Hello Everyone,
I wanted to take a short bit of your time to let you know what's around the corner in the gear shop.
Historically, BPL has always had a year end sale, primarily as a benefit to members, with a 20% discount off items in the Gear Shop. Last year, we scaled this to 40% because we moved our warehouse from California back to Montana and we didn't want to move the inventory too :)
We are rethinking our year end strategy a little this year, in response to your complaints about our low stock of inventory, especially going into the holidays.
So, here are some changes we are making this season:
1. We will be increasing our stock for the holidays, and will offer a fully stocked store starting on November 29.
2. Because the year end sale doesn't help our cash flow (due to discounting), we're being a little more proactive with our cash flow to bring new products in for the holidays. To be released this week: titanium SUL 550 and 900 pots; To be released on November 29: Vapr Bivies, Absaroka Packs, our new Tenkara Fly Fishing Kits, new stock of Cocoon apparel and UL Quilts, a new "Pro" version of the Ursalite Bear Bag Hanging Kit, and some neat new smaller goods too.
3. We'll still have a year end sale, but we're really trying to avoid bleeding out all of our inventory at the end of the year and going into January with nothin' so we're going to be a little more intentional about maintaining our year end and January inventory for those customers that appreciate us having things in stock more. So, the year end sale this December probably won't look like year end sales of the past. We're still trying to figure out what to do, and do it in a way that provides, most importantly, exclusive benefits for our annual and lifetime members. In addition, the warehouse move, which caused us to have extremely low January inventory in 2009, opened our eyes to the fact that a lot of you still remain active in the winter, which is awesome. We want to support that, obviously :)
I'm excited to continue to learn about inventory control and retail ecommerce in a way that allows us to respond more effectively what you want out of BPL.
I hope you're all having a wonderful fall trekking season. I for one had a spectacular cloudless walk in the Tetons in October with five other BPL members – it was a stellar experience, and I got to try out the new Vapr Bivy, Cocoon clothes, and UL 240 quilt! I'm very excited about these new products!
Best Regards,
Ryan Jordan
