NEW VIDEOS

We have quite a few new videos of some existing models and of upcoming models. To see ALL our videos go to YOUTUBE and search "Gringo Furniture" or CLICK HERE

We will be introducing 3 new lines next month that you will see some of our new videos on. Here is a brief description of our upcoming new additions:

Cottage Series

This unique series combines rustic charm with simples lines and a painted distressed finish. The final product is reminiscent of an antique piece that has time etched into it's character.

Available in any colour you like. We highlight BLUE, RED, YELLOW, WHITE, BROWN and BLACK.

We can apply this finish to any of our pieces. We also have several new designs with this finish already applied.

New Marble Series

We will be introducing a NEW Rustic Marble Series that is just beautiful. We fell in love with the warm colour and textures of the marble inlays in these piece. They are conveniently shipped and required a small amount of assembly....but this will save you shipping costs.

Our 3rd NEW line....stay TUNED!

LOVING PUEBLA

Ahhhhhh......what a fantastic job I have that takes me to such fantastic destinations all in the name of work!

Last week Alex, Cathy and I paid a visit to our suppliers down in Puebla. If you have never been to Puebla I suggest you put it on your list of things to do.

Combine the scenery with the architecture, throw in the 385 church's, add great cuisine and inexpensive prices all amongst the backdrop of an active volcano and you have a wonderful city to explore and enjoy.

It was not all fun and games, we did work...actually, we worked a lot, but when you do something you love it is really hard to call work WORK.

I am so excited to upload all our new models into the store. We have sourced some awesome new styles and have found some real cost saving methods for our customers. 2009 will be a year of change for us, changes that will make a different for our customers in their pocketbook, choice and availability of services.

Stay tuned to this page and our web site to see our changes starting in early February. We have videos of our new models and lots of new styles to accommodate peoples varied styles and tastes.

Happy Holidays From

Gringo Furntiure

Click Photo to see our holiday dance!

Will be off on vacation from December 24 and back January 2nd 2009.

Happy New Years to Everyone

Developer Furniture Packs

Each day we get numerous calls and emails from customers who have recently bought into a new development and are looking for alternatives to the furniture packs that their developer is offering. I am probably going to get some back lash for writing this BLOG....but in the end, it won't be from the people that matter the most to us....so here is goes

There are 2 reasons why people do not want to use the developer furniture packs; cost and choice.

Choice allows us to show our personality and creativity.
Many of the furniture packs offered look more like hotel room furniture. The only personalization you can make is in the fabrics. Most furniture packs have little personality and possess none of the Mexican charm we all pictured when we first decided to buy into Mexico. People do not want to have the same style as the Smith's down the street, nor do they want their dream home to reflect another persons’ tastes. You want people to walk into your Mexican dream home and see your personality, not the developer’s....heck, isn't this YOUR home. Would you ever consider a furniture pack for your residences in Canada or the States?

Cost has never been more important....we are all looking to save.
While the furniture packs are often beautiful and of good quality, the costs can sometimes seem...well....outrageous. I remember the first time I saw what a furniture pack cost...my jaw dropped. I have seen 2 bedroom furniture packs cost as much as $45,000. That is a steep price for a convenience.

Now for the stomach turning part....Most of These Homes Are Bought To Be Rentals! My gosh, spending that kind of cash on something that is just an investment? Pick up any real estate guru's latest, greatest book on real estate investing and the overwhelming message is "Don't Over Spend". Have you ever seen "Flip That House" and watched someone put too much money into a house and loose all kinds of cash because they got all caught up in unnecessary finishes? Why on earth do you need to spend that kind of cash to furnish a rental unit????? Think about it, it is nuts!

Developers will tell you that you MUST purchase their furniture packs to gain access to the rental programs. I understand this thinking because standards need to be met for rental purposes, however, I also know these developers are making money from these sales under the guise of these rental program standards. I hear everyday how the developer is "REALLY PUSHING" the furniture packs......stop and think for a second....why would anyone push something they were not being compensated for?

Furniture Packs also give developers and their chosen property management company the ability to control the rentals in the complex, thus, earning more income.....to the tune of 50% for each booking! Frankly, I think renting on your own or going to an outside rental company is far better....but that is another BLOG for another time.

The sad thing to me is that fear will often cause people to buy into the furniture packs and people will spend far beyond what is necessary. They believe that if they do not comply they will not be accepted into the rental programs. I guarantee, if the management company has more bookings than units they will not care if you bought the furniture pack or not, they just want to fill rooms and make their 50% commissions. In all my years I have never heard of a property management company turning down a customer because they did not have a standard furniture pack. As long as you have good mattresses, quality furniture and the right amount of furniture your place is 100% rentable. I rent both my houses www.casamerlot.com and www.casachablis.com and nobody told me what to buy or how to decorate. Each of my places boast a 75% occupancy rate (2008)...and I do it on my own....but again, that is another BLOG for another time.

