Hurricane Woes for our Online Store

The good news is that Hurricane Helene did not damage Friends' merchandise. The bad news is that it took out our primary post office for fulfilling orders and made filling orders quite a challenge. We are still open for holiday shopping, but things are a bit slower.

Cedar Key Post Office after Hurricane Helene

Friends' merchandise has been popular for years. Visitors to our Refuges, Friends' members, and folks who come to local festivals have been strong Refuge supporters. Friends members and Refuge staff delight in seeing our hats, shirts, and other branded items being worn and displayed. It is as much a way to raise awareness of how many support the Refuges as it is a source of modest revenue for Friends' programs.

Cedar Key Art Festival 2023

During the pandemic, we opened an online store to keep the merchandise available. Board members volunteered to keep items at their homes and ship them out as they were ordered. One volunteer would fulfill orders on the iconic tree tee shirts, another orders for Blue Goose passports, another for hats and earrings. It kept the task from being overwhelming for a single volunteer. If someone ordered a butterfly shirt, a tree shirt, and a book, the order would be filled by three different people and sometimes mailed from three different places since some volunteers live in Cedar Key and others in surrounding areas.

Friends' "tree" tee shirt

Friends' Cedar Key Refuge cap

We are actually quite proud of our volunteer-centered, distributed fulfillment process. It meets the need and lets many people be involved in the work. Friends does not have a physical store and sells only at festivals and from our Refuge Rover. The online store continued to be successful  after the pandemic.

Last summer the merchandise team tried hard to order additional Blue Goose passports which were in high demand. Disappointingly, the books are out of print and unobtainable.

In better news, the team designed a new, blue, v-neck butterfly shirt. Production was held up by the hurricanes, but the shirt will be available starting around December 18. It is nice to have a new item for the New Year!

Friends' new butterfly shirt

The Blue Goose passport book, now out of print

And then, along came Hurricane Helene. It wiped out the post office in Cedar Key and put a lot of stress on the volunteers to repair their own and neighbors' homes and properties. For the time being, if an order is filled by a Cedar Key volunteer, it must be driven to a post office miles away to be sent. The mobile post office unit is not equipped to deal with mailing packages. Luckily, the volunteer who will fill the butterfly shirt orders mails from Gainesville.

When things calm down and the post office is not having to operate on slimmed down service, you can expect a splashy "hooray" message from us.

The Cedar Key mobile post office unit