Since 1994, our Dacono location has defied all conventional wisdom about retail by surviving, even thriving, in a location that was anything but "location, location, location."  We've laughed for years that when giving directions to the north store, you have to talk about being "behind the junkyard" and "down the dirt road about a 1/2 mile."  Over the years, the city has talked about getting the road paved, but it's still mostly gravel from the frontage road to the store.  It's really a great testament to the relationships that we've made with our customers over the years that folks have continued to drive down that road to continue to do business with us.  We truly do appreciate the effort that everybody has made over the years to support our snowmobile, ATV, and trailer business. 

In a conventional motorcycle or powersports business you tend to see a big surge of sales in the middle six months of the year.  Typically, that's where all the money is made and the store tries to stay busy enough through the winter to break-even or at least minimize losses.  In our case, the snowmobile business has always been so big that we had the exact opposite seasonal trend.  We were really busy in the winter but struggled to stay busy enough in the summer, especially in parts and service.  Although the ATV business has been really good in the summer, ATV customers simply don't tend to need as much "gear" as sled guys and ATVs are typically not used as intensively as snowmobiles.  That intensive usage tends to generate more parts and service business per machine sold.   

In mid-2005, we had the opportunity to add Yamaha and Suzuki in Castle Rock, build a new store, and really engage in the motorcycle business.  With a good selection of metric bikes, plus Victory and now Spyder, Castle Rock has a much flatter seasonal trend.  While there are still ups and down in the trend, the business is really much closer to being round throughout the year.  Naturally, we started thinking that some bike business at the north store would be good, but it's difficult to pitch that idea to any manufacturer when there's a dirt road in front of your store. 

As our business grew in Castle Rock, we also became friends with Stan and Scott Elmore at Twin Peaks Powersports.  They were a natural trading partner for us.  Our two stores were close making it easy to share inventory and we were selling a lot of the same products.  Like in Castle Rock, eventually it became clear that our two stores really each had half of the business that we needed to be successful year round.  They were slammed in the summer when we were slow in Dacono and they were dead in the winter while we were buried in snowmobile season.  About a year ago, we started talking about how we could combine the operations to really make one bigger store work.  In the end, we decided that it made the most sense for us to buy their business, combine it with ours, and move in to their facility.  With their store's location, accessibility, and size, it's a great upgrade for us.  Logistically it will work much like Castle Rock - we can continue to store crates and excess inventory at our old location while keeping a great selection on hand at the store without all the clutter.  Over Easter weekend, we moved to the new location.  The new store is located at Highway 66 and I-25, about 8 miles north of our current location.  If you're coming from Denver, it takes about 5 minutes longer to get there.  Although it's further, you do save all the time spent on the frontage road and going slow down the dirt road. 

As we grow the business again, we're always mindful of the challenge of maintaining great customer service and the small store feel that our customers value.  In the last year or so, we've focused a lot on building and defining our corporate culture.  When the business consisted of Mindy, Dad, and myself, plus a couple technicians, defining and maintaining our culture and values was relatively simple.  We agreed (mostly) on how to handle situations and if we didn't agree, we discussed it and made a decision.  As a company grows and more employees join the team, that question of culture and values becomes more complicated.  Everybody has their own set of personal values and in a large group, even if everybody shares similar values, there will be some differences.  In order to ensure that we, as a business unit, are acting as a cohesive group and making decisions with the same frame work, we've defined our company values.  Those shared values now guide all business decision making, irregardless of our personal values.  This process is, for sure, a work in progress but I believe we've seen our team really evaluate situations keeping our core values of integrity, team work, success, and quality in mind.  I know we've handled some challenging situations better in the last year than we would have ten years ago.  In spite of a strong focus on budgets and making our numbers work, we've also clearly stated as a group that we will not violate our integrity and team work values just to make money. 

With that all having been said, one of the really neat aspects of this acquisition and merger is that Scott and Stan share our values and their business culture is very close to ours.  Although it seems that the culture and mentality of that store wasn't that way before they bought the store, great customer service has been one of the pillars of their business.  It's worth knowing that Stan was the founder of Stan's Automotive and I think it's fair to say that you don't make it in the auto repair business for long without great service and being fair and honest with customers.  With the business growing again, it's awesome to be gaining staff that shares and understands how we want to do business.  I also truly believe that customers choose businesses that share their values.  Since our philosophies have been very similar, I believe both our existing and their customer bases will enjoy continuing to do business with us. 

The new north store now carries Polaris ATVs, snowmobiles, Rangers and Victory, BRP Can-Am ATVs, Can-Am Spyders, Sea-Doo, and Ski-Doo, and Yamaha motorcycles, ATVs, Rhinos, and snowmobiles.  We will continue to carry Suzuki and Kawasaki motorcycles and ATVs at the south store. 

For our new customers that did business with Twin Peaks, it will be business as usual.  All prepaid maintenance packages, service work in progress, etc. will continue seamlessly.  For our customers, we hope you'll stop by the new location and check out all the cool new stuff we have to offer. 

Once again, thanks for the business and helping us continue to grow!
Donavon