Cedar River Taxidermy

For the last couple of weeks I have continued to work with Qwest representatives to market Cedar River Taxidermy online. Remember, I’m getting some social media help, and I just have to blog about my experience in their program. We continue to work on building our web site for the business, making adjustments and improvements to better serve and inform our customers. I continue to work with only two representatives making communication between us easy.
My coach and I have been working with Facebook to gain more awareness for my business online. We brainstormed for companies that I buy supplies from, and looked for people that had sufficient amount of “likes” to get the most exposure. Although not many local businesses had this, it’s important to get the name of the company out there on the web. We are going to include clubs and organizations that are concerned about conservation and hunter rights that our customers may belong to for a more targeted demographic.
We are trying to get more followers on twitter as well. we don’t have to many followers now but Qwest is going to help me expand my following capabilities. We talked about the need to update consistently so people see that we are active on their profiles, and they will be more likely to fallow.Right now, we are listed on a “creatives” list, which gives us credibility and also makes us easier to follow since people who have an account on Twitter can follow entire lists at one time. Since Qwest hooked up with Facebook and twitter it makes managing my social media as a whole much easier. With their help I’m sure we will attract more business

Just thought I would talk about what we do and why we do it, along with some of the process here at Cedar River Taxidermy.
As a young person I always enjoyed animals and art. So as a taxidermist I can have the best of both worlds. Reproducing life like three dimensional representation of an animal for our customer to enjoy forever.
The word taxidermy comes from two ancient greek words. Taxis means movement, Derma meaning skin. So we have the movement of skin. When an animal comes into our shop we take important measurements off the animal so we can reproduce the actual size of that particular animal. Each individual specimen is no different than people, coming in different sizes and shapes. We then remove the skin from the animal, salting and drying it in preparation to go to the tannery. After several months the skin comes back from the tannery dried and tanned similar to a leather coat, only these skins are tanned with the hair on them. We then rehydrate and prep the skin to place the skin on an artificial mannequin or “form”, generally made out of a polyurethane foam the same size as our original measurements. We insert glass eyes for that particular species and sculpture the muscles and finer details with clay. We are then ready to place the tanned and prepped skin on the form with hide paste and adjust the skin until it appears lifelike. After a drying period we then paint the bare skin areas around the eyes, nose pad, and inside the ears. The mount is then brushed and cleaned and ready for the customer.
Modern taxidermy incorporates many crafts,such as carpentry, wood working, tanning, molding and casting, to name a few, but it also requires artistic vision and talent including the art of sculpture, painting and drawing to bring our mounts to life. So whether its a deer shoulder mount or a life size mount with an elaborate base and habitat, at Cedar River Taxidermy we always want to give your trophy A Final Compliment!

For several years now I have realized my business needed a online presence. Thankfully I have found some help through Qwest. They contacted me with a program to help me market my business online. I have been working with representatives from Qwest to build a foundation for my online presence. They have been helping me build a website and get all the social media set up through Facebook, Twitter, and a blog. Before my only advertisement was word of mouth, which is good; but now I should be able to reach more potential customers and improve my business operations with technology. All I have to do in return for this help is to blog about my experience and give my honest views about the Qwest program.
So far everyone has been extremely helpful. I have only spoken to two people, which is good. It’s nice not getting passed around to different people. In the final steps of the program I get to work with my own personal coach in order to learn the basics of social media. It is good to work with someone who is truly there to get me started. I have learned about blogging, using key words so I get hits from search engines, and how to recruit people using Facebook and Twitter. I look forward to learning more as we go a long. Without this help from Qwest I may not have had the time to even consider how to begin to build a site, let alone get the social media started. When it is all said and done, I know this program will be a big step for Cedar River Taxidermy and something that will truly help establish my business.

Putting the skin on lifesize black bear today 6/8/11, invoice #0552. Shoulder mounts we are working on invoices in the  #0580 range, so if your number is close to that we should be getting to your animal soon.

Thanks, Rick

Cedar River Taxidermy has been in business for 6 years, but taxidermy has  been a part of the owner’s life for more than 15 years! We specialize in big game from all over the world.

Inland Grizzly completed in April

Come back for more updates about our current projects and information about taxidermy!