Looking out from within

OK. The sale is over. Now we are in the midst of getting the shop ready for the ski season. We meet two or three days a week. Martin gets busy all day in the back. Gary is available to work the weekends when we are officially open. I am in the office about 1/2 of the time and spend the rest downstairs. John gets most day to day stuff (customers popping in randomly or by appointment)done plus his ongoing projects. John is great about doing whatever needs done. And he can do anything. He knows all the procedures. He can fix what is broken. He also knows what I would do and he does it that way. Keep in mind that what John and I would do may be very different. That's a good employee. And a good friend.

Anyway, I ramble as well as deviate from my "ramblings", so we should move on. The point is that we are staying busy. I figured this to be the dog days as it usually is. Between the sale and the snow there is a lull, and I was looking to take advantage of it.

Well- so much for thoughts of bike rides and golf. The "to do" list is staying well ahead of the "done" list. I think at this point I will announce a few more days of "open for business" each week. We are officially open weekends 10-6. If we need to be at the shop two additional days each week, why not be open for business? The shop may be messy for "retail" as we receive our steady stream of goods, but I think we can benefit. Heck, we are averaging about $1500 in sales daily when we show up on weekdays right now, so why not just say OK, this is our schedule?

Oh, and the Parking Lot Sale went great. We grossed more in sales than any previous year. By a lot. So thanks! I again need to thank Christian, Gabe, and the rest of the "cast of thousands". In addition to our regular staff, they make these bigger events happen without degrading the expertise and/or customer service that I will not compromise. Also our sales reps that helped out. Thanks Reps! If the sale is indicative of how sales will be this year, we are looking good!

On the home front, I am once again without child. Jennifer worked through the sale and we drove her back up to Eugene this last weekend. This year she is out of the dorms and into an apartment. She and her room mates were SO excited to have their own place. It is all so grown up! Now she needs to nail down a job. She wants to work at Bergs ski shop. Bergs was named top shop in the Northwest by the sales reps. We visited and they seem very similar in approach to our shop here. Just bigger and with snowboards too. The employees she spoke to last spring thought she would be a lock to get a job there, but she has not gotten much response to her job application. "Time to start being a pest" was my advice!

So we continue to prep for snowfall. Then it is hunker down and get it done time. Between now and then, I need to do some hiring and we will have our staff training ongoing throughout October. Time is flying by and we will be skiing before we know it. Meanwhile, I will take a shower and then I am off to work. My shorter term goals (today's list) are to get the Mountain Hardware shipment received and tagged, call Orage about being shorted a jacket on the order we got in yesterday, catch up on mail, order printer paper and other supplies, finalize the proof for the new shop stickers, coordinate with Erik Boone about getting the press back into the shop, etc. until it is time to go home again. Then tomorrow will be more of the same. Lather, rinse, repeat!

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!

Christmas in July!

Woohoo! The ski press is here! Erik came by yesterday and dropped it off. You may be able to see the smile on my face in the photo. This is my own Red Rider BB gun. My pony. My Radio Flyer wagon. My Schwinn Typhoon. My flexible Flyer sled. All rolled into one! Now we simply need to buy a bunch of wood and glue and p-tex and learn how to build skis. We have done a lot of research, and have a training video on the way. Then Erik has in-house training scheduled with a master ski builder. By the real Christmas day, I hope to be skiing on some skis that I made myself. If that works out, maybe one day you too will be skiing on a ski made in Berkeley, California! We will try to have it on display when we have our Fall Parking lot kickoff sale in late August. In the meantime, I need to try to focus on the sale instead of the new toy. I know Erik will be hard at it as soon and as much as possible. Looks like some late night ski building??

Enough vacationing already?

I have not been blogging this summer, as usual. This week however, there is some interesting stuff going on at the shop so I felt the need. I have certainly enjoyed the summer so far. Last night I got back from what may be the last road trip of the summer. Some camping, biking, and hiking in the redwoods trees of Humbolt County. Absolutely awesome! A few days in Eureka with friends to wrap it up, and then back home. Very relaxed. But now I have to shift gears again. A lot will be going on at the shop this week.

