Eileens Emporium 2021 Christmas Newsletter

[derekrussan]

Eileens Emporium 2021 Christmas Newsletter

Hello hello hello! The Christmas season is well and truly upon us and Boss Elf has once again asked Daughter Elf to review his newsletter. When will he learn!!

Eileen's Elves would like to thank all of our friends and customers for their support and patience during this pandemic and the challenges it has created for us all. We couldn’t have got through it by our-elves. All the Elves in the Eileen's workshop hope this finds you fit and well and you are enjoying your Christmas festivities.

We are certainly all busy scrurrying around the workshop to get your Christmas goodies sent out to you in time for Christmas, whether it be pieces for your Christmas projects or gifts. Our friend Santa at Royal Mail is working hard too on his delivery rounds, but please bear with him during his busiest season. A mince pie or two might help him out! The sooner you can get any last minute orders into us Elves, the sooner we can get them to Santa!

The Elves have been very busy over the last few months and would like to make a few announcements and keep you updated with availability, product developments and shows. Yes, we said shows!

HOLIDAY CLOSURE

Over Christmas, the Elves will be taking a well earnt holiday with the reindeers, closing the office from end of day on 22nd December and reopening 4th January. The naughty Elves may sneak in to get a few orders out in-between these closure dates as we just can't help our-elves. Please note there is no guarantee of orders being processed or shipped during this break. We recommend placing orders no later than Monday 20th December 2021 to give the Elves a fighting chance to ship them before they close up. The Elves will work very hard to get the orders out, but are unable to make any promises. Whilst doing our best to get them out for you, we cannot guarantee Santa's schedule of delivery and are at the mercy of his service (Royal Mail etc.) The website will remain open for orders throughout, and will be processed in order of placement.

VOUCHERS

Our Elves are very technologically advanced, so don't forget that they can whizz you off a Gift Voucher if you are unsure of what goodies to hide under the Christmas tree this year! You can buy these online in the same way that you would buy product.

RELOCATION

Eileens Elves are relcoating! We are currently building new offices and workshops a few miles away from where we are now. We hope the reindeers will help us fly everything over in the sleighs sometime between mid January and the end of February 2022 (as this is their quietest time of the year!) This will no doubt cause some disruption, but the bigger premesis will give us much more space to keep the reindeer happy and rested. Additionally, it will be easier to lay out the workshop more efficiently, hopefully cure our telephone issue and allow us to hold reindeer races in the evenings (Comet currently holds the record, to Rudolph's disgust!)

Our mail order address remains the same, but if you want to visit us you will need new directions. We welcome visits, but please phone ahead as it would be unlucky to see Santa out of season!

NEW PRODUCTS

We are delighted that Peco have released the long awaited Parkside PC90 BR(E) 13T steel body hopper wagon in 4mm (our part KPC90). Supplies are still intermittent as Peco are struggling to keep up with demand. We have had several deliveries of these and currently are awaiting further deliveries from Peco. They were in stock as this is being written.

Peco have also released PC91 and PC92 (our part KPC91 and KPC92) Tank Wagons. These are not new, but fully updated of their original Wonderful Wagons. A first look says they they will make decent models. All in stock.

Slaters have released several Private owners wagons, RCH, Gloucester (both 5 and 6 plank) and Charles Roberts in both Side and Side/End door configurations. Yesterday we sold out of 4035, but all others are in stock.

EXHIBITIONS

The Elves were able to at long last grace you with their presence at Gaydon this year, over Halloween weekend. Boss Elf finally declared it safe for us Elves to come out to play! In general, exhibitions appear to be slowly returning to the circuit. Many will not return, or will be in a different location or format, mainly due to venue issues. Under the current circumstances all show bookings must be considered as subject to cancellation or change. The Elves will take a very cautious attitude to shows; we want to do our best to protect our customers and our-elves. The economics of shows presents a variety of challenges, with high fixed costs (including much higher hotel costs) and potentially lower attendances. Therefore we will be taking a reduced size stand to shows for the foreseeable future and strongly advise pre-ordering via our website.

As you probably know Warley was cancelled. We attended Great British Model Railway Show, Gaydon which was very successful.

We are progressively booking more shows. Show confirmed so far, subject to covid restrictions are:

Southampton - Saturday 29th & Sunday 30th January 2022, Barton Peveril College, Chestnut Avenue, Eastleigh, Hampshire, SO50 5ZA (Satnav use SO50 5BX)

Stafford - Saturday 5th February & Sunday 6th February, in the larger and better Bingley Hall at Stafford Showground, so should be a much better visitor experience.

