Those of you that follow me frequently will recall that I received a grand jury summons back in April.  I was a bit taken back at the “wide” representation in the jury pool – just how do we type with sarcasm? – but am very happy that I was chosen as I met some very interesting and very nice people.

One of the people I met struck up a conversation with me as I was reading Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh for review.  I explained that the book didn’t hit shelves for a couple weeks but I was reading to post a review here on my blog.  After conversations about her blog and my blog, we discovered we followed each other on Twitter but just didn’t realize prior to the talk.  She told me of a group of “social media” people that got together for lunch occasionally and talked about blogs and twitter and such.  The next lunch I was invited to join.

Yesterday, another of our group arranged for us to come and tour the facilities where she is working and where she does the social

media for the web site Garden Shoes Online.  Most of you all may be laughing at me being anywhere near the word garden.  You will realize that I kill most plants.  Wait!  I did have tomatoes this past summer so I am a gardener of sorts.  Anyway, back to yesterday.

Garden Shoes Online is one of the stores of GearCor.  As Carol – the owner – took us on a tour of the new corporate headquarters, she gave us a brief overview of how GearCor came into being.  The original online store was Muck Boots Online and operated out of Carol and Pete’s home.  And now my age will show.  I thought I could remember the details, like the year a business began, but I am unsure if that was 2003 or not but that is what is sticking in my mind.  Notes, I promise to take notes next time.

The long and the short of it is that GearCor is now a multi-line company and has just recently moved into a new facility in Conklin.

There are two warehouse areas in the new facility, along with office space for GearCor and office space that is available in the near future for other businesses also.  GearCor runs a cold warehouse and a warmer warehouse.  There is only merchandise in the cold warehouse.  The warmer warehouse also houses the shipping area of the company.

Also in the warmer warehouse is a conveyor belt that contains orders for packing.  As an order comes to the area where it is boxed, there is a scanner system that requires the order be scanned and then the products be scanned.  This ensures that each order is correct.  Then orders are boxed.  Some boxed orders go through a taping machine that tapes both the top and the bottom of the box at the same time.  Having worked in shipping at holiday times, I would have given anything to have a machine like this.

Once we had learned about how the business works, Carol and Pete provided us with a wonderful lunch in their staff “break” room.  Debbie, another of the members of the GearCor family, set a gorgeous holiday table for us all and we talked web sites, blogs, Twitter and other social media as we introduced our blogs and what we each do to Carol.

Special thanks to Teresa Soule for organizing this wonderful holiday get together.  Special thanks also to Carol and Pete for opening their business to us for a tour.  You all can meet my fellow Southern Tier social media mavens by visiting their blogs: Donalyn Ketchum (Donalyn has more than one blog but you can find other links from this one), Kathy Purdy, and Jenn Fowler.