allen about Project Lifesaver.

"It's just another miracle," she said about finding her son alive and learning about the tracking device.

Project Lifesaver has 600 member agencies across North America.

Since 1999, the non profit

has rescued more than 1,400 adults with medical conditions such as Alzheimer's and dementia, and children with special needs.

According to the group, it takes an average of 30 minutes to find a missing

person wearing a locator Tiffany Red heart lock charm and bracelet.

The searches are done on foot and from the air.

Is Body Piercing Against My Religion? Earrings Are Okay, But Nose Rings. Are Not, Unless You Live in valentines jewelry

`Gee, yours looks kind a crusty," said my bikinied neighbor to her friend as I passed them on the veranda we share. They were comparing their new navel rings.

Ugh! Why would these pretty young women -- Stanford students, yet -- want to puncture their bellies like savages? In these parts, people pierce everything. The shop-girl in a Berkeley stationery store has one ring through her lip, one through her nose and several through each eyebrow, and that is just what I could see. Habitually, I would dismiss such a sight as "Goyim naches," an idiotic practice disdained by Jews. But is it?

Is body piercing permitted under Jewish law? Just how different is piercing your nipple -- Jewishly speaking -- from piercing your ears, which is obviously practiced

Nose rings, the most common outre piercing nowadays, were the height of fashion in biblical times, according to Genesis 24:47. No less a personage than the matriarch Rivka wore such an ornament, given to her by the servant of her soon-to-be father-in-law, Avraham, as a chichi engagement present before her marriage to Yitzhak. "I then placed a ring in her nose, and bracelets on her arms," the verse reads. Genesis, however, since it represents the period before the giving of the Commandments, is not considered a source for legal prescriptions, so that wasn't much help.

Leviticus, the Torah source of many rules pertaining to bodily practices, reads (19:28): "Do not make gashes in your skin for the dead," prohibiting Jews, the commentator Rashi explains, from following the pagan practice of scarring the body when a member of the tribe dies.

But do gashes in the skin translate into pierced body Frank Gehry Fish necklace?

Rabbi Moshe Tendler, a Yeshiva University professor of biology and Jewish law who is a leading halachic authority, said that when we consider body piercing, "the issue involved is self-mutilation. There has to be good reason for it." Halacha tolerates some minor forms of self-mutilation, like pierced ears and plucked eyebrows -- but only those forms that are sanctioned by prevalent social norms. "Society is a major halachic interpreter" in this regard, he said. "Societal approval leads to halachic approval as well."

Piercings of noses, navels, lips, genitals or anything other than ears are way beyond the pale, Rabbi Tendler said, because society rejects them and they represent a kind of additional risk to one's health, which tradition advises Jews to avoid. To explain the prohibition against gold hoops in sensitive places, the rabbi cited three concepts originating in the Torah and explicated in the Talmud.

First, Deuteronomy 22:8: "When you build a house, you must place a guard rail around your roof. Do not allow a dangerous situation to remain in your house, since someone can fall from [an unenclosed roof]." Consequently, "it is forbidden to introduce danger into your life" and all due care must be taken to avoid doing injury to yourself and others, Rabbi Tendler said.

Second, Deuteronomy 20:19, which explains that when you lay siege to a city, you must not destroy its fruit trees or use them for making war, not only because you may later eat from them but because it is forbidden to destroy anything that is useful and vital.

Third, "Take heed and watch yourself very carefully" (Deuteronomy 4:9 and 4:15) is a commandment not to cause yourself injury and follow only healthful practices, as Rabbi Tendler explains, in order to serve God to your fullest capacity.

Finally the rabbi raised the question of intentions. "Why would a man or woman put an earring through a nipple or a genital organ?" he asked. According to Rabbi Tendler, such adornments are not for beauty but are inspired by "sexual fantasies, some kind of cult or rebellion against society." Such motives, according to the rabbi, run contrary to Judaism. By the rabbi's own reasoning, in India it would be acceptable for a Jewish woman to wear a nose ring, because it is the custom. So, then, if nose rings et al. become a more universal fashion here, would that provide a loophole for Jewish Elsa Peretti Starfish necklace?

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE FEATURES)--Jan. 18, 2001--First lady- to-be Laura Bush today selected Austin-based jewelry designer Anthony- Nak to be one of her inaugural accessory providers of choice.

