Part of running a small business and being mostly a one man show means I have to wear lots of hats. One of them is the accounting hat which I don’t like to wear. I usually leave it buried deep in some dark closet most of the year and pull it out a few times to work some magic. Each year I have to go through all of the years records and prep them for my accountant whom I have been working with for nearly 9 years. It’s flat out one of the most painful things I have to deal with every year. Here it is, nearly June and I still have not done LAST years taxes. I guess I should pay someone to do it because I just hate it. Lesson learned. Luckily I use digital checks and credit cards for nearly everything related to the business so the paper trail is easy to track at the end of the year.

So, back to the grind I go. All I need to finish my paper trail is my Visa and Mastercard charges for the year and I will be sending this mess of numbers to my accountant in California. What a guy.

We just got back from a great 5 day weekend at the MINI’s on the Dragon gathering near the famous and twisty road that crosses the TN and NC border. On our way into Fontana Village where the event was held we were stopped by flashing lights near a nasty turn where a bike and rider had gone down in a big way. The rider was okay, save a seemingly busted collar bone or something. The bike was basically road debris. Fork broken in two places, chassis all twisted and mangled and enough plastic strewn around the road to cause trouble. We were the first in the lineup and talked with police that were busy keeping the screaming bikes that were buzzing up the mountain road stopped in time to not rear end us. On the other side was a road hazard cleanup truck dealing with oil and gas spills from the wreckage. We were glad to see no one was seriously injured as we learned that just 2 days earlier a biker had a fatal crash as is common in the area.

As we were allowed to move on the mood improved as we saw the dozens of MINI’s that spotted the road and when we finally reached the resort were welcomed by  hundreds of MINI’s parked around the area at the various cabins and houses. We quickly unloaded and setup our display which took about 3 people 4 hours. The next morning we saw a constant stream of MINI owners that seemed to enjoy looking at all the fun stuff we had brought. This year we brought more display fixtures to make room for the new stuff like Piloti Shoes and Griots Garage products which were quite popular. It was nice to see familiar faces and meet some of the people that had been loyal customers over the years as well as many new faces that we are sure will continue to shop with us.

Over the next three days we (my wife Andrea, my father in law Norm and myself) kept the booth rolling. As we were under a larger group tent we did not have to worry about the rain and wind as we had in years past which was a big relief. We also enjoyed “Terry”, the nigh security guy who watched our goods at night so we could relax and not have to break down every night which was a nice surprise. THANKS Mark from NAM and Fontana for arranging this!

The saddest thing of the weekend for me was that my MINI was parked from Wednesday night until Sunday morning when we boxed up everything and drove away! What a shame, to be in one on the nicest parts of the world and have access to some of the best driving roads in the planet. Having our 3 kids there made the evenings less about socializing and more about family, which is good. My wifes mother was in from Knoxville and did a great job at keeping the kids entertained during the days and made some good food so we could relax in the evenings.

All in all it was a great event and we plan on doing it again next year, only we hope to be a few hours closer when we move to Charlotte. The 8-9 hour drive from Columbus Ohio is not that enjoyable….

After way too many months of having the “pull to inflate” stickers on the site WITHOUT a picture I found about 10 minutes when the phone was not ringing to shoot them and add them to the site. Check them out:

and

For some reason, not having a picture had not stopped people from buying it, which is quite odd. Sorry for making everyone wait this long. The good news is that out of the 200 something sold we have NOT had one complaint about the design, scale, color, quality or anything!

Fill those ugly holes in your door panel of your MINI Cooper with these Door Insert Caps in both Union Jack and Checkered flag. Now available at OutMotoring.com.

They are the perfect way to cover up those unsightly holes around the perimeter of your MINI’s oval shaped interior door panel….did I mention they ship for free via USPS?

If you’re in need of a cool keychain for your MINI Cooper Key, check out these new designs that I designed…

This one is called the “punchout“:

and this is called …..you’ll never guess:

I have a thing for chairs. I don’t dare count how many I have in my house because it’s overwhelming. While I have the normal dining chairs and such I have a collection of ‘design’ chairs that are somewhere between sculpture and art. I use them around the house but most people look at them as more of decoration than a useful object. One of my favorites is by a designer named Konstantin Grcic. The ChairONE is one of the coolest chairs I have ever laid eyes. Most may not share my opinion…I like because it looks so much like the Stealth Bomber with the planar surfaces that look uncomfortable to sit on yet in reality is quite comfortable….

