Dear Friends,

It was a white Christmas here in Vermont although there are so many micro climates here that the snow and ice varied widely. There was a major ice storm this week, but at my house on Prickly Mountain we didn’t get any ice. When I drove up to Burlington to the store, however, it was a different story by the time I went over the Duxbury Gap to Waterbury. There, the trees were covered with ice and glistened in the sunlight. That held true all the way north to Burlington where ice encased trees and cars!

Our holiday giving program was very successful this year as we raised about $10,000 for the Vermont Foodbank and lesser amounts for the Manchester Animal Shelter in Manchester, NH and the SPCA down in Key West. It was definitely an iPad Christmas as we outfitted a bunch of people with new iPads, but we also see some growth in the Mac side of the business as well, with sales of the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro with Retina display keeping the team busy. All of our holiday specials run until the end of the month so there is still time to take advantage of the specials and bundles that we are offering.

It is always fun to take Hammerhead up to the store in S. Burlington. He works the floor like a pro, greeting every customer that comes in with a wag of the tail and making the kids and adults smile as he sprawls on the floor like a bulldog-skin rug. I think he might be our best sales asset as invariably customers smile and scratch his back before talking to the human sales folks.