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29 Sep |
Contest Winners Contests
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Sorry everyone. Family life got in the way. Gotta feed my kids, you know? Totally lost track of time, and now I’m an hour late in posting these. I’m really very sorry.
So, you want to know the winners of the contest. Here we go:
For the Alternate Edward Fan Club design:
"Humor Me" submitted by Hanna L.
Image: A smiley face
For the Rosalie Cullen Fan Club design:
"Jealous Much?" submitted by Melissa O.
Image: a hand mirror
For the Renesmee Cullen Fan Club design:
"Go Hybrid" submitted by Phyllis S.
Image: Double Helix (DNA strand)
Congratulations to the winners! The grand prize for the contest was a Signature Edition Fashion version of Bella’s Engagement Ring. Also, each winner will receive one (1) shirt of their design. The winners have been notified via e-mail that they are winners and with instructions on how to proceed. We will be creating the new shirts very quickly for production in time for Christmas.
As of now, we are unable to post the finalists. I’m sorry for that, but it’s just how things are. Thanks to all of those who submitted (over 1,800 in total) and thanks especially to Stephenie Meyer for her participation and assistance. We look forward to getting these designs up on the site in the coming weeks.
-Brian
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27 Sep |
New Software Coming To Twilight Teez The Store
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On October 1, 2008, Twilight Teez will be debuting our new shopping cart software. This software will provide our customers with a more stable online experience as well as offer new features that were simply not available to us before. We are excited to be able to bring this new experience to our customers.
The new web site won’t actually look terribly different than the current site, but there will be some obvious differences. For one, we hope to debut our new logo design at the time, as well. On top of this, we’re launching some new features to the site, including an affliliate program, an online returns process, and a better presentation of our products.
There are some things to keep in mind. First, the new shopping cart is a wholly different software package than the one we are using now. While it runs on the same server platforms (Linux using Apache and MySQL for you tech-heads), the database structure is completely different and thus not compatible with our current software. While porting the data to the new structure is possible, it’s very time consuming and expensive. Therefore, all of our current customers will be required to create new accounts on the new system once it launches.
This incompatibility also prevents us from providing account histories prior to the switchover date. This means that while you can continue to order with the current store up until October 1, the new software will not have your account histories for orders placed prior to that date. In other words, if you place an order on September 30, and go back to check it on the new system on, say, October 3, then you will not be able to locate your order history under the new system.
DO NOT INTERPRET THIS TO MEAN THAT ALL ORDERS PLACED ON THE CURRENT SITE WILL NOT BE HONORED OR THAT YOU WON’T BE ABLE TO SEE YOUR ORDER HISTORIES!
Far from it. We will continue to process orders that were placed on the current store software. On top of that, your order histories prior to October 1 will still be available to you for a time. You will simply need to log into the old site, which will continue to be available to you via a direct link on the new site. Once we make the switchover, new orders will NOT be possible on the old software.
One more thing; the gift voucher system on the new software is much easier to work with than the old. Anyone who currently has a gift voucher balance on the current system will have that balance transferred to the new system. I’m not precisely sure how that will manifest itself just yet, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
I hope this isn’t confusing. I’m writing this at 12:53 AM, and my mind is not only foggy with fatigue but is also still reeling from the fact that I just read in Forbes that If I wanted to charter a 190-foot superyacht I’d have to put up half a million a week. Not that I was looking to do this anytime soon. It just happened to be part of an ad in the latest issue of Forbes, which happens to be listing the 400 richest people in America. You have to have a net worth of $1.3 Billion USD minimum to be on that list. In case you’re wondering, I’m not there yet.
Of course, if you have any questions, please feel free to comment and I’ll do my best to answer.
-Brian
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23 Sep |
The Announcement You’ve All Been Waiting For! Bella's Engagement Ring
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Well, maybe not all of you. That guy there, in the third row, wearing green and purple plaid striped pants and eating the hot dog topped with Milk Duds (TM)…he hasn’t been waiting for this announcement. But most of the rest of you have, so pay attention.
As some of you have already deduced, we have started shipping the rings. We received the first batch of orders from our manufacturer on Monday and we have finished inspecting them, counting them, and matching them up with their respective orders. We have started shipping them today. We will continue to work dilligently to ensure that all orders are correct and get them out the door throughout the rest of this week.
We have not received all of the rings, yet. I’m not able to tell you which ones have not come in, yet, but I can tell you that we hope to receive them as early as this coming Friday. But make no mistake, WE HAVE STARTED SHIPPING THE RINGS!!! That should be enough to garner a WOOHOO! right?
As for the contest, we have still not heard Stephenie’s final decision. We do know that she and her team of Official Character Slogan Contest Name Pickers (OCSCNP) are hard at work pouring through the entries and we do hope to hear a final answer soon.
And regarding Renesmee’s Locket…well…guys, how ’bout we just get through the ring thing first before we start thinking about other product offerings?
