Hippo Mojo Blog » General News

Pay By Credit Card Even If You Don’t Have A PayPal Account

Hippo Honcho — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 13:43:19 +0000

Yes, you can pay by credit card at Hippo Mojo, even if you do not have a PayPal account. Simply check out as normal. When you get to the screen where you need to log in to Paypal, look to the left and you’ll see another option to use a credit card. See the screen shot below for an example. I’ve placed a big green arrow pointing to the alternate log in area.

PayPal Screen Shot - Click on this graphic to see it larger, then hit your Back button to come back to this page.

Click on the “Continue” link to pay using a credit card or set up an instant payment from your bank account.

Hippo Mojo Now on Flickr

Hippo Honcho — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:09:36 +0000

Just to prove to you that we are totally down with the whole social media thing, we’ve decided to join Flickr. What is Flickr? you might ask. It’s a place where you can sign up for an account for free and then upload photos of whatever you want and share them with friends. Or strangers. Any photo made public can be viewed and commented on by complete strangers. Why is this a good thing? I have no idea. But all the cool kids are doing it so we are too. Check out our photostream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/47905557@N07/. And there’s a screen shot below:

Hippo Mojo on Flickr Sreen Shot

And then just so you know that we are totally super cool, we’ve added a Flickr Badge to our site. That’s the long skinny column of photos in the right sidebar. Again, I’m not sure why we need this but it looks really neat so we’ll keep it. For a while, anyway. Until the cool kids start doing something else…

Hippo Mojo Gets a New Look for the New Year

Hippo Honcho — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 01:55:56 +0000

A few posts back we told you about our new logo–that we are still fantastically, overwhelmingly, head over heels in love with–and well, once we got the new logo in place, the rest of the site seemed kind of shabby, and not shabby chic shabby, just SHABBY. So, we dusted off our long dormant CSS and HTML skills and put them to work customizing a new template.

Then the blog didn’t match so we had to find and customize a new WordPress theme to go along with the store site. Along the way we lost the Gallery subdomain that I don’t think anyone ever visited and with good reason because it looked just awful and then we eliminated the forums for good measure. Well, technically the forum is still there but the link to it is gone but you won’t miss it because you never visited there anyway.

So now we are lean and mean for the new year.

I wish I could say the same for my waistline.

I hope you like the new look. Please email us with feedback or leave a comment below if you have any suggestions, compliments or criticism about the new design. And, as always, happy hippo shopping!

Hello, 2010!

Hippo Honcho — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 23:34:19 +0000

Wow, has it really been almost a month since our last blog post? What happened?!! All I can say is, uhmm, nothing. I don’t even know what happened. One minute it was December and now it’s the end of January. Anyway, here we are, our first blog post of the year. And that year is 2010, can you believe it? Only two more years to buy hippos before the world implodes or whatever is supposed to happen in 2012. This year, we’ll be looking for the latest, greatest hippo products for your purchasing pleasure. In particular, we’ll be expanding our notecard line with some fun new designs like the one below.

I'm Rubber, You're Glue Hippo & Rhino Notecard

Something I’ve been wanting to do for, oh, just about every day in 2009 is to redesign our logo. I have finally been able to do that and here it is:

We are pretty happy with this logo and I hope you will like it, too. Please comment and let us know! We’ve been wanting to have a logo with a little more whimsy and I think we’ve achieved it. Look for it to appear, well, everywhere.

Another thing we are planning for this year is to further refine our shipping procedures. Things have been going pretty well so far, but hey, there’s always room for improvement. We invested in a postal scale so we can weigh everything (I am so looking forward to THAT) and set up more accurate shipping rates.

Here’s a pic of the scale we bought. Of course I had to buy a cool-looking one. Hopefully it will work as good as it looks. Otherwise, it will be a plant stand.

Scale

I’m pretty sure there are lots of other wonderful things to tell you about what will be happening in 2010, but it’s dinner time now and I have to go. So check back often to the blog for the latest news.

An I.O.U. For Late Shoppers

Hippo Honcho — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:45:58 +0000

IOU for Hippo Mojo

Are you placing a last minute order from us? You know it won’t be there for Christmas, right? But you can still give your recipient something: just download our IOU and tuck it into someone’s stocking. See this link for more info.

15% Off Sale A Hit

Hippo Honcho — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:55:10 +0000

Wow! We’ve had a great response to our Thanksgiving 15% off everything in the store sale. I thank everyone who purchased and visited our site recently for your support and patronage. The sale ends tonight, November 30th, so get some early shopping done. Can you believe that tomorrow is December 1st and we only have about 3 weeks until Christmas? And I have already heard holiday music playing at the post office!

Tiny Hippo Earrings

In other site news, we’ve dropped the price on our Tiny Hippo Earrings from $14.95 to $9.95. What was I thinking, charging $14.95? $9.95 is a much better price, don’t you agree? What are you waiting for, buy some today!

