Hurricane IRMA Fl Keys Shop Rebuild
Donation protected
Our family owned shop is located on Big Pine Key, Florida - where the eye of the Hurricane Irma made landing in the Keys on Sept 10th. The Authorities let us back in just on Monday, Sept 18th and we are working on the property. It was pretty much destroyed. We are missing a roof and 2 walls in where shipping and warehouse used to be, all of our production spaces got flooded 4 feet deep... There is so much mud, debris and water in all buildings it will take a mammoth effort to even clean up and restore. Days and days of work, just trying to remove the piles of mud, branches, and everything that was scattered around by the 9 Foot Surge and 140 mile winds... We have 7 employees and their families who returned after evacuating and just could not believe their eyes. We are doing everything possible to give them their jobs back as soon as we can.
We will send you a coupon code(s) for the amount of your donation which you can then redeem as soon as we reopen, for our lovely Christmas Stockings, Ornaments or Wedding, Anniversary Couple's gifts and pet presents, all personalized with love and care by us and our neighbors in Big Pine Key, Florida. We feel that sending a coupon for the amount of the donation will allow us to repay it back and work it off as soon as we are back to work thanks to your kind help .
While we are rebuilding, you can take a look at our Etsy Shop at https://www.etsy.com/shop/eugenie2
and read the reviews here, to see what we make and how our customers like it.
Once we reopen ( hoping to be back and start working and shipping by end of October 2017 ), we will send out an email so you can use those coupons and let us make you something nice for your family, or pass the coupon to a needy cause to pay it forward. We usually donate our Christmas stockings to organizations like Freedom Village USA/North America’s Home For Troubled Teens. Hurrican IRMA thinned out our stock of 500 stockings we had ready to send out as donations this year, so I think issuing coupons may be a good idea, what do you think? For us, it means we can work off your kindness in helping us and make a Christmas Stocking, Ornament or other personalized gift item once we are back on our feet.
Our hope is to be back making our products by last week of October 2017.
The Story:
Eugenie Kloubkova Livingstone & Joe Urbanovitch met in California 20 years ago and transplanted to the Florida Keys in 2002 when they moved to Big Pine Key, following their dream to spend the rest of their lives to "Work like a Captain, play like a Pirate" in the place that's truly one of a kind. They live in the Summerland Key and their shop is located on Big Pine Key.
Joe, aka Daddy to Staci, Tina, Dejah, Joey, April, Nicky and Joseph - Yes 7 kids - is an Electronics Engineer (MIT) and technical genius, no machine has any secrets from him. He is the guru who makes, designs and maintains all the hardware. Who else would take apart an embroidery machine and laser engraver after they were flooded by salt water in Hurricane surge and put all it's circuit boards through a dishwasher? Eugenie, aka Christmas Genie, is the software part of the family with a background in computer science (NJIT and Rutgers) and international sales and passion for art and design. Their twin boys Nicky and Josef are turning 18 on September 28th.
Stocking Factory is their family owned business making customized and personalized Christmas Stockings and Ornaments, wedding and anniversary gifts. It took them 20 years of hard work to build what Genie calls an American Dream. They could not have gotten there alone, Joe's son Joey Urbanovitch is making all the awesome graphics designs happen for the past dozen or so years and his fiancee Margie Mead is the multi-talented Angel making sure Joey's art is realized into beautiful things that will delight their owners. Together they have a small family business, earning an honest living by hard work, a proud employer in our wonderful Florida Keys Community which they absolutely love.
You can take a look at their website www.stockingfactory.com
Here is a photo of some of our new stockings taken by Genie right before the evacuation for hurricane IRMA. Joe made the fireplace and Genie takes the pictures against the outside wall of our shop on Big Pine Key.
We have already started our rebuild process where we have to replace the structures that were totally demolished by bringing in one of those mobile office modular buildings, getting help from volunteers to cleanup the debris and repair of the structure that can be salvaged and replace/repair our equipment.
