A grand opening and two great causes

Well tonight is the night that we are really going full bore. At about 1 am the latest incarnation of our site will be launched. The new site will include a few grand opening promotions and a few new items. We have included our entire fall order giving some deep discounts on the half we are waiting on, so it may take awhile for you to get your order but it will surely be worth your wait.

we are excited to announce the arrival of another darn tough shipment. we are now going to be carrying their Appalachian trail conservancy socks (http://darntough.com/hike-trek-1438.html) a portion of the proceeds are donated to the ATC to help with their trail advocacy work.

Speaking of trails and advocacy work, that reminds me that as part of our grand opening we are going to be donating 10% of all our sales to a local trail project. We aren't totally sure which trail right now, but Red Wing or Carley State Park are the lead contenders right now. Oh before I forget that is only till sunday so anything purchased after 12 o'clock sunday night will all go to me. Except of course for all the cycling gear, that always gets 10% donated.

Please excuse any typos tonight, i am typing one-handed with a sleeping baby in my lap so spelling, grammar and capitalization are being compromised.

Up and going, but busy as ever

Well we launched our site, but haven't really started to promote it yet. We are smoothing out a few cosmetic wrinkles and getting the rest of our inventory online. We received the first shipment of our ibex fall order yesterday, so that is exciting, but on a more exciting note, my wife and I are expanding the flock at home. Sometime in the end of February Lillian will have a younger sister or brother. Assuming all goes well and we sure hope it does.

Kileigh Contemplates

A couple of days ago my wife bought some toy for her 7 year old niece Kileigh. And I wasn't really really paying much attention but I overheard her say, "How come everything is made in China?" Wow, even at seven years old she notices that nearly every consumer good we have in the country is made overseas. Now I am no economist but in my mind when our economy is encountering problems and Americans everywhere are battling to keep their jobs I guess I feel that we should support our own. That one of the reasons I chose the two companies I did as the foundation for our store. Both Ibex and Darn Tough Socks have made it a priority to keep jobs in Vermont and shown loyalty to their workers and communities. It is an honor in these times of outsourcing and anything to save an additional penny for the board of directors, to work with two companies with such a commitment to supporting the american worker.

Blackberries for Lil

Some people take enormous pride on how neat and tidy they keep their yards and around their houses. I on the other hand would much rather spend my precious free time doing something I enjoy like hanging out with the baby or biking. Well the apathy toward the weeds has resulted in a tall thistle right in front of our kitchen window and a huge sprawling thorny clump of blackberries on the back side of garage. This might bother some people but the thistle attracts a finch that will sit and eat the seeds no more than a foot from the window and we recently discovered that little Lillian absolutely loves fresh blackberries. I couldn't help but think of my favorite kid's book "Blueberries for Sal". Sure I lawn will never win any awards from BETTER HOMES & GARDENS but who needs awards when you have berries.

Beautiful if slightly unproductive weekend.

Well we were hoping have the sight up and running by now, but things came up (as they often do) and now I have to put the finishing touches on today and should be launching by Wednesday. Once we do open for business we'll be starting with a small inventory, but will be steadily adding and gearing up as we go. On to the fun stuff...

We did receive a shipment on Friday of some ibex cycling jerseys. So of course Saturday I had to go out and test out some of the product so down to Winona we went. I did some riding with some friends while Em and Lily tried to get some grocery shopping done. One flat tire, a chain slipping of and eventually breaking, and 20 miles up and down some of the steepest, tallest and rockiest hills in the state I finally got done. Euphoric exhaustion is the only way to describe accurately the feeling after a ride like that. As for the ibex jersey, it worked well although even wool apparel is no substitute for training and conditioning. It was a pretty warm day and I was laboring pretty hard to get up those hills, so my back would just be drenched and the jersey would be soaked at the top. But once I picked up some speed on the rolling terrain on top or started screaming down the descents it was dry in no time. We are probably going to add the cycling stuff a couple days after we launch, but once we get it added we will be selling the jerseys for $100 ($10-$25 under suggested retail) but then we are pledging $10 per jersey sold to a local cycling advocacy project. We will probably extend this to any cycling products we pickup, because we are rapidly approaching the arm and leg-warmer time of year.

