Bel Chere

It's been a while since my last post. We have been on the grind to get this new website up and running. Lately, I have been editing all the "meta data" which is what google uses to rank websites. Google doesn't publish the criteria for rankings so everyone has to sort of figure out on their own what they might be looking for. There are programs to research popular google searches so we have an idea of what to use as our keywords. For instance, if you are looking for a bike rack you might type in a search engine "bike rack." But someone else might type in "bike racks." Even though the only difference is the "s" at the end, google sees these two searches as completely different. Some of our products rank very high on google and show up on the first page. We have a lot of products so it has taken a while to edit all of them.

With only a week and a half left, we are on the verge of finishing the new website. It has been interesting to see all that goes into it and I feel like I have learned a lot. Google Analytics is another program I have recently learned about. It gathers up all the data and information you could think of in regards to your website. It tracks who comes to our site, how long they stay there, what pages they look, and even how they found the site. This is helpful because you can change where you invest your time and energy. You might find out that people are finding out about your site due to twitter, therefore you might consider increasing your social media budget.

Within the next week or so we are going to watch a sales presentation which should be very informative. I am excited to see how that will go. Our company is also in the process of hiring a new employee to help with the accounting among other things. It is cool to see how this small business is expanding and how they go about their business.

On a lighter note, the largest free music festival in the country is this weekend in Asheville. Bel Chere is an annual festival that sees about 350,000 people with many bands that play in various places downtown. If you are anywhere near Asheville this weekend, you should come check it out.

Hula Hula

Well the other half of the tree finally fell. This time on our neighbors car, but once again no damage! Pretty crazy. Yesterday I went downtown and stumbled across what must have been a hula hoop festival. In the same park where they have the drum circle every Friday, the place was packed with people young and old hula hooping. We were picking up supplies for my roommates birthday party. In addition to grilling and a bonfire, there was also live music. One of my roommate's friends explained the Mayan calendar to me and it turns out I am a Yellow Magnetic Warrior (look it up to learn more).

Work is still going well. I am doing some more complicated work involving updating our website. I've been using a lot of photoshop to get higher resolution images on our site. Our social media is growing slowly but surely. If you have a twitter profile you should follow us or like us on facebook! On Friday we are getting a huge shipment of a lot of products that have been on back order for some time now. It will be nice to have all those orders finally processed and hopefully the phones will stop ringing off the hook.

Bruce and Leroy

This past week has been a lot of fun and very interesting to say the least. If you've been following my blog then you should already know that a tree fell on our house last week. Well we called the city, the power company, and everyone else we could think of to get this tree off our roof and the power lines. No one seemed to care that a tree was hanging on our powerlines, except......Bruce. Bruce is a young man that apparently rides around town on his bicycle with a chain saw on his back. As we were sitting on our front porch admiring half the view we once had, Bruce strolled up and asked if we wanted him to cut down the tree for us. I guess some things in life are free because Bruce didn't ask for a penny.

On Wednesday, we went to a Wiz Khalifa concert, went to a Thirsty Thursday baseball game (the Tourists won), Downtown After 5 was Friday, I played golf at Biltmore Forests on Saturday, and Sunday we went to another baseball game and then to the pool.

As for Leroy, his story is almost as crazy as Bruce's. Leroy is a small, colorful Beagle mix that followed some of my roommates home one night. They thought it would be a good idea to bring him inside and give him some sandwich meat (I think it was my ham). Ever since then, Leroy (he also goes by Toby, Schnappsie, and simply Dog) has been hanging out, eating, and sleeping in our house. Luckily, he is very well trained and behaves himself nicely, however his excessive scratching worries me that he has fleas (my sister can testify as to how annoying that can be). If no one answers our Craig's list or newspaper ad we will very likely be taking care of him until the end of the summer.

Work has been steadily picking up. I have the added responsibility of photoshopping old pictures and editing product information on our new website. Although it has been somewhat stressful because we are out of stock of a lot of our products.

Updates about Bruce, Leroy, and of course my internship will be posted shortly.

Tiiimmmmmmbbeerrrrrrrrr!

A tree just fell on my house. I haven't seen the damage first hand but I imagine a tree on the house can't be good.

Same ol' same ol'

Working from 8-5 everyday has begun taking a toll on me. I don't know how you adults do it. I'm still tweeking my wikipedia pages and still broadcasting our products on the web through social media. I'm sure by the end of the week they'll have me working on something new.

