The answer is yes. Low temperature does affect resin and plastics and could cause your doll to crack while traveling in transit, or in storage where the climate gets low. To avoid breakage, try not to ship dolls where they will travel in or through areas with freezing temperatures. If the location of a doll has climates of snow or ice, it's possible that in transit even to a warmer climate that through transit or as it moves from warehouse to warehouse destination it could crack or break on its own or become brittle enough that basic handling can crack it. This makes winter doll shipping tricky, and you might want to wait until temperatures warm up if the doll is expensive. Vinyl dolls don't seem to be as fragile and won't break just due to cold alone, but storing in freezing temperature can cause vinyl to become brittle over time or attract moisture.

If you are anything like me as a small business, you wear a lot of hats and work long hours. That fateful day when we all hope that we become millionaires at one point is long off, and we are in the day to day struggle of making things work and figuring things out by ourselves. I'm hit flush in the face with all kinds of advertisements that promise AI sales and marketing tactics that will somehow carry your business from the slow pace of growing to the sound of a Vegas slot machine hitting the jackpot. Let me tell you friends, for most of us, that stuff will never work. It's not that we are doing anything wrong, it's that everyone is playing the same game. Everyone is trying to post, everyone is trying to make content, everyone is trying to grow their following, everyone is trying to get more subscribers, and everyone is trying every day to be seen and grow. Some are doing it for business, some for vanity, some for kicks, some for entertainment, and other such reasons. It's like looking into a room of people pushing and shoving at a store's door busters deals before Christmas shopping season. Everyone wants the same thing and all fighting to get to the front and out the door. There is an algorithm at every door. One for Google, one for Instagram, one for Facebook, one Tik Tok, the list goes on, if it's social or web based there is an algorithm for that and it controls who sees you and who does not. Good intentions of course, they are all designed to push things that they think the user will like based on what they've interacted with, what they've shown interest in, what they've searched for and so if you aren't presenting that subject matter you just kind of fade in the background. Many of us have experienced this on a small scale with our shops where listings are popular one week and then the next week fall flat, or everyone saw your post for dolly subject matter and then the next week no one saw anything. With everyone on their phones as a source of entertainment and for cutting boredom or awkward silence, the past time of today is scrolling scrolling scrolling. Social media pushes you to stay on, look at all the people looking, scrolling, if you aren't in front of them you don't exist. Meanwhile small business owners are met with an unbelievable demand of being content creators and unreasonable posting objectives. I've been frustrated myself. I push my customers to "Like" me on Facebook or Instagram, but when I'm ready to release my new dolly product or show what I've recently created, I'm having to find my followers all over again. I was contacted by one of my former Etsy customers not long ago, who came across me on another platform and was so happy to find me again. Again, how is it I lost a customer somewhere on the web? I'm constantly posting everywhere and yet this person could not find me. I searched everywhere, and then found that this same person "followed me on Instagram". How is this possible - this person could not find my store, but was one of my own followers on an active account? Why? Because even though they were a follower, my posts did not end up on their feed because I had been filtered out. So then I had a think about this...so I am busting my butt growing followers, promoting use of social media and then I can just fall off the face of the earth without my customer even realizing they lost sight of me. This reminds me a lot of many situations where I found myself doing all the hard work to make someone else successful. Yes folks, social media needs us to be working hard, creating content, and making platforms look interesting and full of information and to sell advertising, but is it really stable enough to grow business? Or is it a revolving door of people coming and going or getting lost along the way? I think technology as a whole is something that we must keep up with as business owners. We can't sit idle and let opportunities pass us by, but I also think that we need to use our time wisely as otherwise we meet impossible standards of tasks and spread ourselves way too thin. Here today, gone tomorrow is not a mindset that seems very stable to me. I'm not saying get rid of social media, I enjoy posting photos and occasionally getting feedback or likes, but it no longer defines my success in business. I am not going to cry if only 8 people like a post or that my business Facebook page has only 100 followers. Because all of that is superficial. Ok 100 people thought I was interesting enough to click a like button, that doesn't mean they will ever purchase anything from me. In fact social media gets you about 1% in sales from your following. Larger percentages are achievable if you are really killing it but averages peak at about 5%. Now think really hard about that number, and then think really hard about what percentage of your time you are spending killing yourself on posts and creating content. My guess is that it is not 5% or less. What am I trying to say here? I'm saying that we are all dancing around in a bubble of promised success with very low results and a whole lot of fluff. We have defined our success from numbers of people who have no real intent of ever being a customer. Some of us are defined by those numbers as how popular our businesses are and who is an influencer. There are real influencers out there, yes but there are lots of wizards behind the curtain as well that are just putting on a good show but actually don't have any power at all. Many businesses are thriving without social media at all - which seems like a crazy thing. But what is actually crazy is the day we gave up other types of marketing and interaction with real people for a world full of superficial ones. I find it super sad that I can spend all day on social posting and interacting and maybe get 1-2 sales from it or be at an in person doll event and walk home with 3 new network connections and 5 new customers. Social media should not be the only thing on the agenda and it shouldn't be deserving of all your hours in the work week even though you can do it all from home. Explore other types of marketing and measure the success vs social media. Take into account how much time you have to put in to get your results as that is eye opening. • Radio • Google Search • Doll Events and Conventions • Doll Clubs • Teaching a Class in person or online • Magazines for doll collectors • Physical mailers and catalogs • Networking events • Kid events • Craft Faires Everyone's business and customer base is different, but a mix of different methods and figuring out what gets the best results is key, and it may surprise you if social media is not #1.

