Buyers Protection and Top Service
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Purchases made through Best Wishes of Boca are protected from fraud by the Yahoo! Buyers Protection Program.
We at Best Wishes of Boca have consistently received Yahoo’s top service award, meaning customers who have ordered from our store have given us their highest ratings. Nearly all Yahoo! Stores have good customer satisfaction ratings, but those with a star are the best of the best, with at least 95% positive ratings.
We have been in business for over 30 years.
Click here to read an article by the Boca Raton News.
Or read the reprint below.
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Thirty years of ‘Best Wishes’ in Boca Raton
Specialty store at Fifth Avenue Shops celebrates three decades
Published Tuesday, August 14, 2007
by By Dale M. King in the Boca Raton News
In 1977, Arthur and Sue Ellen Sussman left Brooklyn, N.Y., bought a small Hallmark card store in Boca Raton called “Best Wishes of Boca,” and headed south.
Thirty years later, that small store has grown larger, has added other locations and has established a substantial presence online.
Arthur and Sue Ellen are semi-retired, and handle Internet orders while daughter Zari takes care of the on-site duties.
That site is a gifting treasure tucked in the rear of the Fifth Avenue Shops off North Federal Highway. The Hallmark cards are gone, replaced with the Carlton brand. The store – which is marking its 30th anniversary this year – is filled with jewelry, handbags, china, gifts and wrapping paper, Yankee candles and collectables by Lenox, Kosta Boda and Swarovski line the shelves.
Best Wishes also has a wedding registry.
One section of wall is given over to artist Christopher Radko, who has designed a bevy of Christmas decorations, and he visits the store during the holidays.
The Boss
Zari Sussman is the energetic on-location “boss.” She was just 3-years-old when her family made the move to Boca.
“My father and my uncle owned a liquor store in Brooklyn,” she said. “Shortly after the infamous blackout,” her parents bought the Hallmark store.
“Best Wishes was a tiny, charming store,” she recalled. “It sold cards, stuffed animals, chocolates, all the frilly things that delight a young girl. The store came with two employees – sisters Bernice and Shirley. The sisters are the greatest sales people I will ever meet. They take care of the most difficult customers with ease; they become friends with the rest.”
It seems the family helped the store evolved, said Zari. “ Around 1980, my grandmother suggested we carry gold jewelry and sent my parents a few 14-karat gold necklaces. They sold fast, and my parents reinvested the money to buy more gold.”
Jewels replaced the chocolates that had been sold in the glass cases.
She said her grandparents “retired” to Florida in the early 1980s. Her granddad, a craftsman, outfitted the store with custom woodwork and cabinetry.
In the 1980s and 1990s, she said, her parents opened and sold other Best Wishes locations – some of which are still open today.
Computer Studies
Zari Sussman came back to the store two years ago after studying computer engineering in college and taking a job writing encryption software. She set up a web site to sell Beany Babies – and that quickly became BestWishesOfBoca.com. Today, online retailing “dwarfs our in-store sales,” she said.
She also worked on Wall Street and was a lecturer at New York University. The topic? How to start a small business online.
Word of mouth and the Internet site keep people coming back to the store, which has a regular following. Zari said about 50 percent of customers are repeaters.
And she praised the staff, among them, Bob Glassman, who has been with the store 22 years; manager Marilyn Patroski – and Bernice.
“She still works here, and, at 88, she’s selling on the Internet with style. Last week, she created an online wedding registry for a nice bride in Australia. I’m sure they will become great friends.”
Dale M. King can be reached at 561-549-0832 or at dking@bocanews.com.
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