David's Blog
May 6th 2008 Well, it’s time for my latest blog entry. I know it’s time for my next blog entry when my mother calls me and tells me to update my blog!
This Saturday we’re having an open shop sale to move all of our odd sizes, over-runs from larger orders, and just everything that isn’t nailed down. It’s a great time to pick up a smaller cutting board for that onion or garlic use or just to browse our selection in anticipation of the upcoming holidays. (in December)
We received some great news yesterday!! Our 15” maple spoon was tested by America’s Test Kitchen and Cooks Illustrated and the results are published online at the below link:
www.cooksillustrated.com
While we didn’t garner the top spot, we did come in as “recommended with reservations” and their only concern was the length of the handle. We DO sell that spoon in a shorter version, so don’t hesitate and get your spoons now! We are also the only company that can engrave the handles of the spoons as well! I felt it was a great honor to have our spoons tested, I just wish they would list the country of origin next to every entry to level the playing field and give the readers a more complete picture.
On another note, we have landed an order for cheese boards at the US Open Tennis Tournament in Queens this year. We will be providing the executive suites with a LOT of cheese boards.
That’s it for now
April 4, 2008 Well, well, well, where do I start? I must apologize, it’s been way too long since my last blog entry. I do have a good reason though! Well, it’s not really a good reason, it’s a stupid reason. I broke my ankle in two places!! Yes, I’m a Vermont transplant who, on March 4th, was walking to the garage to get some salt because the driveway was slippery, and sure enough, down I went and broke my tibia and my fibula.
1 surgery, 8 screws and 1 plate later, I’m now on crutches and will set off every metal detector within 50 feet of my ankle. I’m healing very well and doing as well as can be on crutches. While in a cast, my brother took me over the NEPTS (wholesale) show in Portland, Maine. We had a great response to our products and landed a bunch of new wholesale accounts. Thanks Mike! I also had 5 days of bonding with my brother, which was a great by-product of my accident. He really came through when I needed someone, as my wife was now in charge of our 3 little ones.
Now that it’s April, the snow is finally melting and the mud season begins. I heard a great joke the other day. Vermont has two seasons, Winter and 4th of July.
Our business has been strong and better than ever. The one challenge that we’re dealing with is that people we extend credit to now pay net 60, net 90 or net 120 instead of the usual net 30 that we offer. That’s been a bit of a challenge, but we’re adjusting our expectations, AND our cash flow! Happy Spring to everyone!
TTFN,
David
2/11/08 Well, our Daniel Boulud pieces were a hit, and I’m tired of talking about it! (not really) Anyway, the piece was featured in Time-Out New York and the article is posted to our “in the news” section. One of our local papers also picked up the story and I’ve posted a copy of that. Our other “local” paper said that our story about Daniel Boulud wasn’t really news and we should contact them again if we had some really big news! I won’t mention their name. (WILLISTON OBSERVER) Ooops, did I say that?
On to more important things! We are attending the New England Products Trade Show in Portland, ME on March 15, 16, 17th if anyone reading this is planning on or thinking about attending. I will be there, and if you mention my blog, I’ll give you a free gift! No Mom, this doesn’t count you.
Gung Hay Fat Choy! For those who didn’t know, last weekend was the Chinese New Year. We celebrated the Year of the Rat by attending a 16 course dinner at A Single Pebble in Burlington, VT. Food was awesome! It was so loud and there were so many kids there, I really needed to bring my shop headphones with the radio in them to block out the noise. I told my wife, next year I am going to bring my headphones!
This past Sunday, I was also tapped to be a judge at a cooking contest. There were 5 teams of chefs and the charge was to prepare an oyster appetizer and a chocolate dessert in the spirit of Valentine’s Day. What a great contest to judge!
Until Next time, TTFN
David
January,28, 2008 Well, it seems like everything isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. I was so excited about my lunch with Governor Jim Douglas that I had won in the Lake Champlain Chamber of Commerce Auction back in September. I was given information to set up the lunch and I tried. Believe me; I tried to set up this lunch. After several months and a few unreturned phone calls, I decided to cut and run. I asked for my money back from the Chamber of Commerce. They stalled, and didn’t call me back. I sent a not-so-nice e-mail and copied the president of the chamber and finally got my money back. If they couldn’t come through with the lunch, they shouldn’t have put it on the bill. As a small business owner, I put a lot of effort into winning that auction and following up and was just totally disappointed by the whole experience. I’m sorry Governor Douglas, you don’t get to have lunch with me. Enough said.