Hippo Mojo Now on Cafe Press

Hippo Honcho — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 18:07:53 +0000

Going on the assumption that everyone wants to buy hippo t-shirts (you know you do!), Hippo Mojo has now opened a store at CafePress.com. Cafe Press is a fun site where you can buy t-shirts, tote bags, mugs, and more, while choosing from a huge variety of artwork. But we don’t want you to choose anyone else’s artwork, just ours, which you can see at cafepress.com/hippomojo. So far, we’ve got two pieces of art to choose from: a large pink hippo head surrounded by hearts with the caption, “Hippo Love”; and a cute, pink hippo with a blue skirt jumping rope.

Hippo Love Tote Bag

Jump Rope Hippo T-shirt

Browse our Cafe Press site to see more product options. And check back here for announcements of new designs.

Hippo Mojo Now On Etsy

Hippo Honcho — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:49:20 +0000

We are delighted to announce that we now joined the legions of craftspeople who are selling their wares on Etsy. That’s right, we have opened our own Etsy store which you can see at HippoMojo.etsy.com. Etsy, in case you don’t know, is a website for sales of handcrafted items. Our first item is pictured below, a set of earrings in red and gold.

Semi-precious stone hippo earrings

We hope you’ll check out our first item for sale and check back with us periodically as we post more products.

Fighting the Good Fight: Hippos Vs. Spambots

Hippo Honcho — Sat, 09 May 2009 15:05:50 +0000

Holy Hippos! Obviously, we here at Hippo Mojo have had our big heads and bulgy eyes submerged under cool water for far too long. Yesterday a yucky email from a bad person prompted us to roar out of the river and stomp up the riverbank to fight off our enemies. No, not crocodiles, something far worse: spammers! That’s right, my fellow hippopotami, evil spambots crawled up out of the primordial ooze they subsist in and mounted a serious offensive on Hippo Mojo’s forum. We were shocked to find 6,500 users and over 2,000 messages, none of which had anything to do with our beloved hippopotamus and all of which had to do with icky subjects better left unmentioned.

Our chubby hippo paws raced over the keyboard deleting messages in bulk. But the messages didn’t stop – no, the spambots are strong and crafty and continued to slip by us—with user names like “sEJHbXsmd” and “qUwMwEdSW”—at an alarming rate of about 40 per day!!! Frantically, we consulted the help archives of our software – how could we stop these Spambots dead? A few solutions came to light and we implemented them as fast as our fat hippo bodies would move.

Unfortunately, some drastic measures had to be taken. For safety’s sake, we decided to remove ALL of our users for fear that their emails had been harvested and would be used for nefarious purposes. Innocent hippos were dropping like flies against the sinister Spambots!

Okay, so we only had 4 registered users and one of them was my mother so it wasn’t really all that bad. Our apologies, though, to those 4 loyal hippo friends – sorry we had to cut you off but it was for your own good! Please, please, please come back and sign up again. And this time, post something to a board!!! We’d really like to hear from you.

And to all those Spambots out there: we double dog dare you to try to infiltrate our forum again. If you do, we’ll whirl our little tails and spray a plume of poop at you! You have no idea how awesome is the force called Hippo Power.

Hippo Mojo Adopts a Hippo at the Philadelphia Zoo

Hippo Honcho — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 20:53:13 +0000

One of the things we decided early on when we were brainstorming about starting up Hippo Mojo was that we wanted to donate a percentage of our profits to charity, specifically to an organization that helps hippos, whether in the wild or in captivity. We had no idea how much to donate but we Googled around a little and found out that companies donate anywhere from 1 to 5 percent of their gross profit or net profit. We decided to play it safe initially and commit 1 percent of our net profit to charity. Well, unfortunately, last year was a tough year to start a business, what with it being the “worst recession since the Great Depression” as the media likes to put it, and we made no profits. In fact, we lost money. Most of our cash went into purchasing inventory and, of course, there were other start-up fees. (That’s okay – we are in this business for the long haul!) So are we off the hook for donating money for 2008? No way! Hippos need our help. So we decided to start in our local area and participate in the Philadelphia Zoo’s adopt an animal program. There was a long list of animals to choose from, but obviously we chose the hippo – duh! We decided to give $100 because that was a nice solid amount and that’s how much we had in our checking account. (I am so not kidding!)

The Philadelphia Zoo has two hippos: Unna and Cindy. I have actually been there to see them, but it was a hot August day, and they did not come out of the water to greet us. Harrumph. Well, even if the girls were indifferent or ungrateful, the zoo is not. We got a nice thank you letter and an official adoption certificate (below).

Philadelphia Zoo Hippo Adoption Certificate

The zoo gives you lots of nice benefits when you adopt an animal, including a 4 x 6 color photo of your animal; an Animal Fact Sheet; Philadelphia Zoo email newsletters; an invitation for two to ADOPT Day (includes admission to the Philadelphia Zoo) and more. I can’t wait for the ADOPT Day, which is held the first Saturday in October and includes special keeper talks, animal feedings, and behind the scenes tours. Maybe they’ll let us touch the hippos! Okay, probably not – that would be CRAZY! Anyway, should be fun.

Over this coming year, I’ll be compiling a list of organizations that help hippos and I’ll post it here when it’s done. If you can help me with this list, please send an email or post a comment. We’d love to hear from you!