CLCLeather Archive Page
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Now that January is coming to an end, we will provide a link to all the words of the day on one page, so you can decide which ones you know and which ones you do not know. Plus, you can see which ones you like and which ones you can do without. One of our vendors explained to us that there are some words that she just feels uncomfortable to pronounce because they have positive meanings but sound negative when uttered.

It's always positive to brush up on one's vocabulary, whether in marketing, sales, education, business or any other field of study or work.

So check out the page for January 2006 words of the day here.

Enjoy the remainder of the weekend,

The CLC Team


by: CLCLeather

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Friday, January 27, 2006
Since we are also eBay PowerSellers, all modifications to eBay policies affect us, directly or indirectly. Thus, when we received an email this morning from eBay's Matt Halprin, who is in charge of the Global Policy Management for eBay, we thought to post it on our blog for discussion.

For the sake of brevity, we are only posting a portion of his email for all to read, because we feel that important changes are coming about in 2006 to the eBay marketplace. These changes will affect all of us sellers and for the most part, we think these changes are positive. Read the email excerpt, visit the links and discuss what you guys think:

Making policies easy to understand

"We now have over 150 policies designed to keep the eBay marketplace healthy and to maintain a safe place to buy and sell. We recognized that some of our policies were hard to understand, even for me. So last year, we spent several months rewriting our policy pages in straightforward language to make them easier to understand and follow. Now each page includes: a clear statement of the policy and why we have it; examples that illustrate what is and isn't allowed; and a list of the possible consequences of violating the policy. (To learn more, please visit our Policy Hub page.)
Educating members about policies

Understanding eBay's policies helps members have a more positive eBay experience. Last year we focused on creating educational materials on the site designed to help members understand and comply with our policies. We now have five online tutorials available for Intellectual Property & VeRO, Shill Bidding, Fee Circumvention , Feedback and Search & Browse Manipulation. These new tutorials only take a few minutes to complete. Each one steps members through the policy details they need to know in order to stay in compliance.

In 2006, we will also be launching a new comprehensive Marketplace Policy tutorial that covers all our biggest policy areas, including Keyword Spamming, Fee Circumvention, Feedback, VeRO and more."

One last paragraph, which we thought was important (sorry for being lengthy but it's worth reading. It deals with reporting sellers that violate policy, appears below:

Making it easy to detect policy violations

"One of the most important ways we learn about listings that violate our policies is through reports from other Community members. You've told us that the process for reporting suspicious activity has been too cumbersome. So to make it easier for members to send us these reports, in the spring of 2006, every item page will have a "Report this Item" link at the bottom of the page. This link will bypass the Contact Us flow and take you to a list of possible reasons why a listing needs to be brought to our attention. It will save you valuable time and help us review the listing quickly."

Happy Friday guys

The entire CLC Team.


by: CLCLeather

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Thursday, January 26, 2006
Please check out our updated Leather Care Section for FREE leather cleaning and care tips!

Many people email or call us about various questions regarding this subject of leather care. We will try to update this section regularly so viewers can see many of their questions already answered.

If you have a question about leather care or cleaning, please email us and we will respond to your query. You may directly post the question as a comment on this blog and we will promptly answer that query as well.

Considering the fact that many people pay a lot of hard earned money to buy leather goods, shoes or an expensive piece of leather furniture, it makes sense to spend a little more money to buy some proper lotions or cleaners to take care of this purchase so that it lasts long. And as leather owners know, leather ages very well, if maintained properly.

Happy Reading and Happy Cleaning,

The CLC Team


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Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Although Yahoo! is one of the first search engine companies, it is a strong second to Google in terms of search engine market share. It seems that it has finally accepted its position as #2, as long as it holds the current share of customers, as mentioned in this article.

Speaking of searching online, people are now quite worried about recent news from the government asking the search engines to provide details about peoples' searching habits (including searched terms and words), in an effort to combat and fight child pornography. Whereas Yahoo and MSN have given up the search data, Google is ardently refusing and most people agree with this refusal.

People are also worried that innocent recent projects may turn into suspicious activity in the sight of investigators, as mentioned in this article.

Good luck and happy searching,

The CLC Team.


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Monday, January 23, 2006
Anniversary gifts can be tricky to find, especially when you need to give according to the anniversary table. As if the traditional table wasn't difficult enough to follow, now there's a modern table which lists the material of the gift in a completely different order than the one listed on the traditional table!

What is one to do?! Well, for starters, we suggest that you look carefully at both tables here and then decide which gift will be more liked and still be within budget. Since we are leather experts, then we suggest unique leather gifts for your third or your ninth wedding anniversary.

And by the way, make sure that the ninth wedding anniversary gift is a little bit more expensive than the one given on the third anniversary!

Click here for some suggestions.