On the flip side, our pieces have appeared twice in magazines. We’re going to post links to the articles shortly. The first was our Charcuterie Board done for Chef Daniel Boulud, it appeared in Time Out Magazine. The second piece was in an advertisement for Italian leather products in Vogue Magazine.
Business has been steady and we’re doing a lot of early spring cleaning. I think we’re going to have a samples sale in March to unload some of our samples and overruns. Stay tuned for that!
TTFN, David
January 7th 2008 Happy Holidays! Happy New Year! WHEW…….The holiday rush is over and we’re almost back to business as usual. We’ve cleaned the shop, removed our extra packing and shipping stations, and we’ve taken a few days to relax and refocus on the year to come. We’ve also cleaned out the sawdust from every crevice it has gotten in to.
Our holiday season was just tremendous, keeping all of us very busy. In the middle of our holiday rush, we got the green light from Chef Daniel Boulud (www.danielnyc.com ) to proceed with his custom designed charcuterie trays. It’s an honor to do work for him even if it came at our busiest point of the year. None-the-less, we were able to fill 100% of our orders by X-mas unlike some of the mass-manufacturers out there who had really early cutoffs for their products.
Now is the time when we’re going to reflect on last year and see what we did right, what we did not so right and what we can do differently this year to help increase our efficiencies and help us increase our business.
We have a lot of new things planned for this year which we’ll start working on shortly. Please stay tuned and check our site often as new items are going to appear including our line of lazy susans that are beyond beautiful. We make them from Bird’s Eye Maple and Tiger Maple. We also use a high quality mechanism and sink the mechanism into the base so our lazy susans stay low to the table and work really smoothly.
We’ll be exhibiting at the New England Products Trade Show this year (www.nepts.com ) to help us get the word out about our spoon line.
Stay tuned for more, TTFN, David December 10, 2007 As the Backyardigans song goes, “Were in the thick of it” and they repeat it a whole lot of times to a catchy tune. (with our 3 girls of 4/4/6, I tend to watch or hear Noggin a whole lot.)
We are in the thick of the gift buying season. We were doing well working to get our largest order ever out the door when a bunch of smaller orders, all needing to be engraved came in. We’ve shipped ½ of the large order and will ship the other half on Wednesday/Thursday. We’ll all be glad when that one is out the door. It turns out that production is not the bottleneck, it’s actually the laser engraving. Who would have thought?
Our local wine group was last week and we tasted wines from Spain. I’ll tell you that the wines were good, everyone had their favorite, but the food was awesome! JoAnne out did herself. There weren’t any stand out funny stories, but it was just nice to get away and relax for the evening.
As our customers purchase items every day, we’re proud to be able to ship most items same day. I had heard that Sur-La-Table was no longer shipping their engraved cutting boards as of December 1st. Rest assured, we’re still shipping it for Christmas arrival up until UPS says, “No Mas.” I think they should find a better supplier.
As for snow conditions, we’ve gotten clobbered with 14” last week and this week we have a lot of flurries planned. Got to run, the phone is ringing off the hook!
Happy Hanukah to all of our Jewish customers as we light the Menorah here as well.
TTFN,
David November 26, 2007 Well, it's been a bit longer than I had expected to write my blog entry, but here goes:
My in-laws were here for Thanksgiving and cooked above and beyond their capabilities and made a great meal that I've had every night for 4 nights in a row. The food was just amazing. I hope everyone reading my blog has had a great Thanksgiving as well.
The holiday season is here! After starting out our holiday season with a 500+ piece order, we have had several larger orders right behind it. At the same time, we're handling many one and two piece orders every day. Our shop has a great "hum" to it and everyone is really pitching in to get the job done and get the orders out. Did I mention that I have great employees?
Other highlights of our past few weeks were the Fine Art and Craft show at the Sheraton in South Burlington. www.vermonthandcrafters.com We had our best show ever just before Thanksgiving. We've started talking with Orvis about possibly having one of our pieces in their catalog. We've also started talking with a local pewter company about possibly making them a custom line of products. Our Chef Kelly line has taken shape and is now starting to become available on our site. More Chef Kelly items will be forthcoming and his website is: www.kidsculinary.com .
I'm still waiting to have lunch with the Governor and I've also had a VERY large retail company approach me about carrying one of our lines. We'll see what happens there.