Meet Joanie a 2006 series that was originally issued by Madame Alexander but then handed off to Ashton Drake Companies to do a series of reproductions. Normally only Ideal Patti Playpal dolls were of high enough quality for me rather than some of the other brand companion dolls that didn't seem to measure up, but the sweet face on this doll made her equally collectible. Ashton Drake didn't fail on this doll. Her face is incredibly cute and sweet and I couldn't help but fall in love with her online pictures and want one for myself. Unfortunately tragedy struck in this transaction, and this doll fell victim to a shipping accident that wasn’t the seller’s fault. The doll was carefully packed but had some very heavy packages set on top of it during transit. The box buckled and the weight crushed the head causing a split that went from the neck through the face and up through the scalp to the center part. I was so sad, especially since she's relatively hard to find in good condition and she was not cracked to start with. Even more unfortunate, she is made more of a hard plastic or resin rather than a vinyl which can absorb more impact without cracking or damage. Picture of the cracked face from the front. The crack continued up the head to the center part. The good news is that I fell in love with this little beauty and although I was disappointed she was damaged (everything was compensated), it wasn’t this little dolly’s fault and I wanted to try and save her. The first thing I did was to assess the damage. I carefully looked at the crack and looked at it while pinching the head together aligned. No chips or pieces appeared to be missing and the head aligned fairly well. There was also no split in the back so it was frontal only. Now obviously the doll will never be the same in value or as a collector item because she is forever damaged, but she can still be loved. Piecing together cracked or broken dolls wasn’t really in my wheel house, so I did some research and watched some You Tube videos to observe how others had done it before I started anything. After doing some research, I felt confident that I could safely do a good job at putting her back together. First off, the head needed to be glued together and I chose fast drying so that it would bond quickly as I held it together. My favorite brand is Loctite Gel as it doesn’t run or drip and it’s fast drying. I gently opened the split of her head just wide enough to line the glue on one side. I started from the bottom and did it by sections. As soon as I applied the glue I aligned the face quickly and then pushed the pieces together firmly but not too hard to cause breakage or slipping. Above - the crack has been sealed and you can see white residue from the glue along the crack line in places. As I got to the top of the head, I gently spread the hair away from the crack and inserted the glue from the top. I kept a wet baby wipe handy to wipe any excess glue that splurged from the crack as to not form any bumps or texture. It did become harder to align as I got to the top of the head, but the face was the most important for alignment so I chose to concentrate the best alignment there. If anything needed to be filled or given extra attention I wanted it to be in a less noticible area rather than straight on in the face. The very top of the head shows the most distance of the cracks. Although you cannot really see it, the crack line has been filled in with clear glue - and this is a close up shot so it seems a lot bigger than it actually is. The glue fill secures the head and keeps it together in the least noticible area as the hair can be combed back over it. This area then can be sanded and painted if you wanted even less visibility of the damage. I decided to work on her head since it was now secure. Her curls were roughly in tact but we’re looking ratty, but the good news was that they were naturally separated. I took each curl strand and brushed it and then spritzed it with water. Then I finger twirled and secured with a Bobby pin. I will let the curls completely dry and set for a few days and then come back to remove the pins and check the head once again. After I set the hair I went back to clean glue residue on the crack line to try to reduce visibility. Formula 911 by Twinn Pines is a great product for removing glue residue without removing any of the doll’s paint. Just cleaning the crack made it disappear more. Now taking into account that this photo has been taken super zoomed in and close up, you can still see the crack line although it is nearly invisible underneath the mouth and down to the chin area. Traveling upwards you can see the crack line but at a distance of 2 feet away it looks like a scratch on her face and at a distance of 3-5 feet away you can't see it at all. To me, that is a successful repair, but I will be investigating and experimenting if I can make it disappear completely if someone is up close. But needless to say, this doll's traveling days are over. Removed all the Bobby pins on the back leaving one or two to keep the curls in line. Combed the bangs a bit May come back and do some trimming. Releasing the curls, side view. After the curls are all released you can go back and position curls where you hide the Bobby pin to have curls stay where you want for a picture perfect hair style. Final hair and Joanie is smiling brightly.