Our grind tally for the season to date is somewhere above 1200, which was our business plan projection for the entire season. We’ve been working pretty hard here! Last Wednesday I stayed up until midnight finishing our final pre-Thanksgiving batch so that we could take Thanksgiving day off. We woke up to groomed trails at Dusty Ridge, and followed that up with some Mexican food for dinner, and a movie in bed (happy Thanksgiving!). All told, we took a four-day weekend – two days of skiing in Putney, and then two days visiting family in New York City – and now we feel almost normal!
We would love to be able to guarantee rapid turn-around times, but during the pre-Thanksgiving rush it’s pretty much impossible. Now that we’ve taken care of most of the skis that needed to be finished for early season camps, we’re looking at a much more sane schedule, and our turn-around times look pretty contained, and we should be shipping thing out within a week of getting them. Our batch this week will be about 100 pairs, and while we might see a bit of a pre-Christmas (Nationals) spike, I think that’ll be a high-water mark for the rest of the season. Time to start enjoying life a little bit, and maybe getting some exercise!
It’s also time to focus on selling the new inventory. We’ve just put a press-release on Fasterskier discussing the incremental gains in new skis in the past few years, and what it all adds up to. About a minute in 10K is what Mike Temkin thinks! So – this is your cue: time to upgrade your skis. Gunnar submitted his Christmas list today…
Scheduling Note: Zach will be gone at the Tour de Ski from after Christmas until January 10th. We won’t be grinding skis from December 23rd until January 1oth. If you want skis ground we need to have them by December 19th!