KEVEN's BAG BACK, plus..

November 20, 2007

We have about 20 Keven's Bags in stock, and 26 GRIPKING pedals on back order. These numbers, these quantities, are completely abnormal for us. Mostly due to them being late to come in, and stacking up backorders. Anyway, it's made for some interesting days.

Delivery problems continue to be the hardest, worst thing around here. If you were to work here a day, you'd hear the moaning and hoping for better deliveries. We're all grateful that you-all are more patient than we-all are. Absolutely, we're sympathetic. Anyway, we're all set for Keven's bags for a week-or-so, and we should have another shipment before mid-December.

The next RR is nearly full. It will be bigger, about 10 1/2 x 12 instead of 8 1/2 x 11, and this one should be 32pp, not the normal 40. Same number of words, though. The idea was to make the  pages a lot bigger, so we could use bigger pictures and simplify the layout some (fewer articles continued onto other pages). But any bigger than the 10.5 x 12 meant it either had to be folded, or postage rates would be higher, so we backed off to the biggest page size possible for the lowest mailing cost possible, and lo & behold, it ended up this size.

Here's a thing that'll come up again soon, and it's about bike payments  on orders where we're waiting for your frame to arrive (we don't have it in stock, we're waiting for the shipment). It's not bad. Right now you put down $300 or so for a bike, then pay off the rest when we're ready to ship. We're going to change that to: $300 down (like before), then the frame balance ($1,200 or so) when the frame arrives here. Then the bike balance when ithe whole bike is ready to ship.

 This way, you have a smaller balloon payment at ship-time; but mainly, it'll tremendously help our cash flow, since we have just 10 days to pay the big shipment bill, which can easily run $50,000 to $70,000. You won't pay any more, and it will help us avoid or minimize fretting and finance charges. Sound fair? (Rhetorical question, that one!) Anyway, please understand.

The Yen is creaming the Dollar. It hasn't been this bad for about 12 years. We're happy when a dollar buys 120 yen. We're OK when it's at 115 (yen to dollar), and would be happy to lock it in there for the next decade. At 112, it's nervous-making, and 110 is just bad, and last week it hit 109. The Euro and Pound, same story. The Pound is the worst, the worst it's been in any living person's memory, and so the Nigel Smythe Stuff--as expensive as it is--is still a bargain, considering what it costs us.

 Over the next few months you'll see more USA-made bags. We have a maker that is not Frost River or Duluth, but somebody with tons of experience with bags. These wil be Baggins brand, and there will be Smythe equivalents to most of the models. 

Yellow rain hat watch: Three more sold!

Grant