Up until today, we’ve been charging people who drop off CRTs or TVs $15-20 depending on the size of the TV, because that’s what we’re charged to recycle them.

Today, the Elkhart County Solid Waste District board approved a partnership with RedPost where, if you’re an Elkhart County resident, you no longer have to pay to drop off your end-of-life electronics. The ECSWD is picking up the tab for you, just like they do at their once-a-month drop off, except now you can drop things off Mon-Fri, 9-5.

We’ve had a lot of people bring something to us, learn of the fee, and take it back with them (sometimes in a huff) to throw in the dumpster. This partnership should help prevent that. Especially with the coming switch to digital TV in 2009, there’s a lot of waste in the pipeline…

Today was a crappy day, or at least, if you measure your day by how happy your customers are, it was a crappy day. I had two issues, one in on the East Coast and one on the West Coast, that were not resolved successfully. I had two customers who were not happy. A couple thoughts:

• I wish I had a magic flying machine (or could afford a NetJets share). I could have started my day in the East, troubleshot and got things working, flown to the West (a mere 5 hour flight, only 2 hours if you account for the time change) and got things working there. Of course, this is not possible.
• I don’t want to do hardware. I’ve been searching for about 6 months for a good hardware vendor. I have some good leads…nothing solid yet. No one makes what we want at the price we want. There’s hardware priced between $1,100-1,500 that’s comparable to what we make…but looks like crap. Not a good solution, too expensive anyways.
• Selling a Long Tail solution means that you have to cut out the middle man…which means no value-added reseller. Which means, when stuff goes wrong, you’re in the Midwest. Not with your customer. As I’ve said before, a good VAR does add value. Like being on call and an hour away. That’s worth something.
• I enjoy “mistakes” and “failures” — our software and hardware are labeled “beta,” which let us get away with some stuff, for one, and two, as long as you don’t repeat the same “mistakes” and “failures” they were just lessons learned the hard way. What I take personally is unhappy, frustrated, disappointed customers. I hate that.

On a more positive note, our new red frames looks sweet. I’ll be installing one tomorrow at The Electric Brew as part of our Goshen neighborhood:

This is from AKA.tv (free reg. required),  a UK-based digital signage news site:

Smart Solar, the solar product specialist, has introduced a new digitally enabled point of sale unit for garden centres. The retail display, which shows both their outdoor solar powered lighting and solar aquatic products, incorporates a digital screen that enables customers to retrieve operational details on the specific products placed within the fixture.

There’s a definite market for small, inobtrusive, signs. They’re cheaper, easier to build into display units…and, well, less obtrusive. This is the space where digital signage is poised to take off. At least, I think it is. At least, that’s the belief RedPost is based upon.

Hard to see much from the photo.

Smart Solar’s coolest product, IMHO, is their “Brick Light Drive Way Illumination” — it’s a brick with built-in solar panels and lights that lights up at night. You just replace your normal, low-tech bricks with it. Now that’s sweet. Not sure how much it costs.

Most of the time, we as human beings decide things based on intuition or feeling…not numbers or facts. It’s just how we operate. RedPost is based in Elkhart County, a heavily manufacturing-based county that has had around 5% unemployment for the past 30 years, despite NAFTA, globalization, and Wal-mart. A lot of what Elkhart County manufactures is RVs and mobile homes — but the spin-off industries are, in my opinion (not supported by any numbers I can find), what’s driving growth, innovation, and prosperity. RVs are essentially assemblers (although some are quite innovative) — much of the burden for innovation and for competing with China falls on the suppliers. China can’t ship RVs to the U.S. cost-effectively (yet?) but they can ship all kinds of RV parts.

Anyways, some interesting data here that I found in a file as I was cleaning up my computer (and physical) desktop today — this is a list of the top 20 Counties in Indiana, sorted by total payroll for the County:

A couple observations (based on the data, not emotion):

• Elkhart County’s total payroll is $1.7 billion (that’s BILLION)…holy cow! That’s huge.
• We’ve 4th in the state with the 6th largest population in the state.
• I have a chip on my shoulder about St. Joseph County, the county to our west, mainly because the people who live and work in St. Joe’s mainly services-based economy (outside of the Hummer plant, of course), look down their noses at lowly Elkhart County. All we do over here is produce RVs and mobile homes…and there are lots of Amish here. I don’t know, I don’t quite understand it, but there’s a definite disdain for us over here, even though more people commute daily from St. Joe to Elkhart, Elkhart County is growing rapidly while St. Joe is stagnating (as far as population), and, according to the above data, our total payroll is bigger with roughly 75,000 fewer people

Here are results from the recent democratic presidential primary in Indiana for the top 20 counties above:

Some observations:

• All but one (Boone County — just over 9,000 total dem voters) of the 9 counties that Obama won in Indiana are in the top 20 most prosperous (defined here as highest in total payroll)
• The rest of the top 20 margins are generally pretty close, except for Clark County — the rest of the state tended to swing much farther for Clinton
• Elkhart County has the same number of dem voters as Monroe county with roughly the same margin — IU is in Monroe County, and the press touted it as “Obama territory” — no one really expected Elkhart to go for Obama
• St. Joe is a heavily Catholic county…but still went for Obama, despite not being supposed to (Clinton’s tended to win Catholics so far)

I’m not sure why I’m spending my Sunday afternoon doing this. But this is the kind of data that percolates in my brain…it also helps me enjoy living in a state that’s supposed to be red (Indiana’s had Dem governors and congressmen for years), low-tech (there’s a ton of high-tech industry here…including most of the prosthetics industry, Viagra (Lilly), advanced manufacturing, software, etc.), rural (70% of Hoosiers live in cities and towns), conservative (Indiana failed to pass a marriage amendment last year, something even California didn’t do), and poor (if you factor in cost-of-living, we’re doing pretty well).