I am not sure how our society got to this point.... of causing people to buy on fear. Marketers have done a wonderful job creating fear, especially in Mexico where people feel vulnerable.

Did you know that there is a standard that developers go by for pricing furniture packs? They price the furniture packs on the cost of the unit. So, for instance, if you paid $400,000 for a 2-bedroom unit you will likely see a furniture pack for that unit price at $40,000. This is typically calculated at 10% of the cost of the unit. Gringo Furniture can do 2 bedroom units for as low as $5,000 to a maximum of $18,000....quite a gap eh!?

Gringo Furniture would love to work with developers but we have had a hard time....mostly because we can't afford it. We can't afford the commissions requested to sell our furniture into developments without raising our prices. And, if we raise our prices we become less accessible to the people that matter most to us....people like us who ultimately are people like you. We hope one day a developer see us for the value we bring to their customers instead of the value we bring to them.

Furniture packs have their purpose. They save time, they make the decisions for you and you get a showroom furnished home. It is up to you however if you want to pay for these conveniences or if you want to save upwards of $20,000 - $30,000....imagine what you could do with the $20,000 you saved.

So, how are we different...here comes the pitch....

Choice
Gringo Furniture has all the Mexican charm you could want and you can customize till your hearts content. We have typical rustic designs that can be transformed into hacienda quality with a special finishes. Our wicker furniture is warm and romantic and our new slip-cover sofas as so comfortable you will have a hard time picking yourself out of them to go to the beach. We allow you to create your personal styles and we love this part of our job!

Cost
Does Gringo Furniture sell furniture for free...NO! Do we make money from selling furniture...YES! But, our prices are a fraction of what the Furniture Packs sell for! We offer less services as far as set-up goes but you save literally $10's of thousands not paying for these services.

Why are we less expensive? We price our furniture in line to what it should be selling for. We do not bundle everything up and hide our prices. You see what each piece costs and you see each charge itemized.

Heart
We are motivated by a passion for what we do, a desire to do the right thing and to promote jobs in Mexico and Canada. I can honestly say, making money has never and will never be our number one priority, it is important, but it does supersede what is fair to our customers. We make mistakes, we are not perfect, but we try to rectify each mistake so that our customers walk away happy. Maybe that is the wrong business strategy, but it is a strategy that gets us (and I honestly mean "us" as all of us here love what we do) out of bed everyday excited to get to work.....and that my friends is priceless.

Interesting Article

I have not had a moment to even clean my house in the past 3 weeks, business is booming....which defies what the news is reporting everyday! We are thankful everyday to continue keeping all our suppliers and employees busy.

I promise to continue my story from Merida, but in the mean time I came across this very interesting article about investment in Mexico. Strangely it is reported from the Middle East. It is worth a read if you already own in Mexico or are thinking of buying.

http://www.bi-me.com/main.php?id=28335&t=1&c=35&cg=4&mset=1011

For ALL Our American Friends

Forgetting The Pain

I have never had a baby, but I am told that you forget the pain of child birth once the baby is put it your arms. I think setting up a home in Mexico could be compared to this. You forget all the pain of setting it up once you are sitting with a cold cervesa, the sun is shining and everything looks beautiful....OK, maybe not eactly like child birth.....but along the same lines.

I honestly thought I was smarter this time I actually got a little cocky (who is kidding who....I AM Gringo Furniture) bragging to my husband and mother that we'd be finished in just 2 days and then we'd have the rest of the time to explore Merida......yyyyyeah, that came right around and bit me in the you know what!

The first problem happened 3 days before we left. As I had indicated in one of my previous BLOGs I was going to use myself as a Guinea Pig for an accessories line. I had taken over 4 months to plan this, talking frequently with the supplier and going over any possible problems.

3 days before we left I called the supplier to make sure all was fine and I found out it had not even left the USA. In fact, the supplier had somehow screwed up the date to deliver and seemed really unfazed by his mistake. He actually had the nerve to say that he'd been working on a 3 million dollar piece of business and had given mine to someone else. I was so put off by his lack of interest in servicing me that I told him to cancel the order. I too have made mistakes (more than I can count) but I have never minimized what I did and I always tried to make up my mistakes to the customer. Weather you spend $1500 dollars with us or $100,000 with us, we will always treat you the same. Everyone is important no matter what the dollar amount it.

