Dividends

It's been a good, busy month; hence my absence from blogland. I just returned from F10 Sales Meeting up in Squaw, which showed very well apart from the usual few glitches and China dropping the ball on a few samples, but for the most part the line is looking very good. It was a particularly important one for me because my co-worker, Erin, is going on maternity leave in January, and I am taking over the reigns of the insulated portion of our business for F11. It's a great opportunity not only to diversify my skill-set, but also to breath a little technical life into the higher price points of the category that I feel is lacking for a brand like The North Face. The boss seems to have faith in me, which is great to see, and I have some cool ideas for a few new styles that I feel will add significant additional growth to the business. More on that later.

In the mean time, I got my first quote in an industry trade publication called Footwear Insight this month. Not only that, but the entire last paragraph is dedicated to a piece that I provided for the author so many months ago that I had actually forgotten that I had even written it until one of the guys at work showed me. They also pulled a sentence out, wrote it in bold, and had my title printed next to it, which is extremely good exposure for me in the eyes of my peers. My S11 line is finally looking like the line that I wanted to create when I started 3 years ago, so work is a good place to be right now! I just hope that the previous "owner" of my category hasn't already done so much damage that the dealers are no longer interested in our product. Then again, even if they are, the new stuff is going to be pretty compelling so I'm not too worried about it. At the end of the day, great product rules the roost in Running Specialty.

On another topic, I'm going out to see the new lady this weekend! Jenn is going to join me in NYC because she has some friends running the marathon, and my buddy Winston is letting us stay at his place on the Upper West side of the Park. I'm pretty stoked because I haven't seen her in over two months and we've got to know each other a lot better since then. She's way too good for me, so I'm focusing pretty hard to not fuck it up! It should be a really fun weekend so I'll take some pics and be better about updating ya'll in the coming weeks.

Love you guys,