Will you be our Valentine?

Now that Valentine’s day is over, I feel like it’s safe to talk about. Personally, I hate the ‘holiday’ as it’s celebrated, with marketing campaigns by massive retailers encouraging people to spend their money on trivialities. The celebration of love and relationships is important and should continue to be so, and having a day dedicated to such things, if only as a reminder to value and continue to strive for your loved ones, is a simple way to accomplish that task. What society has added is the importance of ‘stuff’ on this occasion and the ‘need’ to give your loved one a gift with a price tag.

Setting my personal feelings aside for a moment, the core value of the holiday remains: Celebration of relationships and love. The Greek language has four words for love. Each word describes a different type of love, such as charitable love, family love and so on. R&R has philia for our customers. Philia is the love that describes affectionate regard and friendship, which is how we view all of our customers.

Words and labels can be so limiting, but at the same time our brains strive for labels so that we can categorize each new experience. Whether our customers regard us as a vendor, friend or even business partner, we value each and every one of them with the same passion now as Shawn did 25 years ago when he got his first. We love our customers, and hope that we are able to convey that love to them in the service we provide.