Happy Reading,

The CLC Team.


by: CLCLeather

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Sunday, January 22, 2006
Whereas searches for the words eBay and Cingular Wireless were among the top ten this week in Yahoo! Shopping, the surprise search term in the number one position was Star Wars, which was up from number 422 last week!

There was really no leather term in the top 100 searches this week, but that's because every one is interested in Valentine's Day Gifts and one place to find nice gifts for any occasion is FindGift.com, a free web service dedicated to helping you find the right gift for every occasion. And we are also part of their advertising network!

Happy Reading,

The CLC Team.


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Friday, January 20, 2006
Word of the Week for this week is:

susurration \soo-suh-RAY-shun\, noun: A whispering sound; a soft murmur.

EXAMPLE, used in a sentence:

. . . the soft susurration of the wind through a stand of whistling thorn. --Ann Jones, "Kenya on horseback," Town & Country, August 1, 1994

Susurration is from Late Latin susurratio, from Latin susurrare, "to whisper, to mutter," from susurrus, "a whispering, a muttering."

Happy Reading,

The CLC Team


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Thursday, January 19, 2006
eBay Express, a new retail marketing strategy (in the form of an online retail platform) from eBay, is set to launch in the Spring of 2006. It will allow buyers to IMMEDIATELY purchase from eBay stores and fixed price listings via PayPal or a credit / debit card, without waiting for an auction to end.

Furthermore, there will be no waiting on the seller's part for getting paid because this site will have the look and feel of a shopping site, similar to Yahoo! Shopping or MSN Shopping. Sounds good to us. Let's see what happens. Sellers who have eBay stores or fixed price listings will have their products visible on the eBay Express site, without having to incur more fees (let's see how long this lasts).

Happy Reading,

The CLC Team


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Tuesday, January 17, 2006


Our Valentine's Day Ordering Deadlines have been posted on our site and can be viewed here as well, for your convenience:

Order by 12 Noon EST February 7th, 2006, pick Ground Shipping, and have your item delivered in time for Valentine's Day!


Order by 12 Noon EST February 9th, 2006, pick 2 DAY AIR Shipping, and have your item delivered in time for Valentine's Day!



AND FOR THE TRUE PROCRASTINATORS, Order UP UNTIL 9 AM EST February 11th, 2006, pick OVERNIGHT Shipping, and have your item delivered in time for Valentine's Day!



by: CLCLeather

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Monday, January 16, 2006
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

(January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968)

"Today there is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence. I feel that we've got to look at this total thing anew and recognize that we must live together. That the whole world now it is one--not only geographically but it has to become one in terms of brotherly concern. Whether we live in America or Asia or Africa we are all tied in a single garment of destiny and whatever effects one directly, effects one indirectly."-- Nonviolence or Nonexistence, from a 1967 interview


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Friday, January 13, 2006
Word of the week is:

sesquipedalian \ses-kwuh-puh-DAYL-yuhn\, adjective:

1. Given to or characterized by the use of long words.

2. Long and ponderous; having many syllables.

More to come, including Valentine's Day Order updates in a couple of days...

-The CLC Team


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Thursday, January 12, 2006
Airbus unveiled the largest airplane last year. It's called the A-380, a 550 passenger behemoth of a plane that is larger in width than the White House! Singapore Airlines plans to fly the A-380 in December between Singapore and select European cities. Read more about the A-380, plus more new travel trends for 2006, including less stringent security measure for some pre-approved business travelers (willing to pay a fee of course), in this USA Today article.

James Frey, a former drug addict and alcoholic has written a "memoir" about his struggle through life. In 2003, his book, entitled A Million Little Pieces, was published and in October of 2005 it caught the attention of Oprah Winfrey. She dedicated an entire show to Mr. Frey and as a result of this publicity, his book sold more than a million copies. It still stands as the number one seller in the Amazon.com's non-fiction best seller list. That's great news right? Well up until this past week, everything was going great for Mr. Frey, who was doing the screenwriting for a possible upcoming film about the book.An investigative website published a long but informative article a few days ago in which many accounts depicted by Frey in his book are proven to be exaggerations. The proofs presented in this article are so solid that the publishers of Frey's book agreed to offer refunds to customers who bought the book and would like to now return it! The argument made by this website was that the "memoir" was actually more fiction and should have been published as fiction and NOT as non-fiction.

Well, last night, Oprah Winfrey responded about claims against Mr. Frey and in fact defended the author! So, the controversy continues and interestingly, it has sparked people to flood the search engines to find out more about Mr. Frey. It seems to us that he is getting more publicity!

Oh well, c'est la vie (that's life, in French).

Happy Reading,

The CLC Team


by: CLCLeather

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Wednesday, January 11, 2006
eBay Live! is an annual 3 day event held by eBay for the eBay community. This year it will take place between June 13-15 2006 in Las Vegas, NV.

