Dear Friends,

It is snowing as I look out the window and my road is barely passable as we have one of the latest springs in my memory. There are crocuses peaking up as I look out my kitchen window and I am starting to see buds on the trees, but that white stuff falling from the sky just isn’t conducive to spring joy. It won’t be long though until the Green Mountains will be green again.

My trip to China was a great adventure. I went with my friend and colleague, Jason Wu and we spent three long days walking the floors of the China Sources Fair and the Hong Kong Electronics Fair, and then had appointments in Shenzhen and Dongguan to visit factories. We also had our, now traditional, dinner with our friends from out west, Simple Mac, who were also sourcing products for their stores.

The flight out was long, but my Delta flight across the USA had WiFi on board and I was able to surf, instant message and work all the way—that is so handy. The flight from LA to China left at 1:30AM so I tried to get some sleep but it’s never easy on a plane. Fortunately, when I arrived in Hong Kong at 9AM they had my hotel room ready so I was able to sleep until dinner and mostly recover from jet lag.

You will soon see some of the new products we discovered, it is really like looking for a needle in a haystack as we walked the hundreds of booths at the shows. One reason we always pick a few companies to go visit in the mainland is that often times, you cannot get the real flavor of a company until you visit its factory. We visited one potential speaker manufacturer, and as they showed us the assembly line we noticed the lack of quality control stations which we had seen at other factories. In another factory, we were concerned about the ventilation for the workers gluing leather pieces together. We do these examinations to assure ourselves that the working conditions are safe for the employees and that we are dealing with responsible vendors. Then we double check with our guy in China, Simon Liao, who checks on our production, interfaces with the factories and does final quality control.

The big news this week is Apple’s outstanding financial results with the largest year over year growth of any quarter ever at over 83%. I have the details for you below.