Meeting the customer

Today's big event was a meeting with one of our biggest customers. It was an excellent meeting on several levels. I had met the buyer twice before, both times in social settings, both times due to the efforts of the seller of UCO. This time was all business. He wants a new variation on one of our products so we discussed the details, colors, costs, delivery dates, etc. Then he gave us a huge stack of data. Everything we sell to him with all associated sales statistics for 2005 year-to-date, 2004 and 2003. Excellent information! It's easy to see the steadily declining market for candle lanterns (we could already see it in the historical data for UCO) as LED lighting systems begin to take over the world. It's also easy to see how the ice cream ball (link is to the Amazon store we're building) more than made up for the drop in candle lanterns. What fun!

I also learned more about getting our goods across the border into Canada. Kathy had handled all the paperwork so I could deal with the trucker when he picked up the two pallets of goods at 5:30pm. Unfortunately, he and I had to deal with three different customs brokers as we tried to set him up for a smooth border crossing. The first one was the wrong one; the second one was right but closed for the day; the third one covers for the second after-hours. Whew!