You know what The Menzoid is talking about. Valentine’s Day. That time of year where love and romance allegedly reigns supreme. When hearts are a-flutter. And when florists the world over jack up the price of roses to such an extent that their actions would make oil company executives blush.

Let’s face it: for too many decades, Valentine’s Day has been the most sexist holiday in the calendar. Us men fork over 80 bucks for a dozen long-stems or a box of fancy chocolates. And what do we receive? Some crimson-hued piece of cardboard in the shape of a heart with some Jack Handy-like proverb on it about the true meaning of love.

Well, as they say at Taco Bell these days, “Where’s the beef?”

Ladies, we don’t want your stinkin’ cards

Indeed, if we are indeed living in an age of gender equality, when are men going to receive something actually useful on February 14^th?

Well, good news, guys. While Metropolis has Superman and Gotham City has the Dark Knight, men now have their own champion for truth and justice and the gift-giving way: Marc Slater, owner of King’s Crate.

Visit kingscrate.com and a man will feel like a kid in a candy store all over again. For finally, someone has come up with gift ideas for men that are actually going to be useful and enjoyable.

We’re talking fine cigars. Hard liquor. Good beer. And manly literature – books about sports and steaks and Corvettes and James Bond.

And as the company name suggests, all this man-treasure comes packed into a masculine, no-nonsense crate – not some frilly, effeminate girlie-girl gift “basket.”

And as they say on those Ronco ads: “But wait! There’s more!”

If requested, Marc or one of his associates will actually call or email your lady friend and tell her, point blank, exactly what you want in your crate.

You see ladies, you say we men don’t listen. But the fact is, it is women who don’t communicate in a blunt, no-nonsense fashion. We are men. We need directions. We take orders. Say what you want. Don’t beat around the bush, for we have no time nor desire to go on an endless Easter egg hunt.

So, if you want to cuddle, tell us. We will do it! If you want to neck, tell us. We will do it! Or if you desire the “Bonus Plan”, we are there for you. But you have to communicate your intentions. Not all men are like The Amazing Kreskin. We are not psychics who can read the uber-complicated female mind

Likewise, thanks to King’s Crate, we now have a service that spells out to YOU exactly what WE want.

When The Menzoid enlisted King’s Crate to directly phone Lady Menzoid, that was akin to receiving a Valentine’s Day gift in itself. For Marc firmly reminded Lady Menzoid how The Menzoid had given her an Alfred Sung designer dress for Christmas 1990. And what did The Menzoid receive that Yuletide?  Zellers-branded sweatpants. And then there was that wedding anniversary of a few years ago, which Lady Menzoid completely forgot about. Oopsie! And let’s not forget last Christmas when there was absolutely nothing waiting under the tree for The Menzoid, even though Lady Menzoid received pajamas from the Playboy Collection, including a tank top with the illustration of sexy lips along with copy that reads: “Wake me with a kiss” (which The Menzoid often does – talk about a gift to last.)

Thus, Lady Menzoid has been instructed in no uncertain terms that to make up for all the previous gifting transgressions, The Menzoid wants ALL of the King’s Crates in the catalogue – which are to be placed into one, big super-sized crate. And make no mistake: The Menzoid doesn’t want any designer sweeties or herbal tea bags in there either.

Bottom line: To paraphrase a song from yester-decade about gender equality:

“The Menzoid is man, hear him roar;
In numbers too big to ignore;
And The Menzoid knows too much to go back and pretend;
‘Cause The Menzoid’s heard it all before;
And he’s been down there on the gym floor;
No one’s ever gonna keep The Menzoid down again.”

You’re welcome.

by The Menzoid

Without much of a viable alternative, most companies turn to the traditional gift basket. Having worked in the corporate environment for many years, I’ve seen many a gift basket circulate around the office.

Now, gift baskets have their place. When you are looking to congratulate a team of people (i.e. your marketing department) on a job well done, a gift basket can be a great solution. There will be a number of smaller items in there that can be shared amongst the group.

But what about a gift to your financial advisor, attorney, or real estate agent? What about a gift to a corporate executive or top performing employee?

Check out the line of gift crates at King’s Crate. We have 14 different themed crates including:

• Santa Fe crate – perfect for the guy who has hot sauce on EVERYTHING
• Dublin crate – featuring the awesome Whiskey Rocks (profiled below)
• Oh Canada crate – for a guy’s night of hockey and suds

Know your audience better? You also have the ability to customize your own crate, selecting the items you KNOW they’ll enjoy.

We have many testimonials from corporate clients, all who have gotten a reaction (and hopefully subsequent business) that have well surpassed what they might have from a basket full of fruit.

Contact us and let us know how we can help!

We have this product available in a number of themed crates:

• Dublin crate (for the Irish Whiskey fan)

The Teroforma Whiskey Rocks is also available in our custom crates section when you want to fully personalize your gift.