Data doesn’t lie!

RedPost has an employee benefit that gives all employees up to $150 a year to spend on anything that assists in getting them to/from work without using gas. So, bikes, bike helmets/tune-up/accessories, electric scooters, incredible human-powered flying machines, pretty much anything that doesn’t take gas and helps move you faster than you can walk. It’s not much, but I feel like it’s enough to help motivate employees to not drive, which most of us already don’t do. Isaiah has the longest commute at about 20 minutes. It takes me just as long to drive (depending on how I hit the lights) as it does to walk — about 7 minutes.

Today was Dirty Day at RedPost World Headquarters (and, concidentally, Make Goshen Beautiful week). We:

• set up stone walls outside for 2 flowerbeds
• hauled dirt from the streets department to fill the flowerbeds
• rearranged all the desks
• moved the conference room to the front of the building
• moved the recycled computer repair center to the front of the building
• set up our new IKEA kitchen
• cut down old pipe
• removed an old fan, washer, and some scrap metal to the scrap yard
• finally got rid of the old tire that’s been sitting outside
• planted flowers, peppers, cilantro, basil, and a tomato plant in the flower beds

And we still managed to ship a Sign or two. Go us! I’ll post pics once we have everything in order. It feels…more corporate…more organized…more professional. And the kitchen is finally something you could actually not be scared of eating out of.

Check this out:

This is a photo I recevied from an engineer at Bently Reserve, the building in downtown San Francisco that was the first official installation of our newest Sign a little over a month ago. Take a closer look — that’s real cherry wood, 1/24″ thick veneer. Coming from Elkhart County and the RV culture here, I naturally assumed it was vinyl (everything in an RV is some kind of chemical)…but it’s nothing but real wood, Brazilian cherry. Awesome!

Entrepreneurship is an up-and-down, extreme roller coaster unlike any other. I happen to like roller coasters a lot, except for the wooden kind that shake you around a lot. The problem is, there are really fun wooden roller coasters too, but you don’t know which kind it’ll be until after you ride it. Just like starting a company — you know it’s going to be a roller coaster, but you don’t know if it’ll make you vomit or make you scream for joy. I like metaphors. Anyways.

At a particularly low moment last winter on the roller coaster known as RedPost, sometime in November, a couple events converged for me:

• I was tired, frustrated, and had had one of those days where you feel like everything is impossible and nothing is progressing
• It was snowing (with about an inch on the ground) and freezing cold outside
• My Arbor Day membership (only $10!) had arrived, along with 10 trees (that’s $1 a tree!) in a little plastic pouch with instructions to plant them right away

The thing about me is I like to get things done, or at least, make progress. When nothing seems to be moving forward I go nuts. So naturally, to combat my emotional state, I decided to plant my 10 trees (for $10!). In the snow. In sub-freezing temperatures. I got out my post-hole digger (well, not mine, but my realtor’s that I borrowed over a year ago, whoops) and dug 10 holes as quick as I could. Fortunately, the ground wasn’t frozen. Unfortunately, I wasn’t wearing gloves (I hadn’t thought that far) and was promptly freezing. But I had had a bad enough day that I was in “extreme stubborn mode” and refused to change paths until I was done planting my 10 trees (for $10!), risk-of-finger-loss be damned. The worst part was packing the cold, wet soil around each tree.

I wasn’t sure what to expect this spring…I mean…I had planted the trees in the freezing cold. And then there were the rabbits, which I tried to dissuade from eating my trees by peeing on them occasionally (hey, I grew up on a farm, bathrooms are only made for #2…it’s eco-friendly too, saves water), but who ended up chewing every tree top off (they only stuck up about 6-12″). So…much to my surprise, when I went to mow my lawn for the first time this past Saturday…9 of the 10 trees were budding! (that’s $10 for 9 trees now…still a good deal)

I promptly spent the afternoon building a rabbit deterrent system and lovingly mulching my little trees. I love spring! And not being tired, frustrated, and stuck. And having a Saturday to work on the yard. And starting projects and finishing them in one day. And beating rabbits without using chemicals. And dirt. And a bargain (10 9 trees for $10!).

We re-tweaked (is that redundant?) our pricing scheme a bit…it’ll change again when we go out of Beta, but for now, we simplified it, gave everyone promote/widgets and clarified what promote costs. We also upped the number of Users per level so that the “Individual” level can have multiple users.

Our new, tweaked pricing scheme:

Old, (boring) pricing scheme:

The first 6 Signs shipped out today. We were going to ship more but had some glitches…hey, at least we’re not a month behind schedule like last time.

Today is also First Friday in downtown Goshen. Lots going on:

• 2 new art galleries opening (EyeDart is one — they moved to a bigger space)
• a new 10,000 Villages store grand opening
• lots of live entertainment all around:
  • Concert: Bridgeland 6 - 8 p.m. @ Goshen Theater, 216 South Main Street
  • Various folkloric music performances: 5 – 9 p.m. @ 113 West Washington Street (Tent outside El Duranguenze)
  • Concert: Mariachi Zelaya, 7 - 10 p.m. @ El Duranguenze, 113 West Washington Street
  • Concert: Schmaltzentrubers, 6:45 - 7:45 p.m. @ Goshen Historical Museum, 124 South Main Street
  • Concert: The Potentials starting at 8 p.m. @Hacienda, 618 West Lincoln Avenue
  • Concert: Richard Wineland, 5:30 - 7:30 p.m. @ Old Bag Factory, 1100 Chicago Avenue

Hopefully it stops raining.