There are many classes offered for all levels of sellers and the event can be a very fruitful one for one wishing to delve into the seller's realm on eBay.

Short post for today.

Regards,

The CLC Team


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Tuesday, January 10, 2006
MySpace.com, an online community site that started as late as 2004, is boasting up to 47.3 million users, and attracting attention from the likes of Yahoo!. Furthermore, MySpace.com was number 1 in the list of top 100 searches in Yahoo Shopping this week, beating out eBay, which was number 5.

In its "About Us" section, it states:

"MySpace is for everyone:

Friends who want to talk Online
Single people who want to meet other Singles
Matchmakers who want to connect their friends with other friends
Families who want to keep in touch--map your Family Tree
Business people and co-workers interested in networking
Classmates and study partners
Anyone looking for long lost friends!"

The other late startup success story is about The Million Dollar Homepage started by 21 year old Alex Tew from the UK who wanted to raise money for his college tuition fees so he set a goal for a million dollars.

He has not only raised much more than that, but also gained worldwide fame and attention, not to mention ranking 127 on Alexa.com. What's more, he only started this project in August of 2005 with a little idea...

So don't despair all you creative minds out there! There are still legitimate money making ideas out there and they are waiting for you to think them up and get them noticed.

Good luck and Happy Reading,

The CLC Team


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Monday, January 09, 2006
Wegmans Supermarkets, our local favorite grocery chain, consistently ranks top not only in customer service, but also in employee retention and benefits.

This year, it came in 2nd place in Fortune Magazine's annual listing of the 100 best companies to work for in the US. [In the same survey in 2004, it was Number 1!]

And we must admit that anyone who has shopped at Wegmans can sense the warmth of the employees who provide superb customer service. There are several other choices here in WNY where one can shop for groceries and all of them have a charm. But Wegmans tops our list as well! Congratulations!

Best Regards,

The CLC Team


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Sunday, January 08, 2006
NY Times versus LA Times...

We in NY (and the East Coast for that matter) are so used to headings from either the NY Times or the Washington Post as being the "authority" in News Reporting, that we sometimes forget our West Coast counterparts, one of them being the Los Angeles Times. On Sundays, when you have some time to read just the headings (in addition to the comics), then we would suggest that you compare the front page headlines of each of the three papers mentioned above. It will make for an interesting read.

And then go here for some alternative eye-openers.

Happy Reading,

The CLC Team


by: CLCLeather

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Saturday, January 07, 2006
With regards to schooling versus education, some might say that the two terms are synonyms. However, we tend to disagree.

Read this quote:

"If you can become governor, senator, and president with mediocre SAT scores, what exactly do the tests measure?"

For further reading, click here.

Robert Frost wrote in the Road not Taken:

"Two roads diverged in a wood,
and I--I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. "

And so it seems that the road "less traveled" in modern day education starts with positive reinforcement of the the child's natural attributes. More reading here...

That's all for today. We might have a post in the next few days, because we are still officially on vacation!

Best regards,

The CLC Team




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Friday, January 06, 2006
Word of the week, appropriate for describing some of the latest conflicting news reports and stories we have been hearing, is recondite:

recondite \REK-uhn-dyt\, adjective:1. Difficult to understand; abstruse.2. Concerned with obscure subject matter.

Since we will be off for one whole week, we don't know if we can keep up with daily postings to the blog. So our loyal readers will have to make do with what is posted thus far until the next posting is published.

Have a very safe week.

The CLC Team


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Every year, we like to take a break after the HOLIDAYS and give our staff rest from the long hours of packing, shipping and stress! OUR YEARLY VACATION THIS YEAR FALLS BETWEEN JANUARY 6th AND JANUARY 15th, 2006.


THUS, PLEASE NOTE THAT ALL ORDERS PLACED ON OUR WEBSITE, Our eBay Store, VIA FAX OR PHONE BETWEEN 12 NOON ON FRIDAY, JANUARY 6th, 2006 AND 9 AM MONDAY, JANUARY 16TH, 2006, WILL ALL BE SHIPPED OUT BETWEEN JANUARY 16th AND JANUARY 18th, 2006, EVEN IF THESE ORDERS ARE EXPEDITED.

IF YOU NEED URGENT ASSISTANCE ABOUT YOUR ORDER, PLEASE CALL OUR TOLL-FREE 24 HOUR CUSTOMER SUPPORT LINE AT 1-800-SHOP-LEATHER (1-800-746-7532). THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.




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Thursday, January 05, 2006
The Peak of World Oil Production, a one hour speech delivered at California Institute of Technology a week after Thanksgiving 2005 by geologist and Princeton professor Ken Deffeyes (author of Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak), offers an interesting and astute look at the need for alternate fuel sources in the world.


