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Store address (note: we are moving to 1100 Sam Bass Road, Suite 407
in late-May or early-June)
Tiny Birds Organics
2591 Sam Bass Road
Round Rock, TX 78681
Current store hours are Mon-Friday noon-6pm Our seamstress
Chris is working at the store, and Jenny and Kate work from their homes.
We also have a free bin of used cloth diapers and covers also available
(and a free starter-pack of 6 new prefolds), and some free used shoes and
clothes too. Feel free to ask where the free bin is if you can't
find it in the store (it's currently over behind the bed on the left back
side of the store).
For driving directions to the store, please
enter your starting address for a map and detailed driving instructions
to the store.
Tiny Birds Organics is a small business run by two moms/sisters (Jenny and Kate), and our wonderful seamstress Chris (who has a grandbaby in cloth diapers too!). Our girls are toddler-age (ages 2 through 4), and as some of you probably already know, we have been having trouble balancing the needs of our children while trying to keep the business going. It is a lot more work than we ever imagined to run a small business. Another local small business (husband/wife team) was interviewed recently by the local newspaper, and the husband was so funny/true when he said "It is a lot of fun having a small business. And we even get to decide which 80 hrs/week we want to work". Most of the time we do have fun with our business, and we choose to work in the middle of the night so we can try to have some daylight-hours reserved for our girls. Often there are just so many issues that come up during the day too, that it never seems to work out as well as we planned. You have probably noticed quite a few changes to our web site, as we keep adjusting and trying new solutions for keeping our business going while our girls are little. We had decided to close down for awhile, but then got such a wonderful and amazing customer response (with offers to help us by donating time, if possible, etc...) that we just had to give it one more try.
*Shipping cost increase: Our flat-rate shipping cost
of $6.95 includes insurance and we ship USPS (1st class/priority) or
UPS-ground, depending on the order size/weight/value. Please allow
approximately 1 week for your order to arrive. Orders placed on Friday
or Saturday may take a little more than 1 week because we ship within 1-2
business days (Monday or Tuesday at the latest, for orders placed Friday
or Saturday). For orders placed on other days of the week, the shipping
time is typically less (Tuesday orders usually ship Wednesday morning,
for example).
We also buy recycled
packaging bags and recycled tissue-paper which we use to wrap products
inside the package. We also use recycled-paper shopping bags when
customers shop at our local store, and we have hemp-wrap
also from paporganics.com if anyone wants free gift-wrapping
(please just add a note on your order if you'd like your gift wrapped in
pink,blue,or red hemp-wrap). We automatically write all gift-notes
on gift-cards. We don't have many local shoppers yet, so please spread
the word about our store if you're near Austin! - we are adding lots of
USA-made toys and gifts at the store.
*Removed international shipping option: We are so sorry
we can no longer ship internationally at this time (we have been victims
international credit card fraud, so we cannot accept any payments from
international credit cards or ship to international addresses - so far
we have lost over $700 and cannot take any more chances for now).
*Removed Gift Certificate Option: We're so sorry we can
no longer offer gift certificates - our system just doesn't handle them
well, and they have been a lot of extra work for us. If you have
an outstanding gift certificate, we will certainly honor it (please submit
the order with a total roughly the same as the certificate amount, and
then select "pay by check" and enter your gift certificate code in the
Message Box so we will know we don't actually need to wait for a check).
Thank you so much for sticking by us - we really love this business, and truly appreciate the customer support we have been getting! Thanks so much!
Web-store Payment & Shipping Policy: We accept payment
by Visa, Mastercard, and AmEx (sorry we no longer accept payment
by check on-line, but we do accept checks in person at our store).
I am sorry our on-line system cannot accept gift-cards, and some debit
cards will not go through (please do not try multiple times if a card is
declined, because the amount could show as pending-charge on your debit-card
even though it is just being declined, preventing access to the funds for
3 business days even though we have not received any payment or order).
We ship by UPS-ground or USPS-air, and our shipping costs are $6.95 flat
rate (with free insurance).
I'm sorry we're unable to accommodate requests
for express shipments or changes from our normal shipping methods at this
time (life for us is complicated right now with juggling our business and
the needs of the babies). Orders normally ship within 1-2 business
days (unless noted otherwise in the item-description). For example,
Friday orders will normally ship Monday (or Tuesday at the latest).
Some large items like mattresses also have an additional shipping charge
that is applied as the item is added to the shopping cart. 6.25%
sales tax is added only if you live in Texas. We are so sorry we can no
longer ship internationally at this time.
Refund/Exchange Policy: We accept returns for new, un-used products within 30 days. Please note the products must still have tags attached and- sorry no exceptions unless you received the product without tags. Some products don't have tags to start with, like some Disana products and also our TinyBirds products - though we are finally going to have tags soon! We prefer to just issue refunds instead of doing exchanges, to avoid confusion (please include a note saying "refund needed" along with your full name used when you ordered - we use customer names instead of order numbers for processing refunds). If it is just a simple size-change that is needed though, please include a note saying "exchange for size ___" (and then if we are out of that size, we will issue a refund instead).
