Open E: Thank You For Helping Build Our Progressive Jewish Gifts Shop

It's nearing the end of January and I'm just now recovering from the Hanukkah season. Phew. With the last minute acquisition of Pop Judaica right before the Holiday season, it was a wild ride.

First and foremost, I want to express my gratitude toward our employees. ModernTribe could not have made it without Tiffany, Patrick, and Bart and I am eternally grateful for their magnificent loyalty and dedication. I'm not exaggerating: there were many days when they worked until midnight getting packages out and doing all the hundreds of things it takes to make this business run.

Thank you, customers, business partners, friends and family for helping us move forward toward our goal of providing identity-strengthening Jewish products. We grew significantly in our quest to make Judaica fresh, exciting and accessible to youthful Jews and to those not necessarily religious or traditional. There were also many set backs, but lessons are learned and thankfully our diversity of strengths help us bounce back from our mistakes and losses.

We found wonderful partners in the Jewish community, special thanks to: Limmud South East, Lisa Alcalay Klug, Jewlicious/ JConnectLA, Jewish Woman International and Meredith Jacobs, Jewcy.com and JDub Records. All of these organizations (people, in case of Lisa) are stellar contributors to Jewish American culture and wonderful friends of ModernTribe. We look forward to strengthening our bonds as we continue to grow.

Of course, thank you, thank you, thank you to our customers for whom we exist. We served thousands of you this year and, we hope, most of you have been thrilled with your purchases and customer service from ModernTribe. Thank you for your emails and phone calls of praise and also of criticism. Yes, we've made some mistakes: sent the wrong package, inadvertently mis-represented an item on the website, failed to meet your service expectations, and others. We take our mistakes seriously and are always working to improve our processes so that we can reduce human-error. Also, one thing you should feel secure about: if we make a mistake we will always do whatever we can to make things right for you. Thank you for your continued support and patronage.

Finally, and most importantly, thank you to my husband, Webb Roberts, whose unyielding support is, at times, so overwhelming it makes me want to cry. He not only has allowed us, as a family, to take significant (scary) financial risks, but listens and discusses the big issues (and the insignificant rabbit holes I sometimes fall into) with patience and wisdom.

Shalom to all. We look forward to 2010.