Doncaster (Festival of British Railway Modelling) - Saturday 12th February & Sunday 13th February, Doncaster Racecourse.


Looking further ahead we are in process of confirming:

Gauge 0 Kettering - Saturday 5th March

Alexandra Palace, London Festival of Railway Modelling, Saturday 18th March and Sunday 19th March

York Saturday 16th April, Sunday 17th April and Monday 19th April

Epsom Saturday 23rd April and Sunday 24th April

Scalefour AGM (members only) Bristol - Saturday 11th June - Bristol

Railex Aylesbury - Saturday 25th June and Sunday 26th June

Railwells - Saturday 13th August and Sunday 14th August

This is not a full list, we may have missed some. We are swamped with paperwork and the show Elf is working through it all.

There have been many disruption to the show calendar caused mostly by covid. Several venues have not and may never re-open to shows. Also the additional bank holiday next May has thrown a spanner in the works. We have, after much consideration, decided that we are unable to attend more than one show in a weekend. So regretably we will not be able to attend Perth this year (clash with Railex), hopefully returning in 2023. We are also unable to attend Gauge 0 event at Doncaster 11th June.

We will endeavour to keep the website up to date on developments.

EXPORTS

Great news, we are continuing to send international shipments by santa (post including Northern Ireland). We are still struggling with courier requirements. At present we are only shipping items that can go by post. This means that there are limitations with a maximum of 610mm packed length, maximum of 2kg with no Royal Mail banned or dangerous items. After suffering a number of postal losses at the end of last year we are now tracking all international shipments for security which has increased the shipping costs. We don't want anything to fly off the back of Santa's sleigh! We continue to work on resuming international courier deliveries.

Deliveries to Europe are currently being shipped without VAT being added, so shipments will be subject to Tax and Handling charges at your border and will need to be paid by you. We are close to implementing a Tax paid solution using IOSS which will slightly increase the shipping cost but should be a lot cheaper than the Post/Courier Tax handling charges. Progress is slow with other priorities, but it is coming. We will keep you informed of progress.

STOCK INFORMATION

We continue to maintain high stock levels, but are still seeing slow deliveries from some suppliers (maybe their sleighs arent as powerful!) We are also suffering from a growth in the Cancel Culture, whereby more and more customers are cancelling orders when we are not able to complete immediately. Please be assured we Elves do our best, but are limited in what we can achieve, we are only 'human' after all. All cancelled items or orders cost us time and money (payment handling charges). Please remember with Modelu figures, we stock several hundred Modelu figures, but as we have a choice of over 7500 on the site it is not possible to stock all of them, so they are are on a 2 to 3 week leadtime. See the next paragraph regarding displaying live stock levels.

WEBSITE DEVELOPMENTS

As mentioned before, our Elves have been working with our website pixies and believe we are close to being able to add real time stock levels online. There have been unforseen issues with complex products. They will appear, but we are unable to say when. Then you will be able to see if the item is in stock or can be pre-ordered awaiting delivery. If in doubt or you have any queries, please contact us. The Elves will be more than happy to help!

Many of the products we sell are complex to put stock levels on the website. For example, we offer Parkside 00 kits in 3 different wheel options, but they need the same base product. So it has been hard to show the availability for all of them as only the 00 are physically held in stock. Similar issues apply where we sell the same metal sections in different lengths.

We are also planning to change the way in which product options are displayed on the site, hopefully making things more obvious and simpler for you our loyal customers.

Watch out for the changes.


Right, better go, as Daughter Elf will no doubt be in trouble for elf-ing up the newletter once again!

Thank you, keep safe and stay elfy!

Derek, Anita, Matt and Judith

(Also known as - Eileen's Elves)

[LesGros]

Bravo Derek,

And Happy Christmas to you and your good 'elves.

[Terry Bendall]

Bravo Derek,

Seconded. All our traders, including of course our stores officer, deserve our thanks for coping with all the problems and keeping us supplied.

Terry Bendall

[andrewnummelin]

Bravo Derek,

Seconded. All our traders, including of course our stores officer, deserve our thanks for coping with all the problems and keeping us supplied.

Terry Bendall

Here, here.

[Hardwicke]

Hope you're having a relaxing break. Thanks for the order I placed 22nd. It arrived next day. Fantastic service (also the Royal Mail).