We are using all of our rainy day savings to take care of the most critical things to get us back on our feet but if we can raise additional funds this rebuilding process would take lot less time and let us give our employees jobs in days rather than months. I am one of those old-fashioned folks who believe in self-reliance and have really difficult time asking for help. But I have 7 other families, our employees who rely on us to have a job to come back to instead of collecting FEMA or unemployment assistance. FEMA offers Small Business Loans but I am hoping with your help we can get back to work sooner than that paperwork gets processed. A large percentage of our inventory that survived or is still in delivery route to us is Christmas related - and if possible, we would love to be working our Christmas season and rehire everyone as soon as possible,
The funds raised will be dedicated to a repair and cleanup of our buildings and equipment refurbishing. With the additional funds, we can reclaim our space where we make and ship. We have already obtained quotes from contractors to move our buildings to their original state. One building and a storage trailer moved 30 ft forward on the property, all areas of the shop got flooded and evenly coated with mud, mangrove branches, collapsed drywall and evenly sprinkled over by randomly tossed inventory, tables, furniture.... We will also be able to afford more of the production equipment spare parts that are incredibly expensive - for example, the main circuit board for our embroidery machine is $2,500 or just a power source replacement for a laser engraver we use is $900. Joe can do all the disassembly troubleshooting and reassembly on just about all of our equipment, so it's just a question of how fast we can put everything that was damaged back together.
IF YOU LIKE TO HELP IN OTHER WAYS:
- Please tell your friends and family about this GoFundMe, share it on Facebook or Twitter. Maybe they are thinking of getting new Christmas Stockings or going to a wedding and they can use this GoFundMe as a way to preview what they like and redeem the coupon once we are back to making and personalizing our items.
- If you know of someone in the Big Pine Key area who can help us with heavy equipment ( bobcat or even a crane) to help us clear the building debris. If you know of any volunteers or work crews to help us clear the mud and fallen trees, please text me at three zero five eight nine six five five six five - the voice service is still down but texts come through.
Warmest Thanks from our Family to Yours,
Genie & Joe with Nicky, Josef
Joey and Margie,
& the Stocking Factory Elves
in the beautiful Big Pine Key, Florida
Stocking Factory
30554 5th Ave
Big Pine Key, FL 33043
Our normal phones are still down
Cell Voice Still Down but can receive texts
We will send you a coupon code(s) for the amount of your donation which you can then redeem as soon as we reopen, for our lovely Christmas Stockings, Ornaments or Wedding, Anniversary Couple's gifts and pet presents, all personalized with love and care by us and our neighbors in Big Pine Key, Florida. We feel that sending a coupon for the amount of the donation will allow us to repay it back and work it off as soon as we are back to work thanks to your kind help .
While we are rebuilding, you can take a look at our Etsy Shop at https://www.etsy.com/shop/eugenie2
and read the reviews here, to see what we make and how our customers like it.
Once we reopen ( hoping to be back and start working and shipping by end of October 2017 ), we will send out an email so you can use those coupons and let us make you something nice for your family, or pass the coupon to a needy cause to pay it forward. We usually donate our Christmas stockings to organizations like Freedom Village USA/North America’s Home For Troubled Teens. Hurrican IRMA thinned out our stock of 500 stockings we had ready to send out as donations this year, so I think issuing coupons may be a good idea, what do you think? For us, it means we can work off your kindness in helping us and make a Christmas Stocking, Ornament or other personalized gift item once we are back on our feet.
Our hope is to be back making our products by last week of October 2017.
The Story:
Eugenie Kloubkova Livingstone & Joe Urbanovitch met in California 20 years ago and transplanted to the Florida Keys in 2002 when they moved to Big Pine Key, following their dream to spend the rest of their lives to "Work like a Captain, play like a Pirate" in the place that's truly one of a kind. They live in the Summerland Key and their shop is located on Big Pine Key.