This weekend was a lot of fun. Some friends from wake paid me a visit on their way to Charlotte for a concert. Yesterday we spent the afternoon at a little waterfall about 15 minutes from our house. We had to hike through a few thorns but it was well worth it. We jumped off rocks from 15-25 feet into some pretty "refreshing" water. There was a little nook between the rocks and the waterfall that left about 2 inches of space between your face and the rushing water, pretty awesome. There was also a natural water slide. This crazy guy showed up and did backflips off the rocks, and then climbed to the top of this rock, and jumped over a fallen tree from about 50 feet up. After he jumped he told us about how his brother hit his head on a rock inducing a seizure from the same jump. Smart fellow.

Great Success

Well I finally finished the Wikipedia article. You can check it out at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melon_Bicycles. It still needs some minor adjustments, but it's a good start. I'm still in a battle with some Wikipedia geek that wants to take it down cause he thinks it's advertising. We just started a Twitter page as well (http://twitter.com/LakelandGear), which has grown exponentially from 1 follower to 9 followers in just one day! I'm hoping for double digits by the end of the week. We also have a Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/LakelandGear/106564942722521?v=photos#!/pages/LakelandGear/106564942722521?v=wall). It is really interesting to see how your audience grows by connecting with other people.

I am also trying to come up with a catchy slogan for Lakeland Gear. Here are some of my favorites (keep in mind I'm trying to reach out to the family camping people):

Connect. Explore. Camp.

If Lewis and Clark had Lakeland, they wouldn't have needed Sacajawea.

Good, better, best...Lakeland.

Camp luxuriously.

No trail is off limits.

If luxury and rugged had a baby, we'd be it.

PackRight. CampRight. Live Right.

Live life the lakeland way.

Geared for adventure.

If you have any favorites or ideas let me know.

I've come to the conclusion that Asheville citizens love Honda Elements more than hybrid cars. Everywhere I look there is a box car. I also started using an organic mechanical pencil at work, so I'm getting greener and greener everyday. The pencil is 76% recycled material, and it's actually green in color too. What will they think of next...

Land of Organic Snow Cones

Asheville is both an amazing and very interesting city. There is always something to do. This weekend my roommates and I went to "Downtown After 5" which consists of live music in the streets of downtown. There are tents set up with food and drinks (all organic mind you) run completely by volunteers. A huge solar panel was set up beside the stage which was supplying the power even though it was pretty cloudy. Early Saturday morning I went to a "street fest" on Montford which is only one street over from my house. There was more food and more drinks and even vendors selling all sorts of stuff. This is where we encountered the organic snow cones. There were hula-hoopers, funnel cakes, lemonade, face painters, and some guy had an enormous parrot who was chilling in his yard. I played golf on Sunday with my roommate at a really nice public course. We saw a ton of wildlife: a snake, a turkey, an otter, and either a fox or a racoon (it was a long ways away). Yesterday I played basketball in the park near our house. One goal was regulation and the other was 8 feet or so, which made for an interesting game. I'm trying to blend in with the culture more so I lit a candle in my room, but my roommate pointed out that it was a Glade which is obviously a huge corporation and probably not organic. One of my roommates just started getting dreadlocks so I'm thinking that's an option too (once my hair gets a little longer). I don't think I'm going to get a tatoo but I don't want to be close-minded...

Work has been good. We finished packing bikes the other day so now I'm working on a Wikipedia page for the company. It's tougher than I thought it would be but I feel a break through coming soon. My first attempt was deleted literally within 2 minutes of posting because there was too much advertising. Later in the week I'll have to contact all the retailers that sell our products and make sure they are editing their websites correctly. If not, then I'll have to be more forceful to make them comply. I recently received the nickname "The Hammer" although I would have preferred "The Enforcer."

First Day

My first day at Rightline Gear was smooth and stress free. I am working with one other Wake Forest student, Jeff Young, and 5 other employees that have been very welcoming. We got a tour of the facilities and a run down of all their operations. Rightline Gear is a small, independent distributor of camping supplies. Their main products are Truck Tents (which are tents that hook up to the truck bed), car top carriers (which store whatever you feel like storing), and other accessories. The owner of Rightline also owns Melon Bicycles which are really cool folding bikes. So far my responsibilities have been contacting retailers that buy our products. I have to make sure that they are in compliance with Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) and that their pictures and information about our products are up to date. I have been told that down the line I will be shooting videos of Rightline products and be working in the social media world.

Stay tuned for more...