JTreeLife

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!

Nice Pair is approaching Mackinaw Island this morning, with a good lead over the other boats in their class!

Track the race live at:ttp://www.michigan.org/gps/

by JTree Dave
So… you can follow the race progress with live GPS tracking updates at: http://www.michigan.org/gps/
Select Cove Isl_MH-A
Also… we were able to snap a pic just before the storm with the main sail up…

Be sure to check out our co-sponsors: Enertia Trail Foods! www.trailfoods.com
The crew is stoked to loose the weight of all the ice chests, and get awesome, fast, hot meals on the boat. This is a full on racing boat… minimal kitchen, poop in a bucket… so the trail foods meals really take it up a notch!

by J-Tree Dave
It was super cool to be 3 mile out on lake huron, in the little ski boat, with the guys from SailingAnarchy.com filming the start of the 90 year running Bayview to Mackinac. Our focus was to get some great shots at the start of our Sponsored Boat, ‘Nice Pair’… unfortunately, we ran into a little problem with a missing media registration from the race directors, the coast guard, and the weather. Just before the start of the multi hull class, a squall hit, that turned our sunny afternoon photo / video outing into a total epic! Wave crashing over the bow and winshield, tons of fancy video equipment for a live internet feed on board, pouring rain and lightning… So this was the best shot we got of “the Pair” before the race… hope to see some online pics from the finish with all the sails up!

by J-Tree Dave
Joshua Tree Products - Makers of hand crafted organic skincare for an active lifestyle, will sponsor multiple time winner, “Nice Pair” in the legendary Port Huron to Mackinaw Race.

Port Huron, Michigan (July 16th, 2010)

J-Tree currently markets its line of high-performance, organic & natural skin care products to rock climbers and cyclists. The sailing and water-sports markets offer tremendous potential with great synergy for the brand. Activities on the water and under the sun are tough on your skin. J-tree offers unique solutions for the weathered faces, exposed lips, and torn-up hands of sailors and others who spend time on, in and around the water.

Bruce Geffen’s “Nice Pair”, a 38’ catamaran built by Mike Bell at Offshore Catamarans, will be flying the sponsorship banner of JTreeLife.com as his team attempts to win their division honors for the third year in a row and fifth time overall. And JTreeLife.com is happy to partner with Team “Nice Pair” on her Silver Anniversary tour of the Great Lakes racing circuit.

Nice Pair has quite a resume, with both Bayview Mac and Chicago Mac victories, plus numerous other wins and elapsed time records all over the Great Lakes’ best sailing venues and races.

Dave Lawrence (J-Tree Dave) says that: “This Bayview Mackinac race will be a great launching platform for our new SPF 33+ Sun Stick.” This mostly organic, totally natural, dry-touch foundation stick is designed for an active life under the sun… On the water, rocks, and snow.

Weighing in at SPF 33, It is very water, sweat, and freeze proof. It comes packaged in a no-fuss applicator, has a pleasant fresh scent, and a translucent skin-tone tint… Just enough tint to see the application, but not so much to leave you looking like David Hasslehoff circa 1986!