Happy New Year - Lower Shipping

First, every at ACK wishing you and your family a Happy New Year. Now on to something much more exciting. With the new year we have lowered our FREE shipping threshold to $39 from $50. We feel that it is important to pass along the lower costs we are paying for shipping to our customers and this is the easiest way to do so. Now all orders over $39 will be eligible for free shipping.

Free shipping does not include kayaks which have a surcharge associated with them due to the expense in wrapping and shipping them. We continue to have near the lowest Kayak shipping charges and none of the charges are hidden. They are $19 to a commercial address and $49 to a residential address. No wrapping fees, no hidden fees.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

--Peter

Last Minute Shopping

So, we all do it at one time or another, the dreaded last minute shopping. To be honest, I still haven't done any shopping at all.

But have no fear, our lack of planning on our personal level is not an issue when it comes to your last minute shopping. We have extended our shipping hours, we have brought in extra help to handle the longer hours and we are able to ship up until December 23rd and still get it there on time, in some cases by Ground shipping for free.

http://www.austinkayak.com/holidayshipping.php

Check out our shipping cut-offs and if you are too late, you can get a eGiftCard or we can help you get a picture of the present they will be getting after Christmas.

--Peter

Holiday Parties

Tis’ the season for holiday parties, and I have to tell you I have really enjoyed attending the different parties hosted by the various paddling clubs in Austin and Houston. It is always great to get out and shake babies, and kiss hands. Getting to talk about paddling trips, and swap hot fishing spots with fellow paddlers and anglers is a joy. Every time I get out I am reminded at what a vibrant paddling community we have here in Texas.

The party at St. Arnolds Brewery, hosted by the PACK group, was a great evening. I had a chance to meet so many new folks and enjoy some holiday beer. The Pack group is great organization and a champion of the Houston fishing community.

If you are looking to meet people who like to paddle I recommend getting involved in a paddling group or club of some kind. The meet-up.com groups we sponsor are ambassadors for the Texas kayaking community. If you are currently not part of a paddling club and can’t find one in your area I suggest starting one! It is an excellent way to meet new people and find an excuse to get up off the couch. If you are interested in learning about paddling clubs, or starting one, please feel free to contact us we are always looking to help paddling clubs get started.

Happy Holidays,
Chris

It's been a long time...

So my regular updates have fallen prey to the busy season that has come upon us. You all are keeping us quite busy with the orders.

I did want to share a couple of proud statistics. Currently we are running a 98% in stock rate on all items on our site. This means that if you order you will most likely (98% of the time) see it ship the same day. This goes for kayaks as well.

With the holiday season so many wonder when they can order and when it will arrive. Because we are so efficient and our inventory stock position is great we WILL ship out the same day if the order is received by 4pm. The exception are kayaks, these need to be ordered by 3pm.

So, you wonder what makes us so efficient. Well, when we moved into our new warehouse we laid it out perfect and from a systems standpoint the pick and process portion is faster than anything out there (that is not automated completely). From there it gets a bit slower with the boxing up, etc.

We continue to improve and become more efficient, just last week we started up a new pick process that (from my biased estimates) makes the picking 40% faster.

Needless to say, if you want a present by Christmas you still have plenty of time! :)

--Peter

Turkey Day!

So, everyone seems to always be wondering about ACK and how 'black Friday' is to us. Well, it is just a Friday, you see, we don't run 50% off some inferior item in hopes to draw you in to buy other stuff. While we would love to have all that foot traffic we are stuck on the desire to provide customer service and that means the lower the foot traffic the better the experience. Of course we see the holiday buying and if you haven't already checked out the Holiday Buyer's Guide then what in the world are you doing reading this blog? It is a list of all the products that the people at ACK feel you should buy your loved ones, but don't get caught up in it too much, you can get them anything they want, it is just a Guide.

So as you sit at the table on Thursday and gorge on a meal that took 6 hours to cook and roughly

So crazy stats:

• The average meal for 10 costs $44.61 (not sure about this one, I think I spent that on pie alone).
• 46 Million Turkeys will be eaten...if you do the math that means you will roughly eat 16% of the turkey
• It takes roughly 13 minutes for me to eat the equivelent of 6 regular meals
• Within 23 minutes of gorging I will say "why did I eat so much"

What does this have to do about kayaking, well, nothing....I am breaking my own rules.

--Peter

Shipping Charges - GONE!

I alluded to something coming soon as we have seen dramatic decreases in the surcharges that we are charged when we ship kayaks. As our continued effort to pass along savings to our customers we are passing this along by offering FREE SHIPPING on kayaks. There is fine print, as there always is. We are offering this to Commercial addresses only, why you ask? Well, there are major benefits to having a shipment go to a commercial address that helps everyone out. Hobie Kayaks are also excluded.

--Peter

Gasoline...DROP!

Has anyone noticed that the price of gasoline has been dropping like a rock? I paid $1.82 last Sunday on my drive back from Houston.

I know, I said that we would not discuss anything that isn't about kayaking here, but, this is about kayaking. With the drop in oil prices this has started to translate into lower fuel surcharges we get passed along when we ship a kayak.

Let me put this into perspective, at the height of the $140 oil we were seeing 35% fuel surcharges on all shipments. The latest surcharge, as reported by our largest shipping company is 20%.

Okay, still wondering what these means to you? This means that we are shipping kayaks at 15% less in cost than we were just this summer. I know, I know, the economy stinks, no one wants to do anything, you may be losing your job...yadda yadda yadda....this is a fear we all have. However, as a favorite commentator says all the time, these are mustard seeds and if you get enough mustard seeds you get mustard.

Still not following? That is intended, I don't blog and tell you everything all at once, instead I give you tid-bits of knowledge, but if you follow this blog and you follow the logic here you will quickly realize that the mustard seed here will benefit you directly very soon!

Get out and paddle, no one can take the river away from you and you will forget about all the junk in the world, at least for a minute or two!

--Peter