'Tis the time of year when we are always getting some new stuff in the shop. As I order most of this stuff in fall, I've usually lost my sense of wonder about the new stuff by the time it arrives. Half the time I don't even remember what I was thinking when I ordered it but assume I had some master plan at the time! Sounds worse when I read that.

Flies are one of those things that can kind of make or break my business. If I order too many of the wrong ones...I get stuck with them and it's hard to liquidate flies that no one wants. But, flies are huge part of our business so I drill down the data every year, decide which patterns need to go away and how many of the good ones do I need to order, plus what new patterns should I bring in to replace the junk ones.  Doesn't sound too hard but when you start talking 1500 +/- a couple hundred bins of flies...you can see how it gets complicated.

Anyway, the point is that we really tried to do our homework last year and are making some significant changes in our patterns. We were able to whittle the junk ones away last summer and ended up with our lowest $$$ amount of flies at the end of the year in several years. That's a good thing for business as inventory turns are critical to my biz and flies have always been a tough thing to get more than a turn or so out of in a year. And I have a lot of new patterns that are starting to trickle in this month.

Anyway again, we got a few new patterns in today that reminded me that my season on the MO starts in just a couple of weeks! Looking forward to it!