The two-year-old company also has been enlisted to design tiffany sale, earrings and bracelets to be worn by Bush daughters, Barbara and Jenna, during the inaugural events Jan. 20 in Washington.

Anthony-Nak designers Anthony Camargo and David Nakard Armstrong developed two separate necklace designs from which the incoming first lady will select. One is a spinel and scarlet tourmaline necklace set in 18-carat gold. The second is a multi-strand spinel and Burmese ruby necklace set in 18-carat gold. The designers also crafted a set of Burmese ruby earrings to accompany the necklace.

The former Texas first lady also will wear a triple strand of champagne freshwater pearls set in sterling silver along with matching earrings during an unofficial inaugural dinner Friday.

"Designing the inaugural jewelry for the new first family is a tremendous honor for us," said Camargo. "To know that we're playing a small part in this historic event is extremely meaningful to us -- both professionally as jewelry designers and personally as fellow Texans."

Camargo and Armstrong design jewelry for a number of celebrities, from Cameron Diaz and Sandra Bullock to Cher and Sarah Elsa Peretti Bean earrings.

According to Armstrong, Anthony-Nak designers draw their creative inspiration from past periods when jewelry was more than just an accessory, but an integral part of women's dress. In designing their collection, the self-taught style of Camargo and Armstrong integrates antiquity and art nouveau by drawing on these past elements in a modern representation.

"Our goal is to create jewelry that is modern and sensual and conforms to the body like a bias-cut fabric," Armstrong said. "Each piece combines precious and semi-precious stones that are woven together with silver and gold in a lace-like fashion, giving the jewelry fluidity and Elsa Peretti Sevillana earrings."

About Anthony-Nak

Formed in November 1998 and based in Austin, Texas, Anthony-Nak Inc., designs fresh, unique and individual jewelry for a diverse list of clients. The company's client list includes a number of well- known actresses and musicians, including Cameron Diaz, Cher, Jewel, Sarah MacLachlan, Sandra Bullock, Lucy Liu, Jennifer Tilly and Geri Halliwell. The company distributes its jewelry to Neiman Marcus stores in 21 U.S. cities, including Beverly Hills, San Francisco, Chicago and Seattle; Dallas-based Stanley Korshak, Henri Bendel of New York; and Fred Segal of Santa Monica, Calif.

The scant confirmed facts about the life of Vermeer, and the relative paucity of his Return to Tiffany Round tag key ring, continues to be provoke to the literary imagination, as witnessed by this third fine fictional work on the Dutch artist in the space of 13 months. Not as erotic or as deviously suspenseful as Katharine Weber's The Music Lesson, or as original in conception as Susan Vreeland's interlinked short stories, Girl in Hyacinth Blue, Chevalier's first novel succeeds on its own merits. Through the eyes of its protagonist, the modest daughter of a tile maker who in 1664 is forced to work as a maid in the Vermeer household because her father has gone blind, Chevalier presents a marvelously textured picture of 17th-century Delft. The physical appearance of the city is clearly delineated, as is its rigidly defined class system, the grinding poverty of the working people and the prejudice against Catholics among the Protestant majority. From the very first, 16-year-old narrator Griet establishes herself as a keen observer who sees the world in sensuous images, expressed in precise and luminous prose. Through her vision, the personalities of coolly distant Vermeer, his emotionally volatile wife, Return to Tiffany Oval tag key ring, his sharp-eyed and benevolently powerful mother-in-law, Maria Thins, and his increasing brood of children are traced with subtle shading, and the strains and jealousies within the household potently conveyed. With equal skill, Chevalier describes the components of a painting: how colors are mixed from apothecary materials, how the composition of a work is achieved with painstaking care. She also excels in conveying the inflexible class system, making it clear that to members of the wealthy elite, every member of the servant class is expendable. Griet is almost ruined when Vermeer, impressed by her instinctive grasp of color and composition, secretly makes her his assistant, and later demands that she pose for him wearing Catharina's pearl earrings. While Chevalier develops the tension of this situation with skill, several other devices threaten to rob the narrative of its credibility. Griet's ability to suggest to Vermeer how to improve a painting demands one stretch of the reader's imagination. And Vermeer's acknowledgment of his debt to her, revealed in the Return to Tiffany Heart tag key ring, is a blatant nod to sentimentality. Still, this is a completely absorbing story with enough historical authenticity and artistic intuition to mark Chevalier as a talented newcomer to the literary scene. Agent, Deborah Schneider. (Jan.)