tying up the loose ends and working all the bugs out

First off I really want to commend the prompt tech support crew at one&one.com. They are on my problems shortly after I submit them. Fortunately they helped me figure out how to add size and color options to the items in my store. UN-fortunately it only required me to upgrade my package and pay ten more dollars a month, but it is worth it to have an easy to navigate store. Now if I can figure out a way for PayPal to just let my customers submit their card info and checkout instead of making them go through four pages telling them how much easier it would be for them to checkout if they would have a paypal account. It was easy to setup being that I have an account, but I don't know if that is our long term solution, but it will work for now. That is about it for now I guess. As a teaser I will say that we are pretty set as sponsors for two bike races and we are hoping to have a logo to soon unveil. Oh I nearly completely forgot, we also placed our fall ibex order, so hopefully we'll soon have more great woolwear for all your skiing/snowshoeing/sledding/everything needs this winter.

Moving in the right direction

Well we are slowly but surely moving towards launching the site. Our journey isn't without a few bumps in the road, but for the most part we seem to be making progress.

I am a little frustrated because it appears that with the hosting service we are using we may have to list each size and color option as a separate item. In the grander scheme of things not a terribly big deal, but still just a little bit less convenient for our customers to navigate. Once we get it launched we can work on improving our sight(or is it site.) The key now is just to get up and running and start making a little money hopefully instead of just spending it.

Song of the day: I am going to keep rolling with the cover song theme at least for today. This is one of the oddest cover versions I have ever seen, but still they do a great job on a great song. So here is "Video killed the Radio Star" as interpreted by the WRONG TROUSERS.

Really wishing I had done better in art class

In the process of trying to develop a logo for our store, we basically came to the conclusion that I really suck at drawing. My drawings are such vague representations of what they are supposed to be that they could be used as a inkblog type test by psychologists. ("It's a dog, no a badger, no a pig"even though it's supposed to be a sheep). Even so I am sure that we will get our logo made, I am just impatient because I want to get some stickers made to get our name out there.

Speaking of getting our name out there we are contacting an area gravel road orienteering race about donating some swag to reward people for their suffering. I will keep you all informed and hopefully be an official sponsor within a week or two.

Song of the Day: In honor of reggaefest at the Harbor bar this weekend I decided to pick Xavier Rudd covering the great Bob Marley (I am sensing a cover theme to this) Sadly I am too busy to attend the bikini contest, but maybe next year I could really go for some jerk chicken. Until then I Hope you all enjoy.

Counting down the days

Hopefully it should be only a matter of a week or till we are up and running ready to serve your needs and set you up with the best wool active wear at the best price. We have our domain reservede and are in the process of setting up our website through www.oneandone.com so get ready to set www.speedysheep.com as one of your bookmarks. We have our socks unpacked and organized so the are are ready to ship once the orders start rolling in (hopefully). We are going to be sending in an order for the fall ibex line, if you are looking for anything specific just let us know we would be happy set something up and get you what you are looking for.

I did take the morning off yesterday to take the girls out in the burley, really should've spent some time working on the site or doing some stuff around the farm, but sometimes you have to make a little time for what's important in life.

I am going to start a new feature for the blog, I am going to finish with a quick mention of the song I happen to humming to myself or listening to while I am working on this. Generally if possible I will thieve a youtube video to give you easy access to hear what I am talking about. Today I just can't Futureheads cover of "Hounds of Love" out of my head. Hopefully it drives you as crazy as it's been driving me, here is the best video I could find with little or know searching



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_Bb_rL8juk&feature=related

EXCITING TIMES AT SPEEDYSHEEP WOOLS

Our first order of inventory has be in for about a month now and we are finally getting down to important details of creating our website and preparing for our launch. It has been a busy summer and hopefully I can slip away sometime tomorrow to take lily for her first real ride in the burley. All work and no play is making Ben a dull boy.

On other notes we are thinking about creating custom cycling apparel to get some free advertising while I am out and about. Hopefully we will get a logo designed soon and put that on some cycling caps and maybe even a jersey. I guess that is where we are at right now, hopefully I will have more good news soon and a website for everyone to visit and spend lots of money at by the end of the month.

first blog

Welcome to our blog chronicling our soon to be opened online store, www.speedysheep.com, check back the latest news and info on us and our products.