Behind the Scenes at Hazel Village During the Holidays

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Behind-The-Scenes

Friends, we often joke that we humans of Hazel Village are professional Christmas elves, and it’s true that we do a big part of our business online in November and December. We are really a well-oiled machine getting your packages out the door within two business days. We wanted to give you a behind-the-scenes look at our elf life. 

Hands sewing purple shiny fabric on an industrial sewing machine

We are still cutting and sewing doll clothes! Our advance planning has really improved in this department, so we don’t have to do much emergency production at all. We did just finish some Sugar Flowers dresses, but mostly we are working on new stuff for January! As a chronic procrastinator, this blows my mind.

Hands snipping a doll garment made of light blue floral liberty of london fabric

When all the sewing is done on doll clothes, Zack goes through them, snips the stray threads, and double-checks that the quality is good. Before I became a professional doll clothes maker, I wouldn’t have thought this was a separate job that takes a lot of time, but it is!

Hands packing a Hazel Village order consisting of Oliver Mouse in a red bonnet and fawn spot pants with matching kidswear
Person folding a packing slip on a pile of collectible bandanas next to a wrapped up Hazel Village animal surrounded by packing materials.
Two boxes on a packing station in front of a canvas bin full of Hazel Village raccoons

Megan packs and ships almost every order. First, she prints the packing slips, looks for special customer service requests, and makes a list of all the monograms to do. When all the parts of the order are ready, she wraps everything up in our standard wrapping or in a gift box, puts the items in a shipping box, and prints the shipping label. 

Person embroidering a custom monogram onto a Juliette Rabbit amongst monogram and embroidery supplies.

A lot of people work on monograms these days. We got a little backed up after Black Friday (the stack of packing slips was more than a full ream of paper! It was crazy!) but now we are caught up again and monograms are adding no more than a day to our standard processing time of two business days. 

We help Megan by keeping the baskets of animals dressed and tagged, and keeping all the doll clothes and kids’ clothes stocked from the basement. 

USPS Mail bags full of outgoing packages from the workshop in front of a hutch with shelves full of Hazel Village dolls and animals.

Once a package is ready to ship, we put it in one of these reusable bags that the post office gives us. Specifically our package pickup guy, Mac, sometimes gives us a giant new bag of bags. And lately, we give him back several full bags every day! 

Picture of many USPS mail bags full of outgoing packages surrounding an industrial sewing machine.

This is how it was, the weekend after Black Friday. 

Person wearing a fuzzy sweater working at a laptop answering customer service emails.

Most days, if you call or email the store, Maddy will help you. She is the nicest and most elfin of all! 

So as you can see, we are working very hard and keeping up with your holiday orders! There’s still time to place an order of gifts for the holiday season.

If you order by our 2019 shipping deadlines of 12/16 (standard US shipping) or 12/18 (priority US shipping), we promise to get your order in the mail in time for the USPS’s shipping cutoff dates. After that, it’s a whole 'nother system of elves and all any of us can do is wish them well. Build your own gift here!