One of my other favorites is this Eames LCW (I have it Walnut):

Somehow I manage to keep growing my chair collection even though I don’t recall ever having enough people in the house to actually utilize them….my wife thinks they may need to end up at the office which would not be the end of the world…..

I can’t believe I only have a handful of days to get ready for the Tail of the Dragon event the first week in May….it is quite a lot of work to get prepped. Point of purchase displays, lighting, signage, transportation, setup, running the booth, bringing the product, food, etc. etc….

I wish I could just run a virtual store down there and have everything magically appear in the customers hands so I could hang out more and get to know the people that have supported us over the last 5 years. That is my main purpose for going down to the event but everyone really enjoys having us there and love to check out the products we bring. It is the only event we do each year but may consider doing AMVIV (Biggest West Coast event held in Vegas) at some point, but it is quite a lot more work to get everything to Vegas vs driving 7 hours down to Tennessee from our location in Ohio. When we relocate to Charlotte (as soon as our house sells) we will be just a short drive from Fontana Village and it will that much easier to do the event. As of now, my wife and our 3 kids will be heading down for the 4 day event and have her parents watching the kids at our cabin which makes it a lot more enjoyable. Our kids love going down to the event and with both our families being in Knoxville, it is an easy trip for them to pop over and visit us while we’re down there.

I did not know what to think when Alta released the latest version of some of their exhaust systems and intercoolers in the matte black finish which they have tagged as “stealth”. It seems to be pretty cool but it also looks a bit unfinished with the matte finish and all but it also has this sort of mean, raw look to it that is pretty hip. Trendy, maybe. A fad? Most likely. But hey, it looks nice under the right circumstances so I decided to start selling it as an option to the polished finish that Alta also makes.

Over the last few months I have designed a few tshirts that seem to be VERY popular. So much so I find myself running over to the local screenprinters shop to drop off a load of t-shirts about once a week and with it comes a bill for printing shirts and the hassle of the minimum order requirements, 1 week order prep time and all that. So, I thought I would try to bring that process in-house and bought a Heat Transfer press (on ebay for super cheap) and will start doing shirts in lower quantities so we can offer more designs. I would rather have 10 designs and have 3 of each size in stock than 3 designs and 10 of each size sitting in stock if you know what I mean. It’s a basic retailing concept called Wide and Shallow VS Shallow and Deep…I have typically preferred to run a Wide and Shallow especially with how quickly I can generally get restocked on the things we sell (in most cases 1-5 days on any given item). There are a few items that I stock hundreds and hundreds and some I stock dozens and dozens while others maybe 1-2 at a time….so anyways, having the capability to prints shirts at will and keep a few in backstock will be nice.

To top it off the owner of the company a few doors down that does nearly all of the label and decorative application sourcing for Victorias Secret, Abercrombie, Under Armour and a few other major retailers that are headquartered within a few miles of the OutMotoring World HQ is a good friend. Chris also happens to have patents on some of the most widely used innovative screen printing techniques and is a all around good guy who has all the connections one could image with Chinese printers, label makers, etc. So, he is the one that helps get our OutMotoring keychains made for us at a extremely good cost and is also helping get heat transfers printed. This will allow us me to design and offer about 6-10 new shirts and print them as needed and keep our inventory investment down while offering new and fresh designs.

And no, that shirt in the heat press below will not be one of the new ‘fresh’ designs…

I was thinking about how much money I pay the local sign shop to do stuff like make our hood stripes and stickers and the thought came to me to just start doing it in-house so I don’t have to wait 3-5 days for new stripes when I’m out of stock. Plus, we have added so many new stickers and other stuff that I thought it would be nice to have a vinyl cutter. So, I found a great deal on Craigslist and went to buy it this evening with my kids and wife in our trusty Mazda MINI van. It’s a pretty cool plotter style cutter that I hope will be put to good use. You gotta love Craigslist. This thing was a steal and came with a computer (running cough, cough, windows 95) but has the print software as part of the CorelDraw software that is loaded onto it well. I figure it will be paid for in about 3 months of hood stripes that we typically sell.