steve and all,
Greetings from Colorado Springs. Spent Thursday with Cameron Yost and Co. It was an interesting day for learning. The building is divided into an office and warehouse area. The guys in the warehouse of which there were 2,(Phillip and Bob), were making and assembling Doublecase products for shippment as I watched. The output from these 2 guys per day would be about 80 or so cases. If additional output was required some efficiency in assembly would be produced and 3 people would be able to make about almost double the amount by reducing assembly steps per person. Product IS being shipped out of the door. I took some special interest in the Dell cases and the way the specific foam cutouts were there for the exact fitting of the laptops and accessories in the case. Also I found interesting that now that Doublecase doesn't have to order product in large quantity it makes for less required space in the warehouse and an easier way to get to be a JIT shipper, by keeping inventories down and ordering from their suppliers in smaller batch orders its a better way to control costs. As far as Ingram Micro, Bany product is in their warehouses at this time. Cameron told me that today he is undergoing some training with Ingram to improve upon the synergy between Ingram's ordering and information areas in their databases and the ability of updating that information by BANY for their product line. There are still some bugs to be worked out, but that goes with any new vendor in their system, the important thing is that BANY is in their system. As far as Patriot, I did see some of the ideas for products that were discussed by Cameron in the last CC, but as of now still nothing has been resolved by the Patriot in order to procede with any production of products, so were still on the back burner there. Dell is something that everyone is excited about here. The opportunities of this relationship are enormous for BANY. There is still some finetuning to get the whole show on the road and have BANY on all of the Dell websites and the private sites also, but its being worked on. The important thing that will get some large Dell sales going has been accomplished by laying the groundwork with Ingram. BANY is expecting the Desktop V contract to have some good sales coming in the later(sept) part of the year and go on from there. Cameron told me that the summer months are slow months in his industry and in the fall things start to pickup. All in all I found him to be very sincere in his outlook and feelings for his company and products. I asked him to show me how good the case was and he put his laptop in his Doublecase, threw it on the floor and started to jump up and down on the case. It still worked after he took it out, so I know that we have some good quality products here, got a good laugh out of watching him jump on the case though. He showed me how he got involved with Doublecase back in 91 with a case that was meant to carry around Apple computers. When the laptop first came out then the idea was expanded to that line and went from there. He told me about the ups and downs of the business over the years. Doing business with some mailorder catolouges and other retailers was very frustrating in that a lot of dough had to be spent in advertising and promotional costs that didn't support enough product sales. On a retailers shelf, customers would open up the shipping carton and the procede to start plucking out the foam inserts thereby ruining the product for future sale without rework from BANY and that involved cost of sending the stuff back and all of the associated paper trail of credit and returns for billing purposes. The internet is the venue of choice for the future. Cameron wants to tie in a lot of sales in this arena. The cost basis for these sales is substancially lower than putting product out on the retalers shelves, it doesn't mean that product won't be sold in stores, but the focus will be on line. With Dell's websites to be implemented and the other relationships established with companies like Anything PC as resellers, the power of the net can be brought to bear on generating interest and sales of the companies product lines. Orders on line can be fullfilled in a rapid manner from Ingram and others and the lead time to get product out is cut down dramatically. Everyone knows how internet usage is growing and at what pace, by getting a good foothold in this area the benefits can be realized over time. In summation and IMHO, I liked what I have seen here. Both with the product lines and with the folks at the company. Its for real, not an office with a computer,fax and phone such as some of the OTCBB companies can be. The company has products, not vaporware. IMHO the company is poised for some substancial growth over the next year with the vision of management that I am confident in as an investor in BANY.
Dave
PS: Don't mind the spelling errrors, I thing the altitude is getting me. |
