Last call on the following schools

Eglomise Designs has been working with many major Colleges and Universities, some for over 50 years, to provide their students, graduates, and employees with high quality heirloom gifts to commemorate their accomplishments at these institutions. Part of this means paying royalties on the items we sell to institutions that license their names, something we both understand and abide by.

Every summer at the beginning of July we pay an administrative processing fee and a royalty deposit to use many University and College names on our artwork. The prices of this have been going up year after year and this year the administrative fee at one agency is moving from a maximum of $2,500 up to $17,500. That is one single agency that we process licenses through and that is BEFORE the deposit and royalties we pay throughout the year. These deposits may be $300, $500 or $5,000 per school that is requested for a deposit against sales throughout the year against a royalty rate that is often between 12%-18%. This may not sound like much but Eglomise Designs has over 200 licensed schools so even at the minimum that comes to a minimum of $60,000 before the administrative fees.

In normal years we make 50% or more of our sales in April and May, graduation is the big time for us. We depend upon those sales to place a deposit and renewal for licensing of a school name. When we cannot afford this either because the deposit is too large or a school says we are not allowed to renew because we have had too few sales of that school we “drop” that school. We still own the beautiful artwork of ours but we cannot put the school name on it. Not legally. Not honorably.

This is why many schools are unavailable, it is not because we don't have the artwork or that we do not want to sell it, it is because the licensing fees are too extreme to support the sales of 4 mirrors over the course of a whole year. This pains us but there isn't much we can do, the system is designed for people making t-shirts and cheap plastic trinkets imported from low wage countries. At Eglomise Designs we pride ourselves in hand making lasting heirloom gifts in the USA by trained artists. We source all of our materials from American manufacturers wherever possible, and try to support local businesses.

With the licensing costs going up by a multiple this year, combined with the lack of sales due to Covid-19, we simply don't have the money to license the same number of schools for the 2020-2021 year. In the past we have carried several schools we have had a relationship with for decades even though the licenses fees made selling them a break-even or even loss-making exercise. Unfortunately the combined issues of lower sales and vastly increased licensing fees leaves us with no option but to strictly limit the number of schools we can offer in the coming year.

We will continue to offer as many schools as possible but that number will be sharply reduced. Those schools that we do not re-license can be picked up again if there is sufficient interest. For those schools that had few or no sales in the 2019-2020 year, we will be requiring a $5,000 minimum order on these schools to cover the costs of re-licensing them.

We apologize for this change and wish we had different answers. You can still purchase these schools before June 15th of this year through us or our normal sales channels. After that we will be moving to the $5,000 minimum along with other schools we are no longer licensed with. As an example, Notre Dame's deposit and administration processing are significantly more than that and so we will not be relicensing those without a much larger order than the $5,000 minimum.

**If you are with a school administrator or president's office please contact us at orders@eglomisedesigns.com for additional licensing options.

As a small woman owned and woman operated business since 1965 we have depended upon our very loyal customers. Between Covid-19 and the licensing increases, we are struggling to keep our doors open. Currently sales are at 10% or less of a normal graduation season and we do not guarantee any schools will be available after June of this year. We are trying to make plans to continue operation and are CURRENTY (as of May 2020) open. We are running on a two to three week out shipping schedule in our attempts to comply with the current social distancing rules in our area as well as keeping our employees as safe as possible.

The schools we cannot afford to keep are the following.  More may be added to the list as we are supplied with final processing and deposit costs.  Yes, this is heartbreaking.  We wish we had other options.