It has been soo busy at the shop. Every day. So I haven't updated well here.
Sorry.
Let's see. The Olympics are on every day. Awesome to see. The US has done us proud in Alpine skiing and overall. Head skis has surely been dominant and the customers have noticed. Interesting. Advertising does work! Happy for Americans Lindsay, Julia, Bode, and Ted. For Maria Reich and the other winners too. Those that deserved to win did so. Can't say that I am a fan of the NBC coverage but it is still awesome!
The industry is running out of gear! We are getting low on certain items. Our inventory looks like it typically does a month from now. Not really a bad problem to have, but we will miss a sale every here and there. And worse yet let a customer down perhaps. Sorry! I wish I could get more but the suppliers are out too. It has been a good year so far!
We had a demo day with Wayne Wong and the amazing Anton Gliders (http://www.antongliders.com/) scheduled for tomorrow but weather cancelled. Rescheduled for March 13. Our Toko tuning clinic is set for March 15 at the shop. Interested? Give us a call and get signed up. Max number is 30.
Speaking of tuning we got a NEW STONE GRINDER! Sorry to yell but this is pretty exciting. Our old machine had a stone that will not let us stone grind snowboards. Even wide skis available these days are a challenge. The new Grindrite 21Hundred from Wintersteiger is a thing to behold. Twenty two preset stone patterns and we can program in more. We have already added the Head "christmas tree" chevron pattern from their world cup skis. Also the Stockli pattern. Both were too complex for our old machine. And it is so easy to use that pretty much anyone could run it. Automation is expensive but efficient and repeatable. Good stuff. It cost about as much as a Mercedes Benz, but hey, you cant make your Stocklis sing in the snow using a Mercedes!
Another mid winter storm has been going on. I go to Reno on Tuesday with John to buy for next year. We will be there Tuesday through Thursday. By the end our lineup for next year will be pretty much set. Due to the pace of retail as mentioned above, I am not as prepared for Reno this year. I spend as much time as possible each year doing basic business analysis and create "open to buy" numbers for each category and carefully pour through the various options. This year I may have to trust my gut a bit more. I should still hit it about 95% right but will miss a few things. I will revisit it all in the spring and try to fix any mistakes...
Anyway, that's about it around here! How 'bout you? You been skiing?
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