And the number of the count shall be......

That's right, it is that time of year again.....inventory countin' time! I guess the only thing good about the current counting is the relative ease versus several years ago. Not that many years ago, we would count everything and write it out long hand on pieces of notebook paper. Each line would be entered into a spread sheet with columns for description and quantity. Then it was off to the invoices, catalogs and memory bank to assign costs to each item. It was rough when different distributors had different prices for the same item and we had no way to tell who sold us a particular Shimano Deore XT derailleur. I would manage to spread out this misery for a couple of weeks to come up with a number that was in the ballpark at best. Fast forward to today with each item being tracked on the computer. It is just a matter of calling up the entire inventory, printing it off and comparing the "should have" to the "do have" number. Once the counts are corrected, we get a nice exact (and accurate) inventory amount. All of this can be done in a day or two which is nice. The bad part is having to reconcile the counts. Every time the actual count differs from the computer count, we have to figure out why. Not fun. So if you call us this week and we seem to be grumpy, now you know why!

On another note, I talked to Grab On today about some original style MTN-1 grips. This grip has been around forever and has always been a popular item. The grip is still available but they are using a lower density foam to keep the costs down. The current foam is an 18-24 pound foam while the originals used a 46 pound foam. This made the original grips much firmer plus longer lasting. They are willing to make us a run of the grips using the original weight foam. There seems to be a decent amount of interest in the project, so we will likely order them in the next week and were told to expect a 3-4 week turnaround. So if you like a nice firm grip or are looking for a grip that looks appropriate on your vintage bike, give us a shout in a month or so.