E-mails: Due to excessive spam, we have removed our e-mail address listing from the web site and created a contact form instead. There is also an e-mail address given on the e-mail receipt of your order for you to contact us with any questions about your order (the e-mail is automated and would have been received right after the order was placed, so please check your spam-filters if the e-mail was not received in your in-box). Please allow 24 hrs for a response during weekdays, and Friday-night e-mails generally won't be answered until Monday. If there are problems with e-mail (sometimes spam filters prevent our response from reaching customers even when we try multiple times to answer an e-mail), please feel free to send us a fax message at 512-692-2921 (fax). Please also include a return fax # or snail-mail address, so we can respond (in case we aren't able to reach you by e-mail due to spam-filters), and we will respond to all faxes within 24 hrs (weekdays). If there are e-mail problems and you don't have a fax machine, you can also send us a note in the regular mail (to our store address above), and we will answer right away with a return-letter. Thanks so much!
Product Sizing: Most organic manufacturers do not have sizing charts, so we make notes next to the product if we feel it runs particularly large (like some of the Disana clothing for example). If you are unsure of the sizing for clothing, please feel free to make an order and then you can make an exchange for anything that doesn't fit.
Thanks so much for shopping at our store! Have a wonderful day!
More about pesticides and organic products:
When I found out about the dangers of pesticides
to birds, aquatic wildlife, and children, I started trying to spread the
word about organic products (grown without the use of pesticides).
I gave some organic gardening presentations, volunteered at a local organic
farm, and I also started an organic
gardening web-page. A few years ago I decided to start selling
organic products on my web site, because the products weren't available
in local stores. I believe most people want to do as much for the
environment as they can, so one of my goals is to locate a large variety
of organic products to make them available at one shopping location, reducing
the time it takes for people to find what they're looking for. My
business name is "Tiny Birds" because I wanted to spread the word about
saving the lives of birds, so I was making notecards using some of my hummingbird
photos, and a customer suggested I used the name "Tiny Birds" for the entire
store (most great ideas come from customers!) Many thousands of birds
lose their lives each year due to pesticides, even when the pesticides
are used according to package instructions. Even one granule of a
common pesticide here in Texas can kill a small bird.
Organic agriculture is also transforming the lives of farmers around the world, increasing their profits and the safety of their families. Customers are willing to pay more for organic products, and farmers also save a lot of money by no longer buying the pesticides promoted so heavily by the pesticide companies. $2.6 billion is spent on pesticides each year to grow "100% natural cotton" (in addition, formaldehyde has been added to "natural cotton" fabrics since the 1970s, and research has shown it still remains even after initial washing). Only cotton with the "organic" label is grown without pesticides, and formaldehyde has not been used in processing. Humans are not the only ones affected by non-organically produced products. Pesticides and herbicides from farms and residential areas are washed into downstream rivers and lakes, killing many creatures and affecting the endocrine systems of other creatures such as frogs and larger animals drinking the water. Birds and animals have no choice but to drink from these water bodies, without having the water purified/treated like humans do for themselves after we cause the pollution.
I appreciate your choice to stop pesticide use by choosing organic foods and products for your family. Your purchase of used products (such as used clothing) also makes a huge difference in reducing the amount of conventially grown cotton. Throughout its four-thousand-year history, cotton had always been grown organically. Then, as a result of the development of pesticides and chemical fertilizers during WWII, the cultivation of cotton changed dramatically. In California, 1.25 pounds of agricultural chemicals are used to produce the conventionally grown cotton in a single set of queen-sized sheets. If your family cannot afford organic products, you can still help dramatically by purchasing only "used" cotton products (not adding to the demand for new non-organic cotton products).
If organic foods are too expensive for your family, you can help dramatically by simply becoming vegetarians or at least reducing meat consumption (which also saves a lot of money!), because so much farmland and pesticides are used to grow food/grain for the animals we eat. It takes about 3 acres to feed one meat-eater (because of the land used to grow grain for the animals), but it only takes a fraction of an acre to feed a vegetarian, the land-use benefit ratio is about 10:1. Also, it takes roughly 25 gallons of water to produce an edible pound of wheat or potatoes, or 65 for oranges; but 130 for milk, 544 for eggs, 815 for chicken, 1630 for pork, and 5214 for beef. A landmark study of diet, lifestyle, and health in China tracked the diets of thousands of Chinese. It showed that as fat consumption, protein consumption, and blood cholesterol levels rise, so does the incidence of heart disease, diabetes, and certain cancers. Surprisingly, Chinese villagers on low-fat, low-meat diets also suffered less anemia (iron deficiency) and osteoporosis (a bone disease associated with calcium deficiency) than their urban compatriots eating more meat. Both conditions are commonly thought to result from a diet too low in animal products. Study co-leader Colin Campbell of Cornell University told the New York Times: "We're basically a vegetarian species and should be eating a wide variety of plant foods and minimizing our intake of animal foods." (Junshi et al. 1990)
You can also help by purchasing fair trade products, because paying a fair wage for labor is one really good way to lift people around the world out of poverty and give them more of a choice about their environmental decisions (such as deforestation). You can also help the environment by choosing cloth diapers for your baby. Even non-organic diapers and covers make a difference by generating less waste in our landfills, and the prefolds/covers pay for themselves within a month or two, compared to the cost of disposables. Thank you so much for making a difference!
Sincerely,
Jenny