A. My company is called Animal Hoops. I have a greeting card mailing service and began creating my own line of 'fun' greeting cards with a Hippo theme. I was inspired to develop the hippo line into a coloring book called 'Heroic Hippos'. This coloring/activity book inspires children to Dream, Believe & Achieve their dreams by recognizing occupations of people in their lives as everyday heroes. The book opens with a baby hippo drifting off to sleep and asking the question, "I wonder what I will be when I grow up?" Occupations are represented from A-Artist through Z-Zookeeper on the next 26 pages. Each occupation depicts a fun hippo in that environment. On the header of each page the occupation is printed in dashed font so that a child can trace over each word and become familiar with it.

B. In this economic environment I believe that it is important to support local business. I have developed relationships with small businesses in my area and have placed Heroic Hippos in their stores on consignment. Therefore, when sales are made others also benefit.

The economic recession has caused me to expand my vision of how I can use the artist ability I have. I was driven to create a website and that led me to put these fun characters on t-shirts, mugs, bookmarks, and calendars. I believe in divine inspiration and I had to act on this golden nugget dropped into my consciousness.

I have 10 grandchildren and one great grand-daughter and I feel that it is important that they honor the adults in their lives and be thankful for the occupations each have. There is honor in any profession from the one performing manual labor to the nuclear physicist, each provides security for their families.

C. The hippo is the school mascot in our small town of Hutto, Tx. I have received such a positive response from folks who have seen the Heroic Hippo coloring book that I am inspired to develop a series of Heroic coloring books based on school mascots. I have completed the second book "Heroic Ducks" and I am working on my third "Heroic Dragons". Along with each coloring book I would like to develop a companion first reader. Having a financial foundation would give me freedom to explore options and develop this series, freeing me from operating on a shoe string.

Alibaba.com offers opportunity to not only use the services, suppliers and products from members of Alibaba but to serve as a source to those same members on a global basis. Alibaba also serves to build relationships with individuals thereby expanding their business base to others outside Alibaba. I look forward to discovering the many ways that I can support the members of Alibaba. Thank you for this opportunity.

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