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A testimonial from a satisfied customer:

Hi, I just wanted to let you know that I received the package (last Friday).
I wanted to say Thanks for checking on my order and for the speedy delivery!

As for the bag and the cushion - it was GREAT!!!!  The pictures on your
website don't do it justice.  They are so cute.  I'm sure all the other
"Bingo Grandma's" will be ordering them after they see my grandma's!

Thanks again - WONDERFUL JOB!!!!

Chris

Gini was featured in an article in the November 2004 Issue of Bingo Bugle.  Here is the article for your enjoyment.  Congratulations Gini!

Bingo Land

This month: Bingo Bags, Inc.

By Jeffrey Charboneau

Since childhood, Gini Bottomley, 76, of Tampa, Florida, has had a love affair with making things. "My dad was a carpenter, so I was all the time picking up odds and ends and building something," she recalls. As she grew older, Gini traded in hammer and nails for needle and thread when she began crafting potholders for the 4-H club. "I just loved it," she says. "Sewing seemed very natural and comfortable for me."

As an adult, Gini’s sewing was done primarily for the family, making clothes for her three children as fast as they grew out of them. Eventually her skills brought her the opportunity to pick up extra money working in a Florida sewing factory. "It was piece work; they paid you by the number of pieces you produced," Gini says. "It wasn’t always easy, but it sure beat waitressing, which was the job I had before I started at the sewing factory. And the folks I worked with were great."

When Gini’s husband unexpectedly took ill, she was forced to leave the factory to be home with him. "I still needed income, so I basically set up shop at the house doing alterations," she says. She also continued to make items for family members and herself—which led to one fateful day when she decided to try her hand at making a Bingo bag.

"I go to Bingo all the time, and was using a Bingo bag I bought somewhere," Gini recalls. "But the bag was just too small for all the stuff I carried. So I decided to make my own." Unable to find a pattern to follow, Gini carefully disassembled the bag she owned and enlarged all the pieces to create just the bag she was after. "It was a fairly easy project and I liked the result very much," Gini says. So, apparently, did one of her alterations customers, who admired the Bingo bag so much that she urged Gini to show it to a local Bingo hall manager. He liked it too, and immediately ordered 20 bags to use as giveaways at his hall. "Just like that, I was in the Bingo bag business," Gini laughs.

For the next three years, Gini produced bags for the Bingo hall as well as selling them to players not quite lucky enough to win them on their own. "I’ll bet that today, half the Bingo players in Tampa carry my bags," she says.

One day Gini’s son told her that he had created a new retailing website, Shopsontheweb.com, and asked Gini if she would like to have a page on the site advertising her Bingo bags. She had misgivings. "I wasn’t sure who would even be interested," Gini says. "But I finally agreed, and my son made the page for me." Then she waited anxiously to see what would happened.

"For the first few months, nothing happened at all," Gini says. "Then finally an order came in. Then another, and another. Ever since, orders have been pretty steady."

Today, the grandmother of six and great-grandmother of four makes and sells 25 to 30 bags a month (Her web address is www.shopsontheweb.com/bingobags/). She also sells matching Bingo seat cushions. "I’m the busiest toward the Christmas holiday, when I get over 100 orders a month," she says. On average, Gini produces 10 bags a day.

As of the end of 2004, Gini estimates she will have made and sold more than 4,000 Bingo bags to customers in Canada and almost every U.S. state. And she shows no signs of slowing down.

"When I’m sewing, I’m doing something I love," Gini says. "I read somewhere that seamstresses can handle stress better than anyone else. I believe it. Sewing is therapy."

Back to shopping for BINGO BAGS by Gini, click here!

While in Tampa, be sure to visit Tampa Bay Bingo!          

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Updated:  04/13/2008

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