On our customer service front, I wanted to include a flattering customer feedback quote in my blog to highlight our great customer service,
"Dear David, That is most kind for you to offer to do that. Now this is good old excellent customer service that one seldom sees much this day and age. I would surely appreciate it if you could send me two of your 8 oz. bottles. With the invoice enclosed I would be quite pleased to send a check off to you in the following day's mail pickup... You likewise are so too and quite refreshing to find. That said, I truly appreciate your trust and willingness therefore to simplify things by offering to simply send this mineral oil to me and allowing me to pay for it once received via a mailed check. So many things, it would seem, are going to heck in this country these days more and more, but this is an instance of good old American goodness and quality in business practice. “
Thanks Roy, enjoy your mineral oil!
Just another update, our wine group is December 1st, so hopefully I’ll have a funny story for you after that!
TTFN, David October 23, 2007 Well, it’s been a busy few weeks here a the shop. We’ve been gearing up production for holiday gift orders as well as finishing up a few large custom pieces. My family and I visited Detroit this past weekend for my wife’s nephew’s Bar Mitsvah. A great time was had by all, but it was a whirlwind trip with our three kids. Next weekend our family visits my side of the family in NYC. I need to talk to the scheduler, my wife, about spacing our trips apart a little bit more!
Our wine group met two weekends ago right after I made my last blog entry. We blind tasted favorite wines under $12.00 per bottle. The best of the 8 bottles was bottle number 4. When the bottles were unveiled, it turns out that bottle number 4 was Kirkland Cabernet Sauvignon. Can you believe it? 8 somewhat average pallets picked Costco brand wine as the best? We were all floored!!! (and running to Costco the next day.) We later found out that the bottle was actually $12.50 which violated the under $12.00 rule made by hostess Lucy. (Lucy was also the one who bought the Costco wine).
Anyway, one last thought, I’ve seen many lazy susans in my day and all I can say is that people who make lazy susans use wood that is either scrap wood laminated together or they use plain/ugly wood. I’ve decided that we’re going to make a line of lazy susans that uses beautiful woods such as birds eye maple and tiger maple, with each piece being a work of art. Stay tuned to our website for that, they will be up in a week.
I just wanted to add a disclaimer that my wife’s name is Susan and there is no correlation between my wife Susan and lazy susans.
Have a good week and I’ll update after our trip to NYC!
David
October 10, 2007 Whew!! Our holiday fine art and craft show this past weekend is out of the way. We met a lot of great people and sold a lot of product. Thank you to all of those important customers and thank you to those who promised to contact us about corporate work! Our next and last show of the year is at the South Burlington Sheraton on the weekend before Thanksgiving. Please visit www.vermonthandcrafters.com for more information and an entry coupon good for $1.00 off.
Over the past several weeks, I (David) bid on having lunch with the Governor of our small state and won the auction. Sometime in the near future I will be having lunch with Governor Jim Douglas pictured below. Of course after the lunch, I’ll post to my blog and let you know how it went. I’m not sure what I’m going to talk about during lunch so if you have any suggestions feel free to e-mail them to me. http://governor.vermont.gov/
As for new products, we have made some beautiful candleholders out of highly figured wood and had a glass blowing friend make us some votive tea light tubes for the top. They are just beautiful and they are listed in the one of a kind area on our site. After making them, I wanted to put one of them on my dining room table, but I disappointingly sold the one I wanted at our craft show. Oh well, guess I’ll have to find another special piece of figured wood for my table. Thanks, Eric for making those tubes! www.eyeandiglass.com
Signing off for this week, David
September 28, 2007 Did anyone read that New York Times article about the difficulty in making time to write your blog? Well, I’m experiencing that. Blogs have become an important part of any business’ marketing plan, so I will try my best to make time each week or perhaps every other week. With our craft show appearance in Stowe (www.craftproducers.com ) coming up this week, we’ve been busy preparing for an onslaught of retail customers at the show.
This week we were contacted by a real estate firm to make some pieces for Butterball™ . Another great opportunity earned for us. Of course the pieces were needed in 4 days, but we had them in stock so it wasn’t a problem.
We’ve added framed and matted photos of a great amateur photographer, Laurie Thompson. Laurie is a full time school teacher that lives in a beautiful area and has a great eye for taking pictures! Feel free to check them out on our site. In addition to her photos, we have added a more complete line of pepper mills including teak and rosewood! We have also added beautiful rolling pins, Vermont Butcher Block Aprons, and VTBBB Potholders! Please feel free to stop in and check out our new selection.