Don’t imagine we’ll see this on air anytime soon, good work Internet!

Also cool is that is was done by a Toronto ad agency Taxi 2, well done guys and gals! Moobs, hehe

After adding King’s Crate to Google Local Business Center (this will enable our company to show up in Google Maps), I was encouraged to check out the Google Merchant Center. Upon further reading, it appeared as though I would be able to add all of our products, and they would then show up as direct links to our site for potential customers to view.

Now mind you, this was AFTER I had submitted all of our company location information, so the Google “machine” was well aware of where we conducted business.

To add the products to the program, I had a choice of adding an Excel tab delimited spreadsheet or an XML document. Since we are often adding products to our database, I thought it best to create a PHP file that would read our database and extract the relevant information in the required format, therefore creating a dynamic XML file, eliminating the need to constantly update our products within the Merchant Center. I was fortunate to run across a great little video by John Morris to help me out with some of the little details (How to Create an XML Data Feed File for Google Product Search Using PHP).

So after hours of coding and testing, finding all the proper attributes I could use, I was ready to upload my XML document. That is when I discover the “Target Country”.

Now I see the drop down box, and notice United States is the default. Well, no biggie, I’ll just change it to … United Kingdom or Germany. What, no Canada? I start to frantically search the internet looking for where I screwed up, but no, it seems that Canada is not supported.

Yes, I realize that while my business may be located in Canada I could sell to other countries, could they not have given a little warning that I won’t be able to target the country I’m listed in? I came to this section FROM Google Local Business Center, a place where I specifically entered in all of my geographic information, INCLUDING a 60km radius that we deliver to.

I guess it’s another case of one hand not knowing what the other hand is doing, but it’s just another slap in the face when you’re trying to run a business in Canada. Why here, look who is at the top of the list of largest trading partners to the United States – oh it’s little old Canada, above even China and Mexico.

This was more of a rant than anything, a little Rodney Dangerfield self pity. Just frustrated at the number of times this happens, whether it’s products that are unavailable in Canada or the price of books that are never modified even though our dollar is almost at parity with the US greenback.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on any similar roadblocks you’ve faced, but more importantly we’d like to hear of companies/services that are inclusive of Canada. We are – after all – the Olympic Men’s Ice Hockey Gold Medal holders. Show a little respect

Nick pack!

Hopside down

As I was going to take my own advice (for once) and prepare to chill for tonight’s game with a cold beer, I wanted to post a review on one of the products we feature at King’s Crate called the “Hopside Down“. We have this awesome beer glass in our Oh Canada! crate, and it really is the centrepiece to the gift.

One thing to note immediately is that this glass is hand-blown, and sort of confuses the eye for a moment. People aren’t sure what to make of it at first. It fits a 350mL bottle of beer perfectly, so a beer can won’t fit.

One thing I didn’t expect was how cool it keeps your beer. Because the beer sits in the internal “funnel”, your hand is never directly palming the beer! Really cool!

Well, ends up I’ve had to open a beer about 3 hours before gametime, but it was all in the name of SCIENCE!!

As great as this one is, it is the walk in closet commercial that is my favorite from them (I’m obviously not the only one, this has over 6 million views), enjoy:

Proost!

• Gift baskets have, almost entirely, been geared towards the female population, often filled with chocolates, soaps, and potpourri (not overly proud that I know that word).
• While a large majority of men would GLADLY receive a bottle of their favorite liquor or even a case of beer, perception is that it would be cheesy to give just that.
• My business partner, being in the construction industry, found it very difficult to purchase quality items to show appreciation to his suppliers, vendors and contractors.
• Finally, and maybe most importantly, the phrase “Guys are so difficult to buy for!”

It was out of these ideas that King’s Crate was formulated. Since our inception, we’ve been happily busy filling orders for mostly friends and family for the holiday season. A couple of key corporate gifts (a market we’re eagerly trying to penetrate for 2010) have shown that the idea of luxury gift crates for men in a reusable handmade crate is a real, viable gift option.

We were also fortunate enough to have an article written about our high end crate The Havana in Luxist online magazine. This has created quite a buzz for our company and its products.

Feedback of the received gifts is slowly coming in, and will help to fuel the direction of our business in the upcoming months.

All this said, outside of the obvious holiday season, our goal is to provide quality gift ideas and reviews to gift givers year round.

To further reach that goal, I’ve picked up a great book by David Meerman Scott called The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly. Before reading the book, I was somewhat hesitant to create a blog, but the potential to reach buyers who are looking for ideas – and perhaps what we are selling – became pretty obvious right away. While I’m personally familiar with social networking sites like Facebook (our Facebook page is here), this book is opening my eyes to other potential opportunities.

We look forward to opening discussions and maybe even debates with readers of this blog. Our purpose at this blog will be to highlight gift ideas that men will appreciate, and hopefully help consumers make informed decisions for their purchases.