Dear Friends,

We have had some really mild weather for this time of the year here in the Green Mountains. The leaves are still on the trees and Vermont’s “shoulder” season – stick season seems weeks away at this point. Nevertheless, Grace and I will be heading down I-95 to Key West today.

I have a great team here in Vermont and I would like to take a moment to introduce my management team to you. We all meet each Monday for a check-in from the various departments. We talk about the accomplishments from the previous week, plans for the new week, obstacles encountered, things each is waiting for and any suggestions to stay true to our mission of measuring our success by the triple bottom line of people, planet and profit.

Emily Dolloff, who you know as one of my co-authors here in Kibbles & Bytes and Tech Tails is the General Manager of the company. I originally hired Emily as a shipper many years ago. Since then she has been active in just about every area of the company. She was a top salesperson, she managed our Waitsfield retail store, she managed service, she managed all of retail and now she even has the title of junior assistant IT in addition to managing marketing, HR and basically all aspects of the company.

Rob Amon was also hired as a shipper early on in Small Dog’s history. He moved rapidly to sales and then to managing sales. He was the leader of our corporate sales efforts and now manages that as part of his title of VP of Sales.

Art Hendrickson was our first employee and his tenure is just about as long as the 21 years the company has been in existence. Arty has managed our warehouse, shipping and inventory control for most of his career but he has also had a well-rounded experience in just about every aspect of the company’s operation.

Will Frascella is another Small Dog veteran. I often joke that he has worked for the company since he was nine. He came to us originally as a high school kid helping out after school. He is now in charge of Product Management and is our lead purchaser. He is also our go-to guy for new technology and has a key role in our efforts in home automation.

Hadley Markoski was originally hired as a developer. She has been responsible for vast “under the hood” improvements in our infrastructure and is the author of our Argos service app that has streamlined our service offering. Hadley is now the Director of our IT department which keeps this place running, our website up and operating and has a whole long list of priorities for the company. She has recently completely revamped our telephone system which, if you call, you will find to be a vast improvement.

Michael Duplessis also has had a long history with the company. Starting out in sales, Mike soon became our primary outside consultant, taking on the most complex needs of our customers. Holding advanced certifications from Apple, Mike stepped up and took on the additional responsibility of managing our service department last year in addition to managing our consulting efforts.

Patrick McCormack is the manager of our S. Burlington store. Our flagship store in S. Burlington is responsible for a significant percentage of our retail revenue. Patrick has hired and mentored a great staff in S. Burlington. Many of his employees have advanced to other positions in the company.

Raul de Arriz is our government solutions director and responsible for sales to US Government agencies as well as sate and local governments. Raul came to Small Dog Electronics with a mandate to develop the Government market and he has helped grow federal, state, and Mid-Atlantic sales for Small Dog Electronics by more than 1000% over the last three years. Under Raul, the Government effort has achieved excellent client satisfaction, as evidenced by continued and growing repeat business. With the assistance of Small Dog Electronics’s Outside Sales Team, Raul manages every aspect of client relationships, including face to face, phone, email, database mining, and agency-level events, as well as national government show presence, including Small Dog Electronics’s participation in multiple national government and Mid-Atlantic regional marketing opportunities.

You can see why I feel confident operating with this team even while I am being a snow-bird in Key West. We still have our weekly meetings and use FaceTime to allow me to participate remotely.

We are doing some renovations at our Waitsfield and S. Burlington store over the next couple of weeks. I think that you will like the changes and I hope that you can be patient with any inconveniences as we complete this work as quickly as possible.

This week’s Kibbles & Bytes exclusive features the amazing iPad Pro 9.7-inch 32GB Wi-Fi in gold. We are bundling this iPad Pro with AppleCare+ and the Apple Pencil. Normally this bundle would sell for about $800 but this week only for Kibbles & Bytes readers you can get this bundle for only $739.99!