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.