Dear Friends,

I was able to get out and ride this past weekend as the temps got into the 40s and 50s. The melting snow has revealed a bunch of work to do, but Hammerhead has found a few of his toys that were buried all winter—including his favorite soccer ball. He may be the only soccer-playing Bulldog. He loves the ball and I found a new way to distract him from his itching. I simply say “where’s your ball?” and he’ll look frantically for the ball until he finds it and dribbles it around the room, finally grabbing it in his huge mouth and jumping onto the couch.

I am asked frequently about the basis for Small Dog Electronics’ commitment to socially responsible business practices. We measure our success on the basis of our triple bottom line of people, planet and profit. When a company “incorporates” it “creates a body” (etymology courtesy of my 4 years of Latin in high school). That body has a greater footprint than any individual and with that goes a greater responsibility. We take each of these bottom lines very seriously with equal weight in judging how successful we are at doing our job as a business.

This is the new (old) way of doing business where businesses are contributing members of their communities rather than being a burden upon those communities. When profit becomes the only measure of success, when customers are just ways to generate more profit, and when greed replaces customer service and community, you end up with the mess that we have in our banking system and an out-of-control Wall Street that is costing us and our children so much money.

I have been active in the socially responsible business movement for some time and the question is frequently asked, “how will you know if you have succeeded?” The answer from a group of the original founders of Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility is “when we are irrelevant and all businesses are socially responsible.”

Back to the “profit” bottom line for a minute… 😉 there has never been a better time to buy an iMac than right now. We have a great supply of the recently discontinued iMacs at prices as low as $999.99 and they’re in stock. With our bundles of AppleCare and free shipping for as low as $1149.99, the iMac is the most versatile and powerful desktop personal computer available!