One down and two to go

Well we got through the first weekend with flying colors. I thought my feet hurt on Friday? Well there is a new level of ache this morning. But I am not complaining. We did great business! On Saturday we did 56% more business than any previous opening day. Sunday was just a bit less in sales. We seem to just keep growing. With some great help it all went smoothly too. We had the regular staff, as well as a number of previous employees that lend a hand for events like this. In addition to the new and old Cal Ski Co staff, we got some great sales reps out there to do some retail. I think that much of the time the reps hang out and schmooze at these events. Donuts and small talk. Not this weekend! Dana from Blizzard/Tecnica recently moved from the race department where he dialed in athletes boots at the highest levels to working with retailers. Ingrid Backstroms boots last fall, fitting recreational skiers this fall to help me out. The Soze group distributes Conformable insoles out of Vancouver Canada. Our local sales rep was hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, so they sent Steve Noonan, one of there management team from Park City. We have known Steve for a number of years now. He teaches some of the Boot Fitting classes that top boot fitters attend to find out what the latest tools and techniques are on the world cup circuit. Thanks to Steve and Dana, we had additional staff that was even more qualified than us on staff to help get the right boots dialed in on our customers feet. Thanks Dana and Steve! I think that they seemed quite impressed with the five staffers working the boot area with them too. They knew that John is as advanced as it gets. I think they were surprised to find the depth of knowledge they found across the board with the staff. Once again my staff made me proud!

Benelia mainly worked the clothing and bags in the Parking lot. This was the first year that someone outside was truly "selling" as opposed to soaking up the sun and doing security watch out front. Benelia contributed greatly to our numbers. Jennifer mainly sold helmets and clothing inside and ran the register. She puts all sales under her own employee number. This ensures that she will be the top sales person for at least a few months after she goes off to college. Sorry Jen, you can't fool me!

I mainly worked the ski wall. I sold a lot of skis. I don't know that I sold the most however. Christian, Erle, Gabe, John and Martin kept walking customers out after they finished with their boot fit. They grabbed skis off the wall and walked them up to the counter for Jennifer to process. They were selling the skis and boots at the same time back there. I would be talking to someone for fifteen minutes about skis and they would make the ski portion of their customers purchase in about three minutes. It is amazing how much trust is developed during the boot fitting process. Or maybe I am simply long winded...

Anyway, I am pleased and content. I feel that we offered outstanding prices and great customer service. Our product mix is top notch and my staff is exemplary. We had a lot of new customers as well as dozens of "regulars" that I know by name. Great to see both! Life is good! Now unfortunately I need to go back in today. John scheduled some boot fitting that was a bit complex for the sale environment over the weekend. Groan- no rest for the weary I guess. Oh well, there is quite a bit of clean up and organization to be done before next weekend anyway. I will find some time tomorrow perhaps for a little bike ride or something. See you next weekend!

Ready to Rumble!

Oh do my feet hurt. And my back. And my brain! One more long day in a series of long days. We open tomorrow and we are pretty much ready. There are things I would like to do better but that's how it goes. We got our preseason orders from Head and Salomon on Thursday. That meant about 2 employees full time for two days to get it received and put away. Therefore, I was two employees short getting the signage up and merchandise displayed properly. I am going pretty deep on discounts this year. Some skis are 70% off. Yikes! Anyway it will be great deals for the customers and I will clear some older stock out. Right now that is the most important thing. No, the most important thing is for me to get some sleep. Good night!

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!