As Winter approaches and the days get shorter and colder, we’ve noticed a serious increase in the number of scarves we are selling. Though we haven’t updated our scarves and are not stocking any new lines, it seems that the time of year is now right for them to start selling well on the street.

This is a welcome improvement, as it means our decision to stock scarves as well as jewellery has been vindicated, and it means that we are now likely to enhance the selection of scarves we have available next year.

If you haven’t tried our scarves yet, take a look at our wholesale scarves catalogue here.

From today, customers will be able to pay in Euro by credit card or debit card. We are accepting Visa and Mastercard credit cards, as well as Visa debit cards and Irish Laser cards. Customers paying by Visa or Mastercard will be prompted to enter their Verified by Visa or Mastercard Securecode password. Details are provided as you check out.

We have a small number of new fashion bracelets available today. These are cheap items, at the lower end of the price scale, with a recommended retail price of £4 – £7.

From February 2011, we will be offering reduced delivery rates to many European countries. Our new standard rate for all deliveries to Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden  is now £15.95 + VAT. Other European countries remain at the old rate of £31.

These changes are due to lower priced road services offered by DHL.

We are closing for Christmas and New Year on Friday, 17th December, and will not re-open until Wednesday, January 12th. Our website will still be operational, so you can place any orders you wish during this time, but they will not be processed until we re-open in January. As our offices will be closed for these weeks, we have temporarily switched off telephone ordering, so all orders made must be paid for by credit card or PayPal.

We’d like to wish all our customers a prosperous Christmas, and we look forward to doing further business with you in 2011.

Over the past few months we’ve been trialing a second courier company to ship our orders alongside DHL. This allowed us to considerably reduce our number of remote areas, thereby lowering the shipping costs charged to many customers in these areas. Unfortunately, this company has not lived up to expectations, and as a result, all orders will again be shipped via DHL.

This means that we have had to increase our number of remote areas, which now encompass much of the Highland areas of Scotland as well as a small number of postcodes in Northern England and Wales. A surcharge is added for deliveries to these areas once you enter your postcode on the checkout page.

Anyone who has attempted to contact us by phone in the past week will have found themselves unable to do so. The recent weather conditions across the UK and Ireland have caused problems, which include our telephone lines going down.

Unfortunately, it’s a major structural problem that is taking some time to fix – not helped by the ongoing bad weather. In the mean time, please contact us by email or by using the contact form on our website.

This does not impact our dispatch process, which is still as fast as ever. Orders placed and paid for online are being processed and shipped as expected. Customers who wish to pay by phone may encounter some delays. If you fall into this category, you can speed up the order process by using our online credit card or PayPal payment options, eliminating the need to phone us.

Thanks for your patience.

EDIT: The problem has now been rectified.

All of our Christmas stock is now ready. This year we have over 1,000 styles available – all strong sellers that you will not find at any other wholesaler. This includes a large selection of new watches (RRP £25-£35) and hair accessories (RRP£20-£30), all of which come boxed and make for ideal Christmas gifts.

The Christmas preparation has already begun, with many retailers placing large orders from earlier in the month. We expect it to get busier over the coming weeks, and this may impact on processing and deliver times. To ensure delivery when you need it, please order as far in advance as possible. If you choose to pay by phone instead of credit card or PayPal, your order will take a couple of days longer to process.

I’d also like to remind customers to keep a close watch on our best sellers page. Everything that appears on this page is in danger of selling out. So if you see something you like, buy it now – because it will be sold out next month. And when it’s sold out, it will not be restocked this side of Christmas.

Irish customers may have noticed that shipping charges have dropped to £7.40.  This is due to a change in our shipping agent for Irish routes which came with a lower tariff. This new rate applies to Northern as well as Southern Ireland. Free shipping still applies to orders above £200 or €200.

Starting Thursday, 30th September, we will be implementing Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode on our credit card payment pages. What does this mean?

SecureCode and Verified by Visa are extra layers of security for online transactions put in place by MasterCard and Visa. Their purpose is to prevent your card from being used fraudulently online.

After you enter your card details on our secure payment page, a dialog like the ones below will appear asking you for your Visa or MasterCard password. This password has nothing to do with Nirvana Wholesale and belongs to you and your credit card. We never see or have access to it.

If you have not already set up a Verified by Visa or SecureCode password when checking out at Nirvana Wholesale or another secure website, you can do so by clicking the “I am not enrolled” link as you checkout. Your password or SecureCode can be used on any eCommerce website at which you use your credit card.