Today was a really hard day at Bloomin’ – the hardest day we have ever known in our company’s 16 years. Our longest standing employee of 13 years, Norman Tankersley, passed away during the night at 42 years of age. Norm was differently abled and shared his gifts with all of us in immeasurable ways. He will be missed forever by everyone he touched. He helped us all appreciate the small things and live in the moment. He greeted his coworkers each day with bear hugs and announced his arrival with boisterous ramblings over the company intercom system. He loved being a part of our team and dreaded the arrival of his bus at the end of each day. New acquaintances were often surprised by his enthusiastic handshake or romantic kiss on the back of the lucky ladies’ hands. He loved laughing out loud at our missteps, fumbles, and stumbles throughout the day, reminding everyone not to take themselves too seriously. He has been there for all of us through the good times and the bad, helping to keep everything in perspective, like no one else possibly could. We will miss him and will never forget him. We are grateful for the unselfish gifts he shared and the lessons he unknowingly (or knowingly) taught us each day. We love you Norman. We miss you Norman!
Norm Tankersley 1966-2009
Tags:norm
Hugh snows in October will not keep us from shipping our seeded paper products to the people who want them. As long as UPS can get here, products are shipping on time. We do our best to keep moving things forward. If anyone can get things done in a pinch WE CAN. We always do everything we can to get our customers what they want, when they want it. You will rarely hear us say NO. We want your business as much if not more than you want our plantable paper.
This is Samana assembling cards for leanin' tree today - not rain nor snow... over 20" of snow so far in this storm. Being lovers of sun, we put a huge glass door in our assembly area last year. It's much better for the well being of our people and myself not to be working in a dark warehouse.
By the way, if I haven’t told you lately, Thanks for the business. We really appreciate it. Seed paper is our passion and we hope you enjoy it as much as we do.
- Tom Noyes
Tags:assembly
Over the last couple of months we have been busy “rebranding” ourselves. With the help of Sandbox Collaborative, we have identified and defined exactly who we are.
We realize we have had many different looks with a variety of bloomin logos, and soon we will have a more unified look. Below you will see our new look. The colors may change depending on the product or category, but the look should remain the same.
bloomin - what you say grows
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Hi! This is Abby, Bloomin’ sales coordinator, I have just returned from a fantastic Wedding tasting put on Catering By Design, the premier green catering company in Denver. The event was in the ballroom at the Denver Botanical Gardens with its stunning array of flowers and cool fall mountain air. I would highly recommend the gardens to anyone, (can you image anything more beautiful than being married under an awning of flowers in the bright Colorado sun… sounds like perfection to me!)
Abby Simon is displaying a small sampling of our collection.
Thanks to everyone who came to check out our new line of plantable wedding invitations! So many people we meet want their special day to have a positive impact on the Earth, and what better way than to use seed paper for your invites and the big day. What better way for people to your special day than with some colorful wildflowers that grow right out of our paper.
Here are a few seeded invitations and plantable wedding favors.
Seeded paper, bags and tags, even some wish kits are great for weddings.
Bloomin’ has also launched a more casual line of fill-in-the-blank and DIY imprintable invitations perfect for save the date or bachlorette party. Billy idol almost got it right, its always a great day for an earth-friendly wedding (click here to see the original white wedding music video).
This is a close up of some of our packaged invitations.
This last photo was taken by Jewels Grey at Grey Photography. She was there doing a little networking and decided to snap a shot of some of our products.
Tags:invitation
About three years ago I decided I wanted an electric car. It was then I realized than none were available, well except for golf cart type slow-little “cars”. I looked into building one out of my wife Sues 1973 VW bug, but I just didn’t have what it takes to figure it all out. It appears that affordable production electric cars are just around the corner – finally. Please hurry up guys!
Here is a fellow Boulderite Jim Kasik in his homemade electric car. He and the car look good huh! This car is/was a 1967 Triumph Spitfire.
The past and the future, all in one.
Jim and his buddies built this car over a couple of months this summer for less that $10,000.
There's batteries in the front and back of this rig.
After tax credits, I think he said he will have $2500 into it, that’s right, the government should be crediting him back $7500.
I love the chrome plated ELECTRIC plate.
This car has went over 75 mph on batteries. Jim said it has a range of up to about 40 miles on a charge.
BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD – GANDHI
Bloomin is always hauling stuff around town. Hopefully we will soon be doing it in an electric vehicle that is being charged by the 144 solar panels on our roof.
- Tom Noyes
Tags:electric car·sustainability
Ask me what makes our company great, and I’ll tell you its the people who work there. Our current team of All Star Rock Stars is constantly striving to build a better company for our valued customers every day. Be it back in the die cutting department, paper making, printing, accounting, assembly, shipping, customer service, sales, or the art department, we all are working hard to make Bloomin’ the best it can be. It’s the people that work there that make it so fun and exciting to come to work everyday. It is inspiring to see the diverse backgrounds and intersts that make up our complex, yet ever so simple company fabric.
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We love our sports in Colorado! Here’s a pic of Don on TV during our Colorado Rockies brief playoff run this year. And, how about those Broncos…. 5-0 so far! Now if we can just get our CU Buffs back on track…
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Here is Tia and Naomi, my two 7 year olds enjoying a wintry Sunday morning. We broke a weather record the experts say, I believe it, brrrrrrrrrrrr. Is it because of climate change? I suspect so but I sure hope not. Anyway, I hope these two beauties will brighten your day, they brighten my day everyday. Our kids are the best thing that ever happened to us. It is so much fun looking at the world through their bright eyes. If you have kids, you know what I am talking about huh, if not, I’m sure you have plenty of other great things you enjoy. I hope it get back up in the 70’s soon, I not done with fall yet.
These girls are the sunshine of my life!
- Tom Noyes
Tags:kids
This is one of my favorite places to be at 8 am on a work day. Now I know I should be working by now, but hey, all seed paper no play makes Tom a dull boy. Movement climbing + fitness just opened up this summer and is great addition to the climbing gym collection in Boulder. I say collection because there are three gyms within about one half mile of each other. Movement is only a city block away from our headquarters.
This place can be quiet a 8am. It's like a blank canvas this time of day.
This is what it looks like later in the day.
I love what these guy have achieved here. They put their money where their mouth is. It is not cheap to build a commercial building with the level of environmental ethics that these guys have demonstrated, especially in Boulder. Here is what they say about this on their website.
“We are proud to be Boulder’s newest and most energy efficient climbing and fitness facility. A combination of ample daylighting thanks to Jim Logan Architects design, solar panels and solar thermal heaters fromLighthouse Solar providing over 80% of our energy, and high-quality, efficient building materials and practices from Harrington Homes and Costen LLC have helped to create one of the most efficient and environmentally friendly commercial buildings in the country.”
Reading their story in our local newspaper was a catalyst to setting up solar power on our roof. Much of our power will soon come directly from the sun, hopefully by the end of the year.
-Tom Noyes
Tags:Boulder·climbing·Colorado·play·Playing Is Important·sports
As an MBA graduate of the CU Business School (Go Buffs), I was invited again last week to speak to the incoming freshman business school students. Nothing gets the butterflies going for me like the chance to speak in front of 350 students in one of those giant stadium-style multimedia classrooms. The kids always seem to enjoy hearing our very relevant seed paper shoe string startup story, and I love telling it.
This year I was asked to talk about social responsibility in the small business environment. While most publicly traded companies have responsibility primarily to their shareholders, we on the other hand enjoy a greater sense of responsibility, one that includes our community, our employees, our customers and our environment. We make every effort to offer a challenging, rewarding, fair, safe and clean work environment for each and every one of our valued employees.
Having our roots deeply embedded in Boulder, we are always looking to strengthen our ties to the community and the city we love. We employ differently-abled individuals from various agencies within Boulder and support all things local whenever we can. One recent project in which we have invested is Boulder’s new Valmont Bike Park. (My business partner Tom will be moving dirt this Saturday!) We have always felt a strong sense of responsibility to our customers (our partners), who are helping us spread the Bloomin’ word. We strive to deliver a product that does what we claim; specifically, they really do grow! We aim to meet and exceed our customer’s expectations on all fronts (print quality, delivery time and germination rates to name a few). We continue to operate at the forefront of environmental responsibility and are looking forward to our new solar power installation in the coming months.
If we remain vigilant to these principals, we will have the chance to honor a sense of responsibility to ourselves (the Bloomin entity), as well as ensuring we remain a profitable, viable, thriving and enduring company for many years to come.
Don Martin
Tags:cu·teaching
