VANCOUVER ISLAND WINDTALK

Hello all!

With the warm weather finally here we're starting to see an uptick in local interest and walk in traffic. With that in mind, and with the growth of the business lately, I wanted to provide you all an update.

First of all, Ocean Rodeo is your local brand. We're proud to be local to Vancouver Island and we're proud to support the local kite scene, including our long standing support for Windfest and the amazing crew that organize that event each year.

For years now we have welcomed walkin traffic to our 41 Cadillac Ave offices. However, any of you who have been here lately know the company is quickly outgrowing this space (we are also now at 43 Cadillac) and we've diversified our work force to include many more overseas or out of province employees. This makes direct support for your walk in queries harder to handle and can create an impression when you arrive of disorganization.

For the summer of 2019 and forward, we're proposing a new process for walk in customers. If you're reading this, please help spread the word.

Locals are always welcome! However, what we are asking is that you address 100% of your questions or queries on the phone or online with us through our online chat on our website or email (). Once addressed, we then kindly ask that you submit your order to us online or over the phone so that it can be packed and ready for you to pick up before you arrive.

By helping us with this request we will ensure less standing around by you when you're here, less confusion by the office staff we have on site and less distraction for our sales team who are normally focused on other tasks.

I want to emphasize, we're here to help and we're proud to be local! This is not meant to be a snub to any of you and when you come to pick your stuff up we will gladly take the time to say hi or to answer any specific and quick questions you have.

Many of you have grown with us over the last 19 years and we're so grateful for your support. In other cases, this will be your first summer on the water and we want to be there to see you first get up wind. There will always be local only discounts available, access to limited edition prototypes or off-demo gear and etc. Just call us up or email us for more info. Really, the only change we wish to implement is a simple request:

where possible, please pre-order your gear to ensure a quick and easy pick up

Looking forward to seeing you all on the water soon,

John Z ~ OR

Is there a certain threshold of beer whereby one can circumvent this process? 😄

nanmoo wrote:Is there a certain threshold of beer whereby one can circumvent this process? 😄

Beer is always a good ice breaker! Ha!

Honestly though, we are always happy to see locals at the office and to help them out but it just helps everyone save time and frustration if the order is placed ahead of time and is ready for pick up when they arrive!

Just an idea I'll throw out there (no idea on the feasibility or if it's worthwhile for you guys), but as someone who works mon-fri 8-430 (out on the peninsla) it would be awesome if you had even 1 day a month (or every second thursday or something) where the "store" was open for slightly later pickups.

I've managed to make alternate arrangements in the past, but it would certainly make life easier!

SmallWaveSteve wrote:Just an idea I'll throw out there (no idea on the feasibility or if it's worthwhile for you guys), but as someone who works mon-fri 8-430 (out on the peninsla) it would be awesome if you had even 1 day a month (or every second thursday or something) where the "store" was open for slightly later pickups.

I've managed to make alternate arrangements in the past, but it would certainly make life easier!

Hi Steve!

Thanks for that suggestion!

Currently, it's not super feasible for us to do that as the walk in traffic is so unscheduled, it's really not like an actual store electing to be open later into the evenings.

However, there are a number of solutions:
* Many nights, at least one of us is here late and can meet you if you have an order to pick up and if we know someone will be here for you
* Many weekends, at least one of us is headed to the lake and can easily throw an order in our truck for you if you're also headed up
* Local delivery by Fedex is incredibly quick and cheap. A kite, for example, is about $10 for us to have delivered so we can always just drop it in the post for you as we do with 99% of our other orders to our normal wholesale customers
* Many of us live close to the office and would be happy to take something home for you too if you prefer to pick up and wish to do so in the early evening.

Cheers!

JohnZ

Thanks John, that's what I've historically what I've done, but wasn't sure if I was being a nuisance