About Us MariaLuna's Gallery is a sister site of Andrews Gallery. Sounds sort of cool to say that, but what is a sister sire, anyway? Let's look at how MariaLuna's Gallery came about.
In 1993 Andrews Gallery first opened its doors and shortly thereafter became an Authorized Lladro Dealer. As an Authorized Lladro Dealer, the Lladro figurines we sold were backed by the Lladro family of companies to be true and genuine and supported by other programs such as the Lladro Assurance Program. In 1995 Andrews Gallery first went on the World Wide Web and was immediately at the top of the list when you searched Yahoo with the key word Lladro (Google was still to become a household word). Over the years, we tried other product specific web sites that physically resided on the same computer server as Andrews Gallery. We though of these as sister sites because they resided under the same roof (server).
OK, we're getting there, but who's this MariaLuna anyway? The answer is that Maria Luna exists and doesn't exist. Maria's real name is Maria S. Andrews and she prefers not to use her middle name, not an unusual situation. Around the time Andrews Gallery opened shop on the web, Maria started to receive junk mail addressed to Maria Luna Andrews at the correct address. Somewhere out in the ether a mailing list had mutated and, even though Maria S. and Maria Luna are different names, no human being ever reviewed the list(s) to eliminate duplicate mailings to the same address. Subsequently, Maria received more and more junk mail addressed to Maria Luna as if a new species had evolved and prospered.
In the fall of 2008 and the early months of this year we noticed a couple of trends. First, the volume of junk mail was abating, especially that addressed to Maria Luna. It seemed as if the junk mail senders were trimming costs by reducing redundancy. Second, we were getting more phone calls each we from people trying to sell Lladro figurines. It seemed appropriate to offer a venue where people could offer the precious collectibles for sale at a fixed price (as opposed to venturing into the world of auctions) and calling it MariaLuna's Gallery also seemed appropriate. So many hours were spent between January and August 2009 getting MariaLuna's Gallery ready for business.
For the record, we do exist. Here's a physical address:
350 Valle del Sol Road Los Alamos, NM 87544-3546
Phone number: 800 887 0445 (voice or fax)
E-mail: andy@mairaluna.net (that's me, the code worker) or maria@marialuna.net (aka MairaLuna)
Please send your comments, praise, suggestions, and complaints to either of us so we can improve the site and your experience with it.