UPDATE: We are shipping off the rings in the same order in which they were purchased, giving priority first to Signature Edition rings. If you ordered an SE ring, then your will be among the first to be processed. Precedence is also being given to the method of shipping selected; USPS Express and UPS Next-Day air will be processed first, UPS 2nd-Day next, then USPS Priority and UPS 3-day, and so on.
-Brian
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18 Sep |
Meet Howard Not Twilight Related
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This is Howard.
Howard is a computer, but not in the same typical way that most computers are computers. Howard doesn’t really do a lot of the things you’d expect computers to do. Oh, he can browse the Internet and check e-mail and catch viruses just as well as any other machine out there. But he can also play the trumpet, drums, sax, jam out on the guitar and can do a 50-50 grind on his skateboard as well as any of those so-called "pro skaters". You’ll be seeing more of him around here in the coming months. So get used to him.
-Brian
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17 Sep |
Of Rings and Contests…Updates Galore Bella's Engagement Ring, Contests
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You all are terribly anxious for some news, and I am terribly anxious to actually give you some. I have some important information that I’m dying to give you. I’m so anxious, my hands are shaking. Of course, that could be from the lack of food, too (it’s noon as I type this and I haven’t yet eaten anything).
First, some representatives of Twilight Teez (myself included) went to Scottsdale, AZ (which is dangerously close to the home of our favorite author) to discuss a new business opportunity that has made itself available to us. Although it didn’t go further than with just meeting a few people, we did learn a lot of things and that made the trip well worth it. The downside to this is that I was away from the office all day and have not been able to post any updates until just now. So that’s why you didn’t see anything yesterday.
But I have some great news that I hope will make up for all of that. So let me tell it to you all so you can stop chomping those bits.
Bella’s Engagement Rings will begin shipping on Tuesday, September 23, 2008!
I’m pleased to announce that we will have the rings in our posession by Monday. A representative of Infinite Jewelry Co. will be hand delivering them to us. As soon as we receive them, we will inspect them and then package them for delivery. This has been a very anxious time for us, especially in light of the very significant delay that the hurricanes caused. We know you are all understanding of that situation, but trust me, we know you have been very anxious about these rings. We believe that you find them every bit worth the wait.
The next important announcement I have is that we have finished compiling the contest entries and have selected our finalists. Like I said, there’s about 20 per category. I will be sending the finalists in an e-mail to Stephenie later today. If I can, I will post the finalist entries this evening for all of you to peruse.
UPDATE: I have sent the finalists to Stephenie this evening. However, at this time, I am not at liberty to post the names of the finalists. I’m sorry, and I know you all are very disappointed, but I’m afraid that’s where we stand. I do hope that we will be allowed to post the finalists after the winners have been announced. I will not promise that I will be able to do that! In any event, Stephenie is now in possession of the list of finalists. When she has picked the winners, we will let you know as soon as we do.
UPDATE UPDATE: It is Saturday, Sept. 20 and we have not yet received the winners from Stephenie. I just wanted to let you know so y’all don’t think we’re holding out on you.
We’re very excited about these recent developments. We’re also excited about the new products which we are going to be offering very soon. More on that later.
-Brian
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14 Sep |
Another Contest Update Contests, Shirts and stuff
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Just thought y’all would like another update on the progress of the contest. We are well on our way to having the finalists ready to submit for Stephenie. We already have the submissions for Edward sorted out and Rosalie and Renesmee are not far behind. At this time I thought it might be a good idea to let you know our criteria for selecting the finalists. There’s really not much to it, but we do have at least a little bit of a method to our madness.
First, let me tell you, it is not easy trying to pick just a few out of the hundreds of submissions we received. You all have such great imaginations and it’s apparent that so many of you have a deep understanding of these characters. With so many great ideas to choose from, it really was a hard thing just to come up with the 20 or so per character that we will be submitting to Stephenie. I assure you, every single submission was read and considered.
Our first basic criteria boiled down to did we like the entry? This wasn’t so easy. Like I said, there were hundreds of great entries, but like so many things of this nature there are going to be ones we just basically don’t like. There’s no offense intended here. Just because we didn’t like something, doesn’t mean it’s no good. There were submissions with awkward wording or phrases that just didn’t fit the characters. Those that we felt were not good matches to the characters were eliminated.
Next, we had to consider the appropriateness of the submissions. I’m not talking about appropriateness for the character, but how appropriate would the slogan be for the person wearing the shirt. Remember that these shirts will be worn by people of all ages – from 12 to 112 (maybe not that old)(you never know). We need to be responsible here, so slogans that could be considered provocative or offensive were eliminated.
