JTreeLife

Bruce Geffin, Team JTree Athlete and owner of the JTree Sponsored 40′ Catamaran “Nice Pair” earned his endorsement renewal this year by participating in the chilly dip in Whitmore Lake. The chilly dip was a fundraiser, with a minimum donation of $50 to the Kiwanis Club.

We are in route back to the shop after a wonderful long weekend at the Red River Gorge in Kentucky. The Red is home to arguably the best sport climbing around so its hard to leave after a short trip. This trip was inspired by an annual event Rocktoberfest.

We always look forward to this great event that is a fundraiser for the Red River Gorge Climbers Coalition. For the second year in a row we did a custom run of our lip balms for goody bags at the event. You can find some images of them here www.jtreelife.com/custom.php

Sorry for the short entry but we have to get back to the road. We have a fresh shipment of herbs and sunflower oil arriving at the end of the week!!

Cheers until next time!

photo: Wes Allen

By unanimous consensus, i have determined that Lake Powell may very well be the funnest, most spectacular place on earth…. That said, It wasn’t until we packed up to leave, and decided to check out Lone Rock beach that we discovered where we should have been all weekend!

As we crested the sand dune, and saw all the other rv’s on the beach, we quickly realized that our trip would need to be extended just one more day! And what a glorious day that was! We are all very excited about the next big weekend on the beach at Powell!

Labor Day Weekend…
Roll Call: John, Clint, Dave, Alena, Torrent.
Wahweep Bay.

We spent most of the weekend camped at the marina RV park. Our marine transportation options included the whitewater couches (see post about the snake river) and an inflatable kayak.


Our first day, Clint and I hiked down to some cliffs to climb and jump with the dog. It was really spectacular, and fun. The water is crystal clear, the sunshine hot and steady, and the topography spectacular!


We spent he next morning standing on the dock with my wakeboard, trying to thumb a ride. Sadly, this was not successful. John and Alena arrived late morning, and so we inflated the couches and strapped them together. We then tossed em on top of the Prius, drove down the boat ramp, turned around, and backed into the water to launch our raft (as if it were a real boat). amidst a lot of gawking and staring, we all hopped on and started paddling out. We didn’t make it past the end of the docks before our disco ball equipped flotilla caught enough attention to get us a tow across the bay! We spent the rest of the afternoon scrambling on the rocks, and swimming with the dog.

Mom did not like the “shanty town” look of our booth, but we once again got tons of compliments, and we had a steady flow of traffic the entire show. The double sided location, right under the escalators, was great!
Enertia Trail Foods was cooking up fresh hot meals the entire 4 days of the show, and also had a few bowls of their delicious snack mixes out for our guests. The No Bake Power Cookie was hands down the hit of the show. We heard from multiple people that it was the single best sample of food at the entire event! Personally, I thought It was really nice to sleep in a few extra minutes each morning (after we may or may not have gone out on the town the night before) knowing that breakfast was served as a huge bowl of Power Cookies, just waiting for me in the booth
The J-Tree & Trail Foods synergy was great. We each had accounts that the other wasn’t in. We were able to leverage that by passing buyers off to each other as they came by to visit. We had a slide show playing pictures of the Nice Pair (Bruce Geffens race winning Catamaran that we co-sponosred) and used that as the icebreaker to explain our companies relationship.

New for J-Tree at the show were our unified Point of Purchase display boxes.
These were over a year in the making, and really offer a lot of flexibility to vendors who may not be able to move all of the items in our line. They also offer some great point of sale information and sales points for the customer. The unified box was also designed with distributors in mind. The headboard graphic wraps around the the front of the box when it is closed, so that the contents, and even the bar code, can be read with the boxes stacked on a shelf.

Setting up our cardboard block wall was fairly a fairly smooth process with plenty of PBR, spray adhesive, and a hot melt glue gun. Bentley was the box builder, Clint was the glue-er, and I was the mason, stacking the boxes. The wall turned out awesome. We had tons of compliments from the other exhibitors that were setting up sunday night.
Everyone loved the inexpensive, simple, environmental look of the booth.

…everyone that is, except the new Fire Marshall!