John and I will be finishing up our new boot bench. The boot lab also has some new added features that we have to implement. Most of what we need to finish the projects will have arrived while I was gone. A lot of appointments were scheduled last night after checking email and phone messages on the work phone. Back to the grind stone for a bit.

One other exciting thing for this week is that we will be setting up Boone Ski's (http://www.booneskis.com/) new ski press in the shop later this week. A ski press is the largest and most important piece of equipment in the ski building process. This will be really cool. Eric Boone and I were chatting in the spring. Eric wanted to buy a ski press to do more in-house work on prototypes and the like. He had nowhere to park it currently. I had a shop that was not used for a large part of the year (when he will be needing it). We decided right there and then. For the time being at least, the ski press will be at California Ski Company. Eric has a ski building clinic scheduled later this week. Then we will see what can be done with the unit. While it is not my press, I am still psyched to be able to learn how to use it and learn more about the process. I am also happy to be able to help out a local ski company. Eric is a great guy who is doing skis for all the right reasons. I would love to see him continue to succeed and grow. This could be really cool! I am psyched!

After the Bachelor Party...

Well we have closed the doors for the season. This year the staff went to Bend Oregon after closing to ski Mt. Bachelor just as we had last year. A great time was had although the snow was not fantastic. Not that I am complaining. Spring skiing is great and we didn't need to ski for eight hours every day. This is meant to be a thanks to the staff and a general wind down as we head into the summer months. Swimming, Golf, mini golf, Mountain Biking, and hiking filled in the time in the afternoon. Cooking big meals and hanging out topped off the evenings. A great ending to a great ski year!

As I looked at the people present at the condo, I thought of how much of a diverse group we were. I saw people from 9 months old to 74. My eighteen year old daughter had headed over from school in Eugene. Roman had driven up from Lake Tahoe as had Neil "the squirrel" Harris. Rick Copeland came from Mendocino. And then there were the East Bay employees of the ski shop. We covered about every race, religion, political bent, age, and socio economic category. What brings us together? Skiing! What a great activity!

And what a year to be a skier! Awesome snow conditions. Fantastic new types of skis. Cheaper than ever seasons passes. I hope you took advantage of it!

Here at the shop we had a great ski year as well as a great year for sales. The register started ringing early. Overall sales volume was record breaking. The staff was (as usual) simply awesome. The customers were (also as usual) fantastic. We sold down to a very clean position on inventory. What can I say after a year like this except- THANKS!

Now for the summer break. What will I do? There may be a Mammoth ski trip coming up. There will be some golf played with staff. I will get to ride my bike(s) a lot. My Miata will get some track time and a lot of twisty road action. I will be building a friend a new road bike. My daughters will be around to play with. Maybe some co-ed soccer?

I guess I will also have to cross some chores off the list too. You know, clean the garage, fix the fence. That sort of thing. But that's ok. I can schedule it around the fun stuff!

At work the list is pretty long too. As usual John and I will be doing general maintenance on the machines. Painting and polishing is needed here and there. Some new slatwall will be getting installed. A big project will be the boot areas for both retail and in the lab part of the back shop. Two more boot presses, another water tank, a freezer, and another grinder will have to be fit into the lab. On the retail floor we are finally going to raise the boot fitting benches so that we can get up off our knees when we do a fitting. Yes!

So for now, I will be going into the shop 2-3 days a week and playing hard the rest of the time. If you need something ski related, just give us a call at the shop. If we are not there, we will get back to you to make an appointment. Fall seems a long way off right now. Experience suggests that it will come sooner than expected. Before you know it we will be skiing in Tahoe again. In the meantime, we must all do what we need to so that we are ready for the season. Have a fun Summer!