One of the hardest things we had to deal with were multiple submissions with the same slogan suggestion. We knew we were going to have to deal with this, and trying to figure out the fairest way to determine a winner was not very easy. How we ultimately decided to deal with this situation was to pick the first one to submit that idea. So let’s say if Jane and Jenny both submitted a slogan which says "Dazzling Daddy" and we decided that Dazzling Daddy was a good slogan (it isn’t) then we would pick the one submitted first. If Jane submitted the idea at 10:30 in the morning and Jenny submitted it at 1:00 in the afternoon, then we would pick Jane’s as the submission to send to Stephenie.
Make sense?
Good.
We expect to send the finalists to Stephenie by Monday evening. Stephenie’s schedule will be the determining factor as to when we get her final decisions. Good luck to everyone!
-Brian
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11 Sep |
Hurricane Ring Update Bella's Engagement Ring
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We have just heard from Infinite Jewelry Co. relating to the status of the rings. Now that the hurricanes have passed, we can move forward on getting these rings to you. To better explain the situation, I am going to quote from the e-mail I received from IJC.
Bella’s Engagement RingsTM have survived the hurricanes! They are now being inspected, and once that process is finished, we will engrave the Signature Editions and package all of the rings. They will then be sent to Twilight Teez for delivery to you. We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience. This untimely delay was unforeseen, and we are doing everything possible to get these beautiful keepsakes to you as soon as we can! Thank you for your understanding and patience.
So there you have it. Those rings will be shipping very soon. I have seen the rings, personally, and I can tell you they are far more dazzling than even the photos have shown. I believe they will be well worth the wait.
Of course, if you have any questions, please feel free to post them here.
-Brian
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11 Sep |
Contest Update Shirts and stuff, Stephenie Meyer, The Store
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The time for submissions to our second character contest has past, and we want to thank everyone for all of their submissions. We’ve been reading through them already, and I can tell you that this is NOT going to be an easy task to choose just one for each character. The breakdown for the number of entries for each character is as follows:
Edward Cullen: 534 total submissions
Renesmee Cullen: 653 total submissions
Rosalie Cullen: 672 total submissions
In all, we have 1,859 submissions to sort through. Here’s what’s going to happen next. We will begin disitilling the entries down to about 20 or so per character. Similar ideas will be judged based on the time of entry as well as the description of the graphic to go along with the slogan (both slogan and graphic will be considered). Decisions as to which submissions make the final cut will be at the sole descretion of Twilight Teez. Stephenie Meyer will then choose the winners from the finalists that we submit to her. All decisions are final.
Winners will be notified by Twilight Teez via e-mail once they have been selected. Once notifications have been sent, we will announce the winners here. We hope to have the winners picked by September 17, 2008.
The winning designs will go into product development immediately and be made available as soon as possible.
Thanks again for all who participated! This is an exciting time for us here at Twilight Teez.
-Brian
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6 Sep |
More Support For Stephenie Twilight Books
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A new video has been created to show our support and love for Stephenie Meyer. You can see it here.
-Brian
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1 Sep |
New Character Contest Shirts and stuff
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In the spirit of Stephenie’s contest from last year to introduce new character shirts for Bella, Emmett, Carlisle, Esme, and Jasper, we are hosting our own contest for Rosalie, Renesmee, and an alternate Edward Fan Club shirt. The contest will be open for fan submissions starting on Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2008 at 8:00 am PST, so get your imagination engines revving. The winner for each character shirt design will receive a Signature Edition Fashion ring. The contest will run for one week, and will officially close at 11:00 pm PST on September 10, 2008.
This contest is open to anyone in all countries. Poland, Thailand, and Mexico residents will not be able to receive the ring as a price due to import regulations imposed by those countries. However, we will make accomodations for other prizes of equal value for winners living in those countries.
You can download the official rules for this contest here. Note, you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader in order to view this file.
The rules are also available on this page.
Post any questions you may have on the contest as comments to this post.
UPDATE: All you wonderful people that submitted your ideas BEFORE 8:00 am PST on September 3, 2008…guess what? Those messages have been deleted! This is because the rules say that the contest starts at 8:00 AM PST ON SEPTEMBER 3. You will have to resubmit those ideas. Just thought you should know.
UPDATE UPDATE: It’s on! You may now legally submit your ideas with wanton abandon. Just remember the rules.
-Brian
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About
Twilight Teezers is the official blog for Twilight Teez. This is where news and information relating to our web store will be posted. Twilight Teezers, while not necessarily a fan site for the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer, will likely include commentary or other articles relating to those books. We will also include content relating to other book series and authors. If you want to discuss more about Twilight, you may visit our forums or the many Twilight fan sites around the Internet (see our links section below).
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NieNie
Links
- More Twilight Fan Sites - So many fan sites, so little space to list them all…
- SchadeBlog - Brian’s personal blog
- Stephenie Meyer - Stephenie Meyer’s official web site
- Twilight Lexicon - The Twilight Lexicon
- Twilight Teez Forums - The Discussion Forums for Twilight Teez
- Twilight Teez, LLC - Order Stephenie Meyer Twilight Shirts Here!
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