Chiasso

Pros:  Fun knickknacks here!

Cons:  Knickknacks can be expensive.

The Bottom Line:  Go Chiasso.

Full review
Chia’sso.com (key-AH-soh doht cahm) is beyond a knickknack store for the terminally cool – you won’t find cockroach lunchboxes, rubber chickens or boxing nuns here – it’s like a refined Archie McPhee’s. It is the place to shop for fun toys, trinkets, and gifts for yourself or something different for that co-worker in the next cube who can never have too many plastic action figures, Koosh balls, and Lego people. You’ll find lots of smooth geometric shapes, bold colors, and funky textures as well as influences from modern artists and architects on useless silly toys and useful everyday gadgets and household items. They have a store in the heart of San Francisco – right at the Powell Street BART exit (super handy for last-minute gifts) but for those of you nowhere near the San Francisco Shopping Center, don’t you fret – Chia’sso online is as close as your laptop.

Where the Whimsical Go
Once you figure out what’s going on, the layout of the site is pretty basic. There are seven icons that represent the main categories they have like Décor (candles, frames, vases), Kitchen (uh, kitchen stuff like teapots and such), Office, Tabletop, (the best collection of salt and pepper shakers anywhere) Bath, Personal, and Kids (book ends, toys, clocks). All the stuff is really unique, off-the-wall, and funky, so don’t expect to love every piece you see.

I recently went nuts on my last visit to Chiasso.com stocking up on stuff for my bathroom and some more office toys. I bought some fun-colored glycerin soaps with plastic robots and yellow rubber duckies trapped inside ($6), a white plastic sheep for easy Q-Tip storage ($12), and this sleek brushed stainless toothbrush holder ($15). I was also tempted by their clear polyresin bubbley toilet seat, but at $85 and the risk that it wouldn’t fit my porcelain seat, I chose common sense over temptation. While I hate to use the cliché, there’s something for everyone – except for maybe the crafty and potpourri crowd.

In the Kids section I bought some funky wind-up toys that jiggle and wiggle like mad. ($15 each) They’re bare, with their mechanical guts exposed and I believe are knock-offs of these modern art pieces I once saw in a magazine for over a hundred bucks a piece. I also got this silly clock, which was a white tea cup and saucer, with the clock inside the cup. You mount the whole thing on your wall. (around $20)

Site Use – Nuts and Bolts
Within each section is a search function where you can locate and sort items by category, price, designer, and keyword. This function is utterly useless because there are few enough items per category to view everything. With six items shown per page, the most you’ll have to go into any one category is five pages and their site is well-laid enough so you won’t get buried and lost. Besides, it’ll do you good to browse.

Overall
Chia’sso.com uses fancy web magic with interactive images that scroll until you stop them with your cursor. I can see a few people having a difficult time with the pull-down menus that only pull down when your cursor hovers. It’s a little annoying too when it disappears because you have to start selecting from the top. Even though, I still think it’s a real sharp looking site – pleasing, slightly funky, and very blue (except for holiday times when they tweak it to look ‘festive’.) I’ve yet to encounter any bugs or slow-loading images.

The home page is a little cluttered, with icons to link to categories, the fancy interactive scrolling images, a couple subscribe boxes, and around 20 links to various non-product related sections of the site, like “Customer Service” and “Catalog Request”. They could have done some serious clutter control by using only five links to cover the rest. Why does Customer Service need five different links anyway?

Shipping
They figure out shipping charges by cost, not weight. My shipping cost was $15.50 for an order of around $80. (Shipping starts at $5.) They usually ship by UPS, which I absolutely loathe, but UPS 2nd Day air is $15 additional. My goodies arrived on schedule packed very well with extra padding. Shipping charges are always a hassle so it’s best to try to get to the store on foot.

A Downside?
The only downside to all this pop art goodness? Some of this stuff can be pricey. Although you can find ‘special sales’ online, some of this stuff is intended only for the rich and goofy (with price range on watches ranging $18 – 1,240.) I scarfed up these functional and fun salt and pepper shakers for a mere $20 but you can end up spending over $150 for a set of shakers.