We are still here!

Wow, have we ever been swamped. I don't have much time, but wanted to leave a quick note to let you know we are still here!

As expected, December has been slower than normal. We plan to get through it, and get aggressive in January and February to boost sales.

We had our staff dinner at Mirch Masala on Saturday night. It was very good Indian cusine, and then we went to see Bourne Ultimatum afterwards. It was a fun night.

As for the coming new year, Tracy has been evaluating our night time business. I crunched some numbers, and in the last three months we have shown $400 in profit during the 6:00pm to 8:00pm timeslot. We have had several special events (live music, group holiday parties) that account for more than $400 in sales during that time. Basically, that means the shop has been roughly breaking even during that timeslot over a three month period (if you take out the special events). Tracy's plan is to start closing at 6:00pm instead of 8:00pm starting in January. She wants to take those labor manhours and pull them into the dayshift to assist with catering to Premiere and Time Warner. She feels she can develop better sales with those labor hours during the day than we are getting at night. We are also looking at being open on both Saturday and Sunday for half days. We are currently open half days on Saturday, but Sunday would be a new endeavor. There are lots of churches in the vicinity, and we can distribute fliers to them to let people know we will be open. We should be able to develop a decent following on Sunday mornings with local church-goers... We go to church on Saturday night anyway, so it does not affect us in that manner.

I started a new job as a Project Engineer for RKMI (RK Mechanical, Inc). RK is the largest HVAC/Plumbing contractor in Colorado. It is a privately owned company and is non-union. Knowing that Intel is a temporary situation (Site Water Chemistry Control) I started looking for a job, hoping to line something up before my contract at Intel ends at the end of March 2008. I thought it might take a few months to find something decent, but I found the position with RK almost immediately. My project scope involves the expansion at Fort Carson (Army Base here in Colorado Springs). We are doing the HVAC and plumbing for 8 new buildings, including three Tactical Equipment Maintenance Facilities and five 4 story barracks buildings. I will be continuing my scope at Intel in the evenings. Although I will be very, very busy, I will still try to post the shop's progress every week or so.

Gotta run...
Take care,
JD