We have been in business since 1989, so have accrued a list of favorite suppliers over the years that we will share with you!
Ribbons: Our very favorite ribbon vendor is May Arts (www.mayarts.com). We especially love their UK5 series crushed "silk" ribbon as it is inexpensive, ties easily and already has an elegant wrinkly look so if you need to retie, it is no big deal. The soft teal (UK5-4) has been our store ribbon for well over 20 years, and we use some of the other colors seasonally. The color they call rose (UK5-20) is a pretty pinky, watermelony color that looks great on our Cottage Garden pattern boxes. The white (UK5-01) is versatile, so we keep a few bolts of that on hand too. The EA5 series is similar, and comes in a gorgeous emerald green that is perfect for Christmas.
Your local floral supply also carries ribbons and if there's not one in your area, you might take a peek at Floral Supply Syndicate www.fss.com .
Bags: We buy our merchandise bags from Store Supply Warehouse (www.storesupply.com) and love the frosted plastic bags. We use the aqua, but they have pink and lavender too, and in the tote bags they have even more colors.
The bags we use for restaurant to go foods are from Papermart (www.papermart.com). We use the frosted wave handle bags for boxes and the frosted diecut handle bags for small items like condiments, teas and cups of soup.
We package the 2 ounce bags of tea we sell in the gift shop in an array of colored foil zipper bags from Clear Bags (www.clearbags.com). We use the ZBGM2 for everything except white teas and herbal peppermint, which are too fluffy, so we use the ZBGM3. We color coordinate the bags to the tea type: ie: black for black, green for green, red for rooibos, silver for white, bronze for oolong and pu ehr and gold for decaf. We purchased a little sealing machine from Amazon to seal the bags above the zipper so they are tamper proof.
We use U-line (www.uline.com) for any cellopane bags we might need for making tea cups into mini gift baskets, packaging small amounts of tea, or other little projects. They have hundreds of sizes available,