Archive for the 'SPORTS & GAMES' Category

All-American Summer

I won’t say variety is exclusively American, but Americans may be the best at embracing it. The dill-covered salmon curing in my refrigerator is what brings this to mind. Our melting pot of cultures makes for a stew rich with traditions, and one of them- a Swedish Midsummer celebration- is what’s dominated my household this week. But like any week in this fair country, it could be any of 10,000 other things worthy of celebration.

Speaking of celebrations, you’re invited to save up to 50% at Hayneedle’s July 4th Sale!

I can hardly wait to watch the fun unfold in my backyard tomorrow. American barbecue alongside the undeniably Swedish lutefisk. Bocce and ladder golf while waiting for my turn in the next game of kubb. Kids caroming in and out of the bouncehouse. What better way to work off all that pickled fish and make room for strawberries and cream? Or, if my guests prefer something more definitively American, they can always hold out for fire pit s’mores.

Whatever you’re celebrating, be it a wedding or the World Cup, a cookout or the College World Series, these June weekends are loaded with options. Heck, if you’re looking for a reason to get together tonight, just remind your friends that today is Log Cabin Day. For real. It’s Log Cabin Day.

For the fest of the season, or just the happy hour of the day, Hayneedle has all the essentials you need to entertain. From grills to canopies, from conversation sets to outdoor lighting, it’s all here. And in every one of these categories you’ll find an abundance of options, along with a powerful filtering system that lets you narrow your choices based on what you want. That’s true variety, and that’s how we know you’ll find what you love and love what you find.

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Angie’s Electric Bike Test Ride

Hayneedle-what does that even mean?

To me it means fun, variety, and something more exciting than other stores you’d  find online or down the street.  As a company, we offer products that are not always mainstream- products that are fun and completely different.

This brings me to one of Hayneedle’s newest stores, ElectricBikeSuperstore.com.  This site recently launched, and I had the pleasure of riding the Liberty Black 26 Inch Classic Electric Bike.  Not going to lie, at first I was a nervous, but was convinced by coworkers that I’d love the bike in no time… turns out they were right!

Now, my poor husband gets to hear me come up with all the reasons on why I now need this bike. It rides just like your standard bike, but is just more fun and effortless! If I could let you take a demo ride I totally would, but since we don’t have a physical store, you can settle for watching me ask Steve Page- an avid road biker and Buyer for ElectricBikeSuperstore- a few questions about the bike and take my first spin.

With a little luck, I survived with no wipeouts despite attempting to ride in high heels.

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Binocular of the Year Awards

Last Friday, Hayneedle’s binocular specialty store, Binoculars.com announced its first-ever Binocular of the Year Awards. It’s kind of a big deal and the response so far suggests that this was a pretty good idea.

On our staff is a team of optics experts, who also provide support for our telescopes specialty store Telescopes.com. These folks developed an extensive list of criteria for testing the performance of various binoculars in our most popular binocular categories, then they took to the field and conducted these tests themselves. Now the results are in.

The Binoculars of the Year Awards were developed to recognize outstanding products and to help our binoculars customers understand the latest technologies and how they translate to real-world performance.

Here are this year’s winners, just in time for the summer outdoor season:

Best Travel Binocular:
Leica Ultravid 10×25 Compact Binoculars

Best Birding Binocular:
Pentax 8×43 DCF SP Binoculars

Best Hunting Binocular:
10×42 Leupold Camo Cascade Binoculars

Best Astronomy Binocular:
Zhumell Tachyon 25×100 Astronomy Binoculars

Binocular of the Year (a.k.a. Best All-Around Binocular):
Nikon 10×42 Monarch ATB Binoculars with Dielectric Coating

The Best of the Best:
Swarovski EL Binoculars

Check out the full write-up on Binoculars.com to see why each of these models was selected.

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The Random Act of Kindness Sale

Supposedly it was peace activist Anne Herbert who coined the term “Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty” when she wrote it on a placemat in Sausalito, circa 1983.  The idea, often distilled to “random acts of kindness,” has seeped into media and our psyches, even providing the gist of the movie Pay It Forward, a Kleenex-fest starring Haley Joel Osment as a translucent-skinned sickling with a heart of gold.  So what better name for our weird little 14% off sale, right? It’s a random act of retail kindness, and we did it to make you smile.

Our Random Act of Kindness Sale lasts through April 15. It features 12 of our top stores, all offering 14% off.  Who says consumerism can’t be laced with a little kindness?

Maybe today you’ll be inspired to commit your own senseless act of beauty, whether it’s paying for the latte next in line at the coffee shop, or picking up that piece of litter on the sidewalk instead of walking by, or taping a page of poetry to the wall inside the elevator of your building (our personal favorite).

However it manifests itself, a little kindness goes a long way.

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Nerds at Work

Disclosure: some of us at Hayneedle are giant nerds. But here’s the thing, we wear the distinction as a badge of honor. You could even say that we revel in our nerddom.

We nerd out about a lot of things: grills, telescopes, green living products… everything we sell, really. Behind every one of our specialty stores is a wonky team of experts who make it their job to know everything there is to know about the products we offer.

Picture that for a second. We’re not a huge team of baby crib experts. We’re an amalgam of aquarium geeks, model plane enthusiasts, radar detector whizzes, and then some. And since we’re an Internet company, you’d better believe we have some computer nerds here, too. But we’re all living here in relative harmony, in the world of variety that our sites promise.

So what if we’re a little outside the norm? Of course there is another word for all this geekiness. It’s “passion.” It’s about finding something you love and immersing yourself in it. Nerdy or not, we think that’s pretty cool. And we like to think that when you take a look at our sweeping variety of stores, you’ll inevitably find something you think is pretty cool, too.

Photo by Clark J., Hayneedle employee and StarParty member

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