Yesterday was a good day for sales. Definitely made us feel better after a painfully slow sales stint this last long holiday weekend. Our year long relationship with Amazon.com is continuing to grow and they ordered 8 RocLok's of varying styles which we shipped out to 4 of their many hubs throughout the United States. Our new relationship with a mcuh smaller .com shop is also proving itself producing a new sale every Monday for the last month. To top it all off our partnership with Brookstone.com has finally come to fruition and we are officially available on their site as well.
All of the excitement from yesterday made for a busy day at the shop today. We were able to have our part time helper come in early and we knocked out the orders in a record 3.5 hours including making another 8 RocLok's which we'll demold tomorrow. When we hired our very first employee in May we had high hopes of having him work 3 days each and every week. Unfortunately things aren't growing quite as quickly as we had hoped and for now he is happy to help out whenever we need an extra hand.
We could not have been more fortunate than to find our team member Bert. When we placed an ad for minimum wage ($8.50/hr) we feared we would never find a responsible, detail oriented person who would be willing to work for such a low wage. Obviously we'd love to have hired someone for a lot more but it's difficult to pay anyone anything when you can't even pay yourself! In today's poor economic climate I was shocked that a couple people actually wrote in on the ad angry that we were only willing to pay $8.50/ hour. We even interviewed a few people who openly admitted that they would rather milk their unemployment benefits over taking a job for such low pay. Ultimately we received well over 30 applicants for the job, interviewed 16, chose 6 more to participate in a 2nd interview and fortunately decided on our new friend Bert, a former Marine who is studying towards a degree in Geology with the help of his GI Bill.
One of the things that impressed us with Bert is his willingness to stay busy and build his career goals. I've often wondered what kind of person works twirling a sign on the street corner for business promotion. Honestly, I always assumed that the people standing on the corner were either high-school drop outs, homeless or people with some criminal record that impeded them from getting any other job. I was beyond wrong! You see Bert also works as what he calls the "Advertising Specialist" at a local firearms dealer in the area. He initially took that job to get a foot into the door with the hopes of becoming a salesman at the shop. So far he has been disappointed by the lack of upward mobility still he diligently shows up for his duties each and every time he is needed. The poor guy often comes back to our place beat red from standing in the blaring heat of the summer all day long.
If all goes well in the next few months, we pray that we can bring Bert in on a more permanent full time basis. To loose such an amazing asset to our company would be a travesty to say the least. For now we'll continue to play it day by day and shoot for a brighter tomorrow. Good night everyone.
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