So, the long and short of it is....we are back to the drawing board for accessories. But not to fret, we already have ideas that we think will be even better for our customers. We will unveil this idea over the next month.

With that behind us we boarded the plane to Merida. We arrived late on the Sunday night and went straight to the hotel and got some rest as the following day was going to be busy. We woke up the next morning, went out for breakfast and then shot over to Walmart to buy bedding for our beds. We figured if we had bedding we could get through till the following day and focus on receiving the furniture after we signed all the papers at the lawyers.

We arrive at the lawyers at 10:00 and signed all the necessary paper work. Our lawyer was amazing and so was the real estate company we purchased thru, Mexico International (I will write another BLOG about this next week). By 10:30 we owned the house and had the keys in hand -- Whoo Hooo!

I called Alex back in Canada to make sure the truck was on time.....surprisingly, it was....this never happens. The plan was to have the furniture arrive at 12:00 noon and we were on-time......I was looking like a STAR at this point.

We drove to the house, opened the door and fell madly in love with the house. If you remember, we had never seen it other than on the Internet....so seeing it for the first time was incredible. It was perfect....I was speechless (which many will say is impossible)..... I will never forget that feeling of joy, it was indescribable to know this house was ours. It is truly a work of art.

By 11:00am our plant manager from Puebla arrived at the house with the carpenter. I lined up 6 workers to assist with the unloading of the furniture....how much better could it be going I kept saying to myself....I started to feel a like a SUPER Star!

Yeah, right....try a falling star. Unbenounced to me, you can not bring a tractor trailer into the center of Merida during the day....WHO KNEW? Apparently, I should have done a little more homework on the delivery into Centro. I soon learned through our trusty and wonderful Real Estate agent Henry Ponce (who also was the architect of the house) that we could not even consider unloading the truck until at least 10:00pm or risk getting a fine.

TEN PM! Are you kidding me!?! I had calculated that by 10pm I was to be finished unpacking and sitting on the roof with a margarita... this new reality was putting a spanner into my plans....my star status burned out at this point with my 71 year old mother who was already looking wilted and my husband who's patience is lacking at the best of times.....and it was barely noon.

It is always best to have a plan B, so, plan B went into effect. We left my Mom at the house with a cold beer (beer always unwilts her), sent the plant manager and Carpenter off to have lunch, sent all the workers away with orders to return at 10pm and jumped in the car and did a Costco run with my grumpy husband.

We went into Costco and attacked the task like a couple of dogs on T-bones, we must have looked like 2 crazed animals. Within 30 minutes we had 2 carts overflowing with bedding, coffee makers, towels, pillows, mops, glasses...you name it, we had it. When we could not fit another thing we went to the check-out. I still shiver when I think of the total we spent....but at that moment, who cared, it was one more thing that was done.

We drove back to the house, unloaded everything from the car and began to put the kitchen together. By about 5:00pm we were idle again with nothing to do. I decided to risk fate and ordered the truck to arrive at 7:00pm and called the workers to arrive then too. It was my hope that the police would not drive by and put a stop to us.

My star started to burn a little brighter as we never had any problems with the police and we were able to start unloading at 7:00pm. It took 3 hours and 12 people to get the furniture off the truck and into the house. It took an additional 4 hours and 5 people to take every scrap of wrapping off all the furniture.

By 2:00am we were all exhausted, red eyed and our fingers were raw from unwrapping the furniture. I went into my mothers room at one point to say good night and there was blood all over the floor from someone cutting their finger with a knife while unwrapping. We all fell into bed and had a very restless sleep as we were all still on an adrenaline high.



.....to be continued

VIDEO'S
Our newest feature

We are still uploading all our videos. We have several ready to view. Please go to http://www.gringofurniture.com/videos_000.asp to see our furniture in real life!

All Set-Up In Merida


(Percy table, made in antique and recycled pine paired with Iron Chairs)

For the past three weeks I have been busy setting up our new home and showroom in Merida. Boy, is it ever a big job to do. Since I had not set up a home in Mexico for over 3 years, I had forgotten some of the pain involved. One thing that was a surprise to us was the assistance of the real estate firm we bought thru. I will go into much more detail later, but I don't know if i could have been more impressed with Mexico International, the agents from there were top notch.

I will write more next week on everything that happened as this week I am busy catching up. We are currently getting slammed with orders for people needing furniture for the Christmas season. So, in the mean time, I will tease you with some photos of the furniture. Everything you see is Gringo Furniture, even the mirrors on the walls. ENJOY!

