Education and Fun for the Whole Family!™

While that phrase pretty much says it all, we thought we should share a bit more about our store and our business philosophies.

History

Kite and Kaboodle was established in 1991. A personal passion for kites and involvement in the wholesale gift industry, led to a small table display selling 5 styles of kites, at the local market. The single market table was given up in 1992 when we established our first permenant retail outlet, a 300 square foot "skywalk" location. In 1993 we relocated to a store almost four times the size of the original, and have since expanded twice!

Current Facilities

Our current retail outlet is a beautiful 3400 square foot "hands-on" store, located in the historic Johnston Terminal at The Forks, a restored heritage rail building located in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. We stock over 25,000 items including about 5,000 new items every year! That's a big increase over the five styles of kites that we started with!

Product Selection

Selecting the right products for our customers has always been a priority for us. We travel to a variety of trade shows offering different product groups, to come up with what we feel is a great collection of items that will please our customers and meet their shopping needs. We look for things that are fun or educational. We look for products that will interest all age groups and a appeal to wide variety of interests. We look for high quality products that offer good value. We look for manufacturers and distributors that will stand behind their products.

When we are selecting products, we select them based on their own merit and not on the manufacturers advertising budget! We also stay away from products that depict or encourage violence.

It is interesting to note that with such a diverse product mix as we carry, we are perceived as a variety of different stores. We have be described by customers as: a kite shop; a toy store; a book store; a gift shop and a variety of other concepts. Our favourite description (and the one that comes up most often) is the store with all the "Neat Stuff". We are pleased to be something different and special to everyone!

Customer Service

In such a fun store it's hard to be serious, but we are very serious when it comes to serving our customers. Each customer gets the special attention they deserve from our knowledgeable staff. Meeting our customers' needs is our number one priority!

The Purpose of This Website

We hope this website will become a source of information for our customers and potential customers. We'll provide basic information like store hours, location information, access to a gift card balance checker, hightlight new products, make some special offers, newsletters etc. If there's something you'd like to see on the site, let us know and we'll see if we can work it in!

To Sell or Not to Sell...

We have been asked why this website has not been developed the "E-Commerce" or the ability to sell products over the internet. Our answer is simple, we started our web project with E-Commerce in mind. We soon realized that we did not have the infrastructure in place to handle the demands of selling online. While we could have taken that route, we felt that we would not be able to offer the same excellent quality of service that our customers have come to expect with the in-store experience. We also realized that the energy that we put into managing that type of website would take away from the time we spend ensuring that Kite and Kaboodle (the "bricks and morter" store) remains a special place for all our valued customers.

Will we sell on-line in the future? We would like to, as we get requests from all over the province, the rest of Canada and beyond. Perhaps one day we will, but only if we can be sure that we can guarantee a high level of service! Keep watching for updates to the site. We'll be sure to announce if and when E-Commerce becomes available!