Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Things are getting exciting!

Well the materials for building skis are late. So to get ready for the big sale in a few weeks, I moved the ski press out to make more room. We need to deal with about 250k worth of merchandise coming in over the first three weeks of August. We have big trucks coming every day. They drop off pallets of goodies! The goodies are sorted, counted, priced, tagged, and then put somewhere. Anywhere for now. Then by the actual sale they must be merchandised with signage and the whole bit. How "professional" everything looks depends on how much time we have once everything is in place. This year Jennifer is in charge of sale signage. I am hoping that this will mean less felt pen tags and more actual professional printed tags. Not that it really matters for the sale, but it will save me time later! Jennifer has also applied to work at Berg's ski shop in Eugene where she goes to school. I am excited for her. Berg's won the award for the best shop in the NorthWest from the industry reps. We visited the shop and it is very similar to CalSkiCo in many ways. But bigger! She has been taking more and more interest in our store these last few years. Now after taking some frosh business classes she is full of ideas to improve the shop. I am happy to share information with her about the business and her input is always welcome. If nothing else she has an ability to inject enthusiasm. Even better is that she has some pretty sound ideas. A future business mogul! In the meantime if she works at the shop in Eugene she will be sharp and ready when she comes home and works here at Cal Ski Co. She can probably give me some ways to improve things based on their model up in Eugene too (and visa verse?). For the last week Jennifer has been watching the shop with John. Rebecca and I weren't available as we went to Colorado to visit my dad and drive race cars. We had a great time. Three generations of Whitehouse's driving as fast as possible. If you told me when I was 20 that this would happen I would have thought it was too surreal to believe, but there we were. The race car will be a great tool for quality family time between the generations over the years. It stays at Grandad's so it is a good excuse to visit. While we were gone, Jennifer got to be super important for a week. She was "in charge" at the shop. She did a great job. I was proud to see the situation when I got back. Boxes to the ceiling but organized and clean. Paperwork done well. Organized list of what she had done and what she waited on due to uncertainty. Good job Jen! John speaks highly of both my girls work ethics. John is a harsh critic as well as unafraid to say so if he thinks someone is not top notch. This makes me proud. So some track time in the Miata may REALLY be the last gasp event for the summer. At least until mid September. Then we may have to fit in one more event before the snow flies. For now, thanks to the UPS man, it is Christmas every day at the shop.
We know the agenda and are ready to execute:
1.Get new toys.
2.Sell new toys cheap for three weeks.
3.Set up the shop for the ski season.
4.Then learn to build skis.
Sounds good to me!

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