Dear Friends,

It’s Halloween and I’m getting tired of wearing my WWF costume, but FanTail is looking good as my corner girl with her hoodie and water bottle. Hammerhead came as a snowshoer but I had a hard time keeping the shoes on him. Everyone had great costumes – be sure to check them out on our website.

I drove down to Brattleboro, Vermont for the annual fall conference of Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility. It was great to network with like-minded business folks and the drive down was spectacular (once the sun came up!). The foliage is still in full peak down in the southern part of the state while we are fully into stick season here in the Green Mountains. The keynote speaker, Mary Powell, is the CEO of Green Mountain Power, the second largest utility in our state. She gave a great presentation on how she changed the culture at GMP from typical corporate excess to a socially responsible business. While Mary and I disagree on the role of nuclear energy, it is clear that she understands that socially responsible business practices can lead to a much stronger triple bottom line: economic, social and environmental. I was having a friendly chat with Mary when she got really serious and said she had a complaint about our store. I was worried at first, but then she told me that her husband had come into the store and left with one of the new MacBooks and was a very happy customer.

I want to give a shout-out to Hannah Parfitt who is leaving Small Dog Electronics to pursue other interests. Hannah has been our S. Burlington store manager for the past two years and with only an idea in her head, took an empty space, hired the most awesome retail team in the business and created an award-winning retail store in Burlington. We are going to miss Hannah, and I know that I will be forever grateful for her contributions to Small Dog Electronics and for her unfailing commitment to the best customer service while always striving to maintain the company’s social mission. Thank you Hannah.