Born in the middle of an Oklahoma City oil field Ken Deffeyes has spent a lifetime in the oil business and the academic study of petroleum. He is Professor Emeritus at Princeton University where he taught geology. Before joining the Princeton faculty in 1967, Deffeyes worked in the Shell research lab in Houston. At Shell he was a colleague of M. King Hubbert, who was the first person to predict that a peak in oil production was even possible.After his retirement from Princeton in 1998, Ken Deffeyes published two books on the subject of Peak Oil, Hubbert's Peak and Beyond Oil. Deffeyes says that the methods that M. King Hubbert used to accurately predict the peak of United States oil production for the early 1970s can now be applied to world production. Ken Deffeyes wrote that quote: "It is my opinion that the peak will occur in late 2005,” and nominated Thanksgiving 2005 as his World Oil Peak Day wherein quote "we can pause and give thanks for the good years of abundance, and face up to the coming decline of this life-force fuel."

The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena invited Ken Deffeyes to talk about his theory of Peak Oil one week after Thanksgiving 2005. He was recorded by the L.A. Sound Posse. [If you click on this link, it will lead you to an MP3 file where you can listen to Part 1 of the speech.]

Now, you may be wondering, how this pertains to CLC and other online companies?! Well, we are in the business of mail-order and shipping products to happy customers. When the fuel surcharge at FedEx went up to 20% (?!!!) in November and December of 2005, it was very difficult for us and other online retailers to afford shipping products and maintain the same shipping & handling costs! Thus, we have to be aware of the issues that go on in the world we live in if we are to live sustainably and allow our coming generations to live in an environmentally friendly world.

Happy reading...

The CLC Staff


by: CLCLeather

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Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Very sad news about the miners, because at first it was thought that all 12 were found alive, but in fact only one survived!!!

Louis Braille, the founder of braille language for blind persons, was born on this date in 1809. Here is an excerpt from one website about him:

"Louis Braille was born in town near Paris, France in 1809. As a toddler he used to watch his father make shoes. One day, while his father was not watching, he picked up a sharp pointed tool for making holes in leather called an awl. The awl slipped, piercing his eye and damaging it beyond repair. The other eye became infected and before long Louis Braille was completely blind.
At the age of 10 Louis was sent to a school for blind children in Paris. Children were taught to read and write using a system of raised letters. This system was difficult to use as it was hard to tell the letters apart. One day a soldier called Charles Barbier visited the school. He had developed a system for reading messages in the dark based upon a series of raised dots. Louis Braille realised the potential of this system and developed it so that it could be used for blind people."


Read more about his story here.

Get more in depth news coverage from this source whose reports are a bit more comprehensive than the mainstream media.

That's all for now. Happy reading and stay safe. Make sure to stick to your resolutions. We should have a weight loss / dieting post coming up soon...

-The CLC Team


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Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Independence Air is ceasing operations on Thursday, January 5th, 2006. If you have tickets booked on any Independence flights after this date, please make alternate arrangements as soon as possible.

You may read the letter from the company on its website. The letter is entitled, Today is a Sad Day for Independence Air.

After the announcement was made, airline experts predict airfares to double or even triple in cities served by Independence Air, like Charlotte, NC and Charleston, WV. Speaking of West Virginia, that horrible mining incident has also occurred yesterday where 13 miners are trapped inside a mine, which was issued more than 200 violations in 2005!!! Some people think that they are above accountability, but rest assured, "What goes around, comes around," as they say. We are hopeful for some good news about this mining incident. What a sad way to start off the New Year. Good luck guys.

Signing off for now,

Staff at CLCLeather.com


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Monday, January 02, 2006
We just read an interesting article from an online marketing / news expert that uses a recent report to compare the online behavior of men and women.

The first part of the article, which is entitled, Men are from Google, Women are from Yahoo, begins like this:

"On the Internet, as in life, men and women have different motivations for doing what they do. According to a recent report from Pew Internet and American Life, women view the Internet as a place to extend, support, and nurture relationships and communities. Men tend to see it as an office, a library, or a playground..."

The report that is referred to in the article, all 54 pages, can be found here. OK people, the report is in PDF format so you can save it to your computer and read it in parts if you wish.

The full article can be found here.

Happy reading and sleep early tonight because for many of you, waking up early to go to work after 10 days of slothfulness can be almost a herculean task!

Best regards from the CLC team.


by: CLCLeather

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Sunday, January 01, 2006
We have sent an email to all our existing customers today. There was no hidden marketing scheme behind this email. It was just to wish them and all of you reading this post a very happy, safe, healthy and peaceful New Year.

Let's all start 2006 on the right foot, by making practical resolutions and trying our best to fulfill them.

Best Regards from the entire CLC Team...


by: CLCLeather

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