Giving Thanks

Baying Hound has many reasons to be thankful this year:

*great repeat customers who make selling enjoyable

*strong relationships with our manufacturers, particularly Hannah at Peregrine Outfitters and the crew at Guyot Designs

*a growing relationship with local brick and mortar Sprout Soup

*exciting new eco-friendly products

*a business successful enough we can give back

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. May you have many reasons to give thanks this year as well.

Ibex Jersey reviewed in New York Times

The fashion and style guide at New York Times featured fleece and wool gear today.

About the Ibex Shak, the review says "“Gorgeous!” is how Ms. Chism described this pure merino wool hoody. “I felt very posh in it.”...The wool was “breathable and very thin” but cozy. She was surprised at how soft and “not itchy” it was. Ms. Chism also laundered the top in her washing machine, and then placed it flat to dry, per its care instructions. It dried “beautifully,” she said, and “didn’t wrinkle or stink like wet wool.”"

Buy a women's or men's Shak at BayingHound.com and get free shipping with code freeship50.

2008 1% for Good charities announced

Thanks for all the nominations. We selected 6 charities to benefit from our customer's purchases this year:

Capital Area Humane Society - local Columbus OH shelter that housed our two hounds before we adopted them
UNICEF Children's Fund
Nature Conservancy
4 Paws 4 Amelia - nonprofit organized to provide a trained mixed breed dog for local Ohio girl with autism
Mid-Ohio Food Bank
School for Young Children scholarship fund - nationally accredited preschool in Columbus OH

Some of these charities will benefit from eBay Giving Works auctions listed in our eBay store. Bid and you can get some fantastic green gear while benefiting great charities. We will start more auctions on Thursday of this week.

Last Day to Nominate a Charity!

Readers, there are 10 hours left until we choose our charity recipients for this year! Please contribute your ideas to our previous thread where our 1% for Good program is detailed.

We are busily working on writing up listings for auctions to benefit these charities. We will make them live on Monday the 24th ending Monday December 1st.

Our viewpoint on Charity Add-ons

I just read a post about Charity Add-ons by Tim Berry over at Small Business Trends. It got me thinking about why we give 1% of sales to charity. Here's what I wrote about our donation program:

"

I own an online retail store that gives 1% of sales (that’s all incoming revenue, not just profit) to charity. We believe that giving 1% of profits isn’t enough because that number can so easily be manipulated.

We do this to potentially add value in the eyes of the customer and because we believe that success is meant to be shared. We attempt to engage our customer and charities by asking non profit nominations and allowing customers to guide our giving. (We’re actually accepting nominations now, if anyone wants to wander over to http://bayinghound.blogspot.com/2008/11/nominate-your-favorite-charity-for-1.html)

As a micro-business, supporting nonprofits through community leadership or volunteer hours is something I aspire to, but can’t do yet. I just don’t have the time, manpower, or physical resources to donate. As our business grows, I see potential for supporting charities in these ways.

Measuring the ROI of our charity donations is difficult, but I don’t necessarily need to know that number. I operate my business like I operate my life, which is to give back as much and as often as I can."