This week, we were visited by our BDC consultant, Dale Thibodeau, to review our first quarter financial performance & I visited our R&D team to review Trail Blazer’s potential new products. I evaluated sales rep’s performance across Canada and the United States while making changes in the North Eastern United States & the province of Quebec.

I’m very happy & excited to see an order being prepared for, Quebec Fishing Tackel in St-Hubert, not just because their a great store but also this is the first of many outdoor retailers that will be set up by Donald Turcotte.  Donald is the owner of Unique Agency & our newest sales rep for the outdoor retailers in Quebec.  I sent Donald a contract on July 18 & only two days latter, were setting up his first customer.  Donald has been a sales rep in the outdoor industry since 1999.  As a sales rep, he’s recognized has a “digger” to find and generate new accounts.  When you think that there’s no more customers to find … Donald will find some!!!

Two other new sales reps are Trey Smith from Woodstown, New Jersey & Mike Streets from Ephrata, Pennsylvania.  They were set up on July 16 (Mom & Dad’s anniversary) to represent Trail Blazer products in the North Eastern United States.  Trey was meeting with distributors this week for the first time and I look forward to their first account.

I hopped in my jeep (with the doors off) and drove to Windsor Nova Scotia, a whole 30 minutes away from Dartmouth, to meet with our valued development team.  We had a great meeting about three possible new products and with every meeting we have … I feel closer to the addition of a new Trail Blazer product.  Next week I will be reviewing the final drawings of one of the new products and will meet with our powder coater in Burnside “Dartmouth” soon after to finalize another new Trail Blazer product, being made in Nova Scotia.  Are you excited to learn what it is? … I am very excited to show you!!!

We’re always looking for ways to improve Trail Blazer products and we received a number of great suggestions for our Sawvivor Saw, suggestions from customers through our contact page & testimonials.  We started to build samples, with their suggestions, for testing this week and I would like to encourage you to keep your suggestions coming.

I’m proud & excited to congratulate the Trail Blazer team for achieving the best first quarter financial performance in the history of the company & turning our worst quarter, because spring sales have been delivered & fall deliveries have not began, into a great quarter with successful planing & budgeting.  I’m confident that profits will continue in the second quarter, traditionally our second best quarter because we will begin shipping product to outdoor retailers for the 2012 hunting season & re-stock hardware stores & garden centers for fall pruning (best time of the year to prune).  This year we will see a growth in sales with the continued growth in popularity for Trail Blazer’s New Reverse D-handle snow shovels … launched in 2011.

I would also like to congratulate Brent, Don & Paul from the production team for accepting the responsibility of managing our inventory levels, of raw material, previously managed by the operations manager, to ensure material is always on hand for maintaining stock of Trail Blazer products & allowing us to ship all orders on-time.

All the Best, Shawn Levangie