Joe, aka Daddy to Staci, Tina, Dejah, Joey, April, Nicky and Joseph - Yes 7 kids - is an Electronics Engineer (MIT) and technical genius, no machine has any secrets from him. He is the guru who makes, designs and maintains all the hardware. Who else would take apart an embroidery machine and laser engraver after they were flooded by salt water in Hurricane surge and put all it's circuit boards through a dishwasher? Eugenie, aka Christmas Genie, is the software part of the family with a background in computer science (NJIT and Rutgers) and international sales and passion for art and design. Their twin boys Nicky and Josef are turning 18 on September 28th.
Stocking Factory is their family owned business making customized and personalized Christmas Stockings and Ornaments, wedding and anniversary gifts. It took them 20 years of hard work to build what Genie calls an American Dream. They could not have gotten there alone, Joe's son Joey Urbanovitch is making all the awesome graphics designs happen for the past dozen or so years and his fiancee Margie Mead is the multi-talented Angel making sure Joey's art is realized into beautiful things that will delight their owners. Together they have a small family business, earning an honest living by hard work, a proud employer in our wonderful Florida Keys Community which they absolutely love.
You can take a look at their website www.stockingfactory.com
Here is a photo of some of our new stockings taken by Genie right before the evacuation for hurricane IRMA. Joe made the fireplace and Genie takes the pictures against the outside wall of our shop on Big Pine Key.
We have already started our rebuild process where we have to replace the structures that were totally demolished by bringing in one of those mobile office modular buildings, getting help from volunteers to cleanup the debris and repair of the structure that can be salvaged and replace/repair our equipment.
We are using all of our rainy day savings to take care of the most critical things to get us back on our feet but if we can raise additional funds this rebuilding process would take lot less time and let us give our employees jobs in days rather than months. I am one of those old-fashioned folks who believe in self-reliance and have really difficult time asking for help. But I have 7 other families, our employees who rely on us to have a job to come back to instead of collecting FEMA or unemployment assistance. FEMA offers Small Business Loans but I am hoping with your help we can get back to work sooner than that paperwork gets processed. A large percentage of our inventory that survived or is still in delivery route to us is Christmas related - and if possible, we would love to be working our Christmas season and rehire everyone as soon as possible,
The funds raised will be dedicated to a repair and cleanup of our buildings and equipment refurbishing. With the additional funds, we can reclaim our space where we make and ship. We have already obtained quotes from contractors to move our buildings to their original state. One building and a storage trailer moved 30 ft forward on the property, all areas of the shop got flooded and evenly coated with mud, mangrove branches, collapsed drywall and evenly sprinkled over by randomly tossed inventory, tables, furniture.... We will also be able to afford more of the production equipment spare parts that are incredibly expensive - for example, the main circuit board for our embroidery machine is $2,500 or just a power source replacement for a laser engraver we use is $900. Joe can do all the disassembly troubleshooting and reassembly on just about all of our equipment, so it's just a question of how fast we can put everything that was damaged back together.
IF YOU LIKE TO HELP IN OTHER WAYS:
- Please tell your friends and family about this GoFundMe, share it on Facebook or Twitter. Maybe they are thinking of getting new Christmas Stockings or going to a wedding and they can use this GoFundMe as a way to preview what they like and redeem the coupon once we are back to making and personalizing our items.
- If you know of someone in the Big Pine Key area who can help us with heavy equipment ( bobcat or even a crane) to help us clear the building debris. If you know of any volunteers or work crews to help us clear the mud and fallen trees, please text me at three zero five eight nine six five five six five - the voice service is still down but texts come through.
Warmest Thanks from our Family to Yours,
Genie & Joe with Nicky, Josef
Joey and Margie,
& the Stocking Factory Elves
in the beautiful Big Pine Key, Florida
Stocking Factory
30554 5th Ave
Big Pine Key, FL 33043
Our normal phones are still down
Cell Voice Still Down but can receive texts
Organizer and beneficiary
Christmas Genie
Organizer
Big Pine Key, FL
Eugenie Kloubkova Livingstone
Beneficiary
