Our Holiday Tradition? Bundle-palooza!

Hexagramm Books has a company motto: Saving Teachers Time. When Marie was teaching in Brooklyn, she would spend weeks during the summer, and evenings throughout the year getting her books organized at school.  We had been dating for two years, and the janitor Juan told her: “Marie, I see you more than you see your boyfriend.” I couldn’t agree more. She spent so much of her time reading books, leveling them and labeling them. Sometimes, she would even have my mom come in and help!

When we built our first collection, Classroom Libraries, we knew it needed to be packaged in the most “teacher-friendly” way possible. That’s why our books come pre-labeled and pre-sorted. Preparing Classroom Libraries takes a whole team of people. Below are some of the faces that save you time. 

Our Receiving Crew receives literally hundreds of boxes filled with thousands of titles. They sort them by reading level, and organize them into bins.  

Then, it’s a massive team effort involving pretty much our entire Atlanta-area staff. This is our Stickering Squad. They are adding labels on the right hand corner of the books to indicate their reading level. This holiday season, we have hired high school students, college students and seasonal staff to power through the thousands upon thousands of books. They are a tremendous help!

Finally, our Operations Manager, Shannon Meyer, checks to see which products are ready to be bundled. She’ll verify that we have all of the books in the quantities we need before she assigns the bundling work to another team member. 

Once we have all of the titles in a bundle, and they have all been labeled, it is time to assemble sets of books. Our team builds small stacks with one copy of each title in the bundle. This holiday season, they’ll be making as many as 18 sets of each bundle.  

Do you remember the story of The Elves and the Shoemaker where little elves help a poor shoemaker and his wife make these beautiful boots? We see our work as the work of the little elves. Instead of boots, we help teachers save time by getting their books ready-to-shelve.  

I wish you a wonderful holiday season! Let the Hexagramm elves do the work, and get some rest. 

Cheers,

Robert Celic