We showed up Monday morning to finish the set up, to find a big red warning note from the Fire Marshal. Apparently, cardboard boxes are a fire hazard, and are not allowed in the Salt Palace, which is ironic, as there are a handful of other bigger companies who use plenty of cardboard in their both construction, and plenty of shoe companies with walls of cardboard boxes, and just piles of highly flammable merchandise and signage and banners. Have you ever seen a down puffy jacket catch fire at a bonfire???
It turns out that our cool new booth location happens to be right across the hall from the security office, so we lucked out and got picked on.
After talking with the show organizers, and learning that there was really nothing we could do to appeal the decision, we decided to just get on with it.
A quick tip to Home Depot with Shannon Lamb and Bentley for a few sheets of OSB, and a gallon of Shellac (which we of course applied in the H.D. parking lot) and we had a new booth construction that looked pretty cool, and was ironically, significantly more flammable… in my opinion - which holds a bit of weight as I deigned combustion processes in my previous life.

The Summer OR show in Salt Lake City has traditionally been our most successful trade show of the year. It is an odd mix of work and fun and socializing for 4 days. I say its odd only because it can be difficult to balance the fun with trying to get a lot of business done too. This is compounded by the happy hours that start at like 2 or 3pm at the various booths, and the “best friends” that we only get to see a few times a year at these shows.
This show, we have partnered with Enertia Trail Foods (it has nothing to do with the Nice Pair… or does it?). Sharing booth space has afforded us the ability to get a slightly larger than normal booth, in a much cooler location than normal. We are situated in an over head door that separates the main show floor from the escalators, restrooms, and food service area. It should offer pretty good traffic on both the front and back sides of the booth!
We don’t know the exact dimensions of the space, or the door, so we need to have a flexible booth. Our plan is to construct the side walls of the booth out of cardboard boxes… Built like a block wall. Some of the boxes will be offset, as shelves, to display the product. We will use the vinyl cutter to make some graphics for the walls, as well as pertinent wholesale info to display behind each item.
Clint has generously offered to build and varnish an OSB counter top for the middle of the booth. We should arrive in SLC mid day Sunday, just in time to pick up Clint, his OSB counter, the Uline boxes, and head down to start setting up. The show doesn’t start till Tuesday, but it will feel good to get the setup done with a day early!

It is time for the next section of the J-Tree road trip. The schedule is a bit simpler this time. 2 trade shows, 2 months, then back home / at The Red for the fall.
First stop is Salt Lake City for the Outdoor Retailer Show. Then, 6 weeks later is Vegas for Interbike.
Without Skittles as my partner, things will be a bit different being on the road this trip. Thankfully Bentley has agreed to rent a car and drive from Knoxville to Michigan, then drive west in the RV with me to SLC. It was fairly easy to convince him of this plan, as i lured him in with the promise of 2 wakeboard lessons before we left Michigan.
Bentley arrived at the lake on Wednesday evening. We loaded up the boat witha a few lake friends, and hit up the legendary Zukey Lake Tavern for dinner and drinks. Thursday morning came early, as we had to be on the water at 6am in order to get good water and drop B’s rental car off in Ann Arbor by 9. Two pulls later, Bentley was popping big and landing wake to wake.
We spent the rest of the day packing the RV, and hit the road mid afternoon. We made the Lake Michigan shore line late afternoon, and took the dog on a mile hike across the sand dunes to the water. Bentley, being from the south, already thinks michigan is cold, but I was able to convince him that he MUST swim in the big lake for his first time seeing it. We took a running start from the beach and splashed into the big waves! Amazingly, our balls didn’t shrivel, and we didn’t ‘bounce’ back out of the water… it was warm and pleasant with an on shore breeze!

Next stop… Chicago… another first for Bentley. We arrived at my sisters house just in time for dinner, then we met up with an old college water ski buddy, Kevin, hopped on the El Train and went out for a night on the town!

by J-Tree Dave
Bruce Geffin and the crew from the Joshua Tree Skin Care / Enertia Trail Foods sponsored Nice Pair won the Chicago to Mackinac race last weekend… for the 3rd time in a row! This ‘hat trick’ for the Nice Pair come just a week after performing a similar ‘hat trick’ in the Port Huron to Mackinac Race.


The crew of the Pair was fueled by Enertia Trail Foods for the first time this race. The minimalist living accouterments onboard the pair are a perfect candidate for the gourmet, cook in the bag, dehydrated meals offered by Trail Foods. Bruce reports the teams favorite was the Coconut Quinoa Pudding… ready in about 5 minutes after the addition of cold water to the measured pouch!