Designs by Gardenfire—known mainly for apparel—now appear on BelieveTek technology products under a new partnership between the two companies.

BelieveTek, a faith-based technology company owned and operated by Steve Crawford and Josh Warren, wants to bring a message of “accountability when surfing the Internet, so we are working on some designs for the keyboards and mice for that reason,” Warren said.

Under the new agreement, Gardenfire designs will be used on BelieveTek’s wireless keyboard ($59.99 retail), wireless mouse ($34.99), iPhone and Samsung case ($24.99); iPad case ($34.99) and Kindle Fire case ($29.99).

Kregel Parable Christian Store in Grandville, Mich., is planning to open a new P. Graham Dunn Gallery—only the second such gallery in partnership with a Christian retail store.

Owners Jim and Kathie Kregel learned of the possibility through Lorraine Valk, the retailer who owns the first gallery teamed with a store, Parable Christian Store of St. Joseph in St. Joseph, Mich. outside of Grand Rapids.

“Kathie [Kregel] had an opportunity with the real estate next door to their store to sign a lease and do a pass-through, like a door from their store into this new space,” said Joe Knutson, co-president of P. Graham Dunn. “It was an opportunity that all fell together at the right place at the right place at the right time, and what she wanted to do was to present P. Graham Dunn in this new space.”

Heritage Lace—a family-owned business in Pella, Iowa—has grown with the times. Started in the early 1980s, the company imported its textiles until the early 2000s, but now has the ability to create about 95% of its lace products in the United States.

“Lace textiles require lots of complicated machinery,” co-CEO Dan De Cook said in the February issue of Inspirational Gift Mart magazine. “There may be 7,000 spools of yarn feeding one machine with 7,000 needles. Just one of those machines costs $1 million. We have 70 of them.”

Gift companies are invited to enter their top releases in the 2013 Christian Retailing’s Best awards, honoring the best products in the Christian retail market. This Friday, Feb. 15, is the deadline to enter this year’s awards program, which is sponsored by Christian Retailing magazine.

Entries are invited in more than 60 categories of 2012 products—books, Bibles, gifts, music, DVDs, children’s products and more—along with categories for Marketing/Promotion Campaigns and Backlist titles. Click here to nominate. Those nominating will be invoiced for the entry fee of $60 per nomination, and no sample product is required this year.

New Day Christian Distributors is bringing a popular brand to the Christian gift market. New products distributed under license from Duck Commander capitalize on the following of fans of the A&E TV reality show Duck Dynasty.

The products are similar to what is already available in the general market, but with the “Faith-Family-Ducks” wording on the products, which include mesh hats, license plates, can coolers, key chains and more. Retail prices range from $4.29 to $14.99.

Cottage Garden Collections (CG) adopted two families to help during the Christmas season, in keeping with its annual tradition.

“This all started about eight years ago when the staff was trying to think of a gift to give me,” explained Mark Timm, Cottage Garden’s president. “The idea was then born to give a gift on my behalf to a needy family. I was more touched by this than any company gift I had ever been given.”

Divinity Boutique is completely revamping its Bible cover program for 2013. All previous SKUs in the category have been discontinued, and the company has launched its brand-new collection of higher-quality canvas covers and fashion Bible covers. Divinity is planning to introduce more than 500 new SKUs of Bible covers this year.

“We are revamping our Bible cover program to improve the quality of what we produce,” said Keith Schwartz, president of Divinity Boutique based in Warrensville Heights, Ohio, near Cleveland. “Customers loved the value of the line, but said that they wanted a higher-quality product, so we are responding to the market.”