Sheliah Gilliland

My Twinn creates personalized, handcrafted dolls that lend themselves to gift-giving. So not surprisingly, the holiday season is its busiest and most lucrative time of the year. The company faces a time crunch, though, because its artisans use customer photos and information submitted by buyers to make doll heads that look like the little girls receiving them. “We make [the doll heads] one at a time. They’re not pre-ordered or mass-produced,” ex-plains My Twinn Vice President Craig Currie. So, it’s crucial for My Twinn to get the lion’s share of its holiday season orders early. To encourage customers to order earlier, it offers an incentive —

By Debra Wilson Ellis More customers order in the holiday season's 11th hour; be ready to fulfill. Customers take a leap of faith when they place last-minute holiday orders. Different reasons drive them to place orders at the 11th hour. And however they come, their orders are more than a transaction; they're symbols of their relationships with your company, and they're depending on you to deliver. Successfully fulfilling last-minute orders solidifies your relationship with customers. It says, loud and clear, that they can trust you to deliver at their most vulnerable time. Consequently, failing to deliver during this time jeopardizes your long-term relationship. Last