BANKS BANKS BANKS combines two careers for Gloria LeBlanc, the owner and
founder. After graduating from the University of Washington, Gloria had a career
as a buyer at The Bon (the Northwest's largest department store chain now known
as Macy's.) Having twins sidetracked her retail career, a career that she had
loved. Her career as a stockbroker began with Shearson (now Smith Barney) in
1986. It evolved to where she opened up her own office in Los Gatos, CA. But, in
order to have a downtown storefront location she had to have retail. Wall Street
Gifts was born in 1994 to meet this zoning requirement. In 1996 Wall Street
Gifts was launched on the Internet.
www.wallstreetgifts.com Thus, Gloria intertwined her money management skills
with her first love of buying. In October 2000 she created a second Internet
business.
www.cowscowscows.com. She
had seen the Cow Parade cows in Chicago and thought they were wonderful! That
site now includes other cow items as well as Cow Parade. In February 2003 the
Trail of Painted Ponies was launched by Westland Giftware and Gloria launched .
www.ponyponypony.comThe next
Internet business launched was this site,
www.banksbanksbanks.com, over Labor Day 2003. In 2005
www.bullsbullsbulls.com was tied into Wall Street Gifts. Another offshoot of
Wall Street Gifts was
www.globesglobesglobes.com was also launched in 2005. In April 2006
www.gamesandpoker.com was launched. Next came
www.inspiremotivate.com and
www.loyalfansandalums.com In 2007
we added
www.verylargestuffedanimals.com. In 2008 we will add
www.eagleseagleseagles.com
In 1996 Wall Street Gifts (the mother company) offered 12 items on the
Internet and had sales of $8,000. Ten years later, in 2006, we offered over
3,000 items. Today the number of items surpasses 5,000. We've grown!!!
You can help us. If you see an error on the site, or think we could provide a
better photo. Let us know.
service@wallstreetgifts.com We do our best - but we are human.
We are a small business which operates out of a warehouse in Chula Vista, 4
miles from the Mexico border.
Chris is our Operations Manager. She processes all orders. Chris is a college
student who plans on being a doctor. She is a native of San Diego. If you need
to change your order, you can reach Chris at
orders@wallstreetgifts.com She
arrives at 8 AM M-F.
Lee is our Customer Care person. Her job is to make you
happy. Lee is from a little town of 600 people in Nebraska. Her husband was deployed
to Iraq but has returned home safely. She gets to work
around 10 AM M-F after she drops her son off to school. Her email address
is service@wallstreetgifts.com
Alex is our "numbers" person. He will graduate from San Diego State in May
2008 with a degree in Economics. He files FEDEX claims, vendor claims and pays
our bills. His email address is
returns@wallstreetgifts.com He also helps out with customer service.
Diana is our "floater." She helps out where she is needed.
Mike is our full time web person. That's why if you find an error on our site
and call us we can have it fixed before you hang up! We TRY to have him mark an
item as sold out within a few minutes of it occurring. (M-F) We're not perfect,
but we try.
Rafael is our photoshop specialist. He is an awesome photographer as you can see on
the Wall Art page of
www.wallstreetgifts.com Rafael's
college degree is in Fine Arts. He does our graphic arts and creates the banners
for each site.
Beth is a soccer player even though her college degree involves writing. Beth
writes all of the descriptions for our Pony and Globe sites - and other
descriptions as need be. You'll also find her coaching 5 soccer teams when she's
not playing semi-pro women's soccer.
Iliana is a college student who has written 2 children's books (not yet
published.) Lili writes all of the descriptions for our Cow and Stuffed Animal
sites - and other descriptions as need be. On the side she is a model.
Lito writes the descriptions for Wall Street Gifts. His long term goal is to
be involved in films. Lito is also our "utility player" doing whatever needs to
be done.
Cheyenne is our in house artist. She has so many great ideas. Cheyenne etches
the silver and pewter banks. She hand paints the ceramic, resin and plastic
banks. She creates stencils or vinyl letters for banks. She is very proud of her
work and likes to coordinate the personalization and the bank. You can be
specific as to color or placement of personalization; but, most customers tell
us to "do what you think best." That is exactly what Cheyenne does. You can
reach all of the artists at
artist@banksbanksbanks.com
Cindy is an artist who works at her home. She creates unique, exclusive banks
for us. Each bank is signed and numbered.
Manny does our special colored banks for us.
Carlos is our warehouse manager. He has been an avid skateboarder and raced
cars. He was raised in Columbia and the U.S. Carlos prides himself on doing a
good job. He enjoys packing up our shipments so they
arrive in one piece. He is fascinated with all of the countries we ship to.
(Besides the 50 states, we have shipped to at least 50 foreign countries.)
Danny was our warehouse manager until he broke his arm sky diving. He was a
paratrooper and is currently under contract with Red Bull to sky dive
competively. At age 23 he has made 3,400 dives. Danny was in a bad automobile
accident and will hopefully return to work with us at a later date.
Carol writes some of our text. She is a retired professor of Sociology from
Kansas University. Having written 12 college textbooks, Carol finds writing text
for the Internet as quite different and fun. If you read text with a word you
don't know the meaning of - it was Carol that wrote it! She is quite brilliant.
Kathi takes some of our photographs. She also is a retired Child Psychology
professor from Kansas University. Between playing golf, tennis and her other
"fun" activities, she takes photographs for us.
We are here for you; but, due to our limited staff it is VERY helpful if you
email us rather than phone. During office hours we will respond within 24 hours.