TTFN, David
(TTFN is short from Ta Ta for now – Tigger from Winnie the Pooh)
September 21, 2007: Owner’s Log, Star Date….just kidding that was for one of my geeky trekkie friends. Ted, you know who you are. Well, so much for having a slow September. Our business has, well, gotten busy! We thought we might have more time to build up our holiday inventory and instead we’re making a lot of custom products for the next few weeks. The premier holiday catalog that we’re in has been keeping us busy in building up inventory as well. They have taken not just two of our cutting boards into their folds, but two cutting boards and two knife blocks as well.
Well, we’ve also landed a job working for Chef Daniel Boulud making charcuterie trays for his new restaurant opening in November across from Lincoln Center. We were chosen over a number of other vendors due to my sunny personality, along with a few quality products from our staff. Having the Chef Boulud feather in our cap falls in line with the number of celebrity chefs we have done work for including Bobby Flay, The Food Network, Guy’s Big Bite, and a few others that shall remain nameless.
Our holiday season is shaping up to be a great year for us and we would love to earn your holiday business, we’re able to engrave corporate logos on any of our pieces and can do just one, one thousand, or any quantity in between. Please feel free to e-mail us your logo for a free sample of your engraved logo.
This is David, signing off until next week, Nano-Nano (Mork from Mork & Mindy circa 1978-1982 Robbin Williams/Pam Dawber)
9/13/07 Well, it’s my first blog entry. What do I say? I’ll start by saying, “WELCOME to our new website!” Please feel free to email me with comments, suggestions and mis-spellings to
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and we’ll get them cleared up. Feel free to place an order or two as well while you’re looking around our site. (Someone has to pay for the new site!)
Anyway, we started the year out yearning for a paper catalog that would list our products and better inform customers about them. Our newly hired marketing firm talked me into having our website rebuilt to a friendlier format as initially we were working on a shoestring budget website. Following the website rebuild, we would be able to come out with a catalog that would be cohesive with our website. It all sounded great in theory. I didn’t have time to spare, they were slow getting out of the gate and the site took much more time to build than anyone who was involved anticipated. It’s done and I’m really glad! Next was the catalog.
What we finally decided is that due to the environmental impact of a new catalog with all that paper and chemicals (along with the cost), we would be better off producing a give-away CD of all our products and offerings. Then we took it one step further and decided that anyone that had a computer to play a CD would have internet access and would be able to pull up our site. (Hello, this is 2007) Scratch the catalog, scratch the CD/DVD catalog and now we’re going to come out with a high quality brochure that points customers and people to our website. Stay tuned for that……and e-mail us if you would like one.
We did re-design our logo last year and I think it came out great. Thanks to Ted Kohn of www.moondyneagency.com. Our logo appears on our website and is laser engraved into all of our pieces.
Another milestone this year was our new wooden utensil line. We consulted a number of local chefs from a “top 3” culinary school and they all agreed on several principles, or must haves. They wanted sturdy, strong pieces that were made in the USA, Vermont to be more specific since that’s where we all live. Having flimsy shaped handles or whimsical designs was a turn-off, they wanted reliability, durability, and good strong utensils that wouldn’t discolor or break at the sign of hard work. They also wanted the ability to hang the utensils, possibly from a hanging pot rack or on the wall. Our utensils come standard pre-dipped in mineral oil and also have a leather hanging loop attached. A big WELCOME to our utensil line in Maple, Walnut and Cherry! If the handle ever snaps from overuse, we’ll replace the spoon at no charge!
We can also engrave names and messages on the spoons to add to their charm. Shortly after the Maple line came out, we engraved 30 spoons with a logo and restaurant names for a chapter of Meals on Wheels to give out to supporting restaurants. They just look great in our pottery utensil crocks.
A number of times per week we get asked why we don’t carry other Vermont products. Well, now we do! We have Danforth Pewter, Richard’s BBQ and hot sauces (famous here in Vermont), Wooden bowls by Woodburys of Vermont, Bag Balm, the worlds best skin moisturizer, Way Out Wax Candles, the environmentally friendly aromatherapy candles, some pottery from local potters, and there’s going to be more to come. Whether you need a wedding gift, a kitchen enthusiast gift, or you just want to treat yourself, our website has become the place to shop for Vermont items!
So how has business been going? Well, things have been going really well since our inception in 2004. Our internet orders are very strong along with our custom orders and our repeat customers. We’ve added some very prestigious customers to our portfolio and we’ll include some of the products and customers in future blog updates.
Signing off for now, please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or comments or if you are interested in ordering some of our products!
David Glickman, Owner
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