Dear Friends,

I was out in Cupertino last week for meetings at Apple headquarters. As Kali reported last week in Kibbles, we created a video that is now up on YouTube that introduces Small Dog Electronics.

View the high-res version here.

It is always exciting to be on the Apple campus, and this time — more than ever — I have seen a real beehive of activity. I stayed at a hotel just across the road from Apple and I could see the night lights burning over at One Infinity Loop. One of the hidden stories of Apple’s success is how they have managed for their growth. It is not an easy task to grow a company from $5 billion in sales to over $100 billion in sales, and we have often talked about this part of Apple’s success.

However, the harder task is managing for the growth in sales, growth in sheer number of employees, the growth in the numbers of components that need to be coordinated in the supply chain, and the growth in customers. Amazingly, Apple still maintains the highest marks for both customer satisfaction and technical support despite this enormous growth. It is a real testament to Tim Cook and his management team that Apple has kept up with this rapid growth as well as they have.

We know this ourselves at Small Dog Electronics. Our growth has not been quite as spectacular as Apple’s, but we have doubled our sales in the last few years. In what seems like a blink of an eye to me, we have expanded our staff from 20 Small Doggers to over 70 currently. Our own Tim Cook is Hapy, who designs our systems and procedures and as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operational Officer, has his finger on the pulse of our growth. Hapy’s real title here is “Information Retrieval” (named in jest after the bureaucracy in the cult classic movie Brazil), and the hub of the company is right at Hapy’s desk.

While Hapy manages from that hub, the rest of our management team is on their game managing our business: Rebecca Kraemer manages our IT and Consulting business (and serves as my co-host on our weekly radio show, Small Dog Speaks!), Art Hendrickson manages our inventory control and warehouse operations and is also our go-to guy on buildings and grounds, Jen Mayer is our district manager and has responsibility for our expanding retail operations, Rob Amon is our corporate sales guru but also has the added title of Company Jester, and Dawn D’Angelillo is not only our marketing director but also manages our retail merchandising and PR.

We have a pair of Jasons, too: Jason Wu manages our Hammerhead/Chill Pill division and Jason Lewantowicz manages our services division and is the guy who makes sure your Mac or iPhone gets repaired right the first time. Matt Curran is our assistant controller and Hapy’s right hand man, and Kerry Westhelle — in addition to being my awesome assistant — manages our HR functions. I couldn’t be prouder of my management team here at Small Dog!