Confessions of a Real Estate Junkie

I Confess, I have struggled for many years with a real estate addiction. It started innocently by frequenting MLS sites but soon grew into a full time habit with uncontrollable urges to constantly watch HGTV and go to open houses. My husband Greg, also suffers from this addiction which began to manifest when he started coming home on Wednesday's with take out in hand yelling "whoo hooo, hurry up, it is Real Estate Wednesday on HGTV".

The two of us would watch "House Hunters", "Buy Me", Flip that House" , "Moving Up...you name it we watched it. We played games trying to figure out what house was chosen, who lost money and who was totally out to lunch on their renovations. We believed we had become experts in real estate.

It all came to a head this June when we went on a business trip to Merida. My business meetings took place and then we planned a few days of free time to spend in Merida as it was our 15th wedding anniversary.

We walked around town, rented a car, drove to Progresso, visited all the popular sights and even took a carriage ride thru town. It was a lovely few days and we fell in love with Merida. One evening as we were having a glass of wine deciding what to do the next day Greg said "Hey, why don't we take a look at some Real Estate tomorrow?"

It was like the universe slowed down, I got all dizzy, broke out in a sweat and started to recall an episode of "Buy Me" that followed around a lady looking to buy in Merida. It all happened so fast. The next thing I knew I was in an Internet cafe, surfing properties for sale calling out ID numbers to Greg as he feverishly wrote them onto the pad of paper we found in our hotel room. Greg started calling agents trying to get appointments for the next day, he was writing times and locations down , I was punching a calculator figuring out our budget.....it was simply crazy.

The next day was hazy, we went from one house to the next, falling in love with each and every one we saw. I could picture myself in pretty much every property we waked thru. I began to decorate each and every one of them, recalling different styles and designs from my store and doing a quick calculation of the cost for each to decorate....I am a Realtors dream...buying signals galore.

The final house of the day was the one. It was perfect, it was everything we wanted (WANTED!!!!!...Like we had time to even put a list together). We put an offer in before we left the property. The next day we boarded a plane, flew home and arrived only find out the property has sold to another buyer. We were devastated, but not ready to give up. We decided to put an offer in on our second choice, but that too had sold.

The following night we took a deep breath and began to giggle about how ridiculously close we came to buying a house in Merida. Common sense had taken back over and it felt good. We made resolution to stop the madness, to take our time...why the urgency? We began to make plans to go back down to Merida in the fall, take our time, look around and not make any snap decisions. We were getting our addiction under control.

The very next day I had a lull between Gringo Furniture orders. I resisted going to the web site for homes in Merida and instead got on my bike and went for a ride. I came back made a coffee and sat back down at my computer determined to work on Gringo Furniture. And that is when it all happened again. My fingers punched in the web site for homes in Merida, I started to sweat and began to surf and send suggestions via email to Greg's blackberry.....the madness began all over again. His blackberry started to go off like a fire cracker, he called me and yelled "WHAT ARE YOU DOING"...I yelled back "I'M ONLY LOOKING."

Before he could get his key in the door that night I POUNCED on him...GREG! I have found our dream home in Merida...hurry, come look at my computer. That was all it took, he succumbed to the madness. He went thru all the photos of the house I had fallen in love with, then went thru them again, and again, and again, and again. Finally he announced "IT'S PERFECT!"

The next day we asked the agent to go and make a video of the property. The video arrive and it looked more like an Alfred Hitchcock movie but it still sold the house to us. We were in love and nothing was going to deter us. We placed an offer and within a few days and a little negotiating the offer was accepted and a deposit was sent.

To add to the madness, my mother took one look at the house on the Internet and insisted on owning 1/3 of it.....what is that saying????...... "the apple does not fall from the tree"....now you know where I get it from.

So here I sit, 3 weeks away from seeing my new home for the first time. Furnishing it from floor plans given to me from the real estate agency and preparing to wire the final amount.

Do I have any regrets....ABSOLUTELY NOT! Am I afraid the house won't be what I expect....NO WAY, in fact, I think it will be better than I expect. Since the purchase I have gotten calls from people looking for furniture who were also house hunting in Merida and went thru my house, they told me it was magnificent. Also, since we bought it we found out it had been profiled in Ambiance Magazine last year.

So you ask, is this the first time we've done something like this.....ARE YOU KIDDING, this is the 4th time we bought something without seeing it. And finally, the last question....how much of this story is true....ALL OF IT!

It feels so good to finally confess. I know we will repeat this story over and over again for years to come. When people ask how we choose Merida......we will say, Merida choose us, because honestly, is there really such a thing a Real Estate Addiction?!?