[RKDinOKC]

Wonder if we are going to have the company block party this year.

Our sales was as low as it was in 2005 in April. The lowest yet in this oil slump. Even though we sold less in April we were able to cut costs enough that our cash in the bank remained the same. Most of the loss was made up for by leaning up inventory and improving the just-in-time for materials. It is looking they the daily sales in May will be better, but not enough to show a profit yet. They killed 3rd shift so it will be interesting to see the difference shutting down for 6 hours a day and no night premium pay makes along with the slight increase in sales.

There have been a few employees taking the $5000 opt out and leaving. We've still got about 50 employees more than we had in 2005. Everyone is sure hoping it doesn't come down to another layoff.

Last week with my brother and I had lunch he asked if there was anything I thought might be a good product. Gave me some examples of companies that are doing very well making completely different products than they made originally. Like Nokia used to be a paper mill and Xerox used to make photographic print paper.

The have branched off the engineering and marketing into a group that not only does Kimray work, but will do work for others like Porsche Design does. Originally they called it Paper to Plane, now it is called Swell Product Design and Marketing. Told him the marketing side sucks horribly if they can't come up with a better name than those and that Porsche calls their group Porsche Design. And maybe they should start with some cool stuff stuff with the Kimray name on it like watches, sunglasses, pens, instead of the crap the corporate gift places offer to put your logo on. That's what Porsche Designs does, and it has Porsche Designs on it instead of the Porsche logo. Bet it's the reason Porsche fiercely enforces the usage of it's name. It's also interesting to me that Porsche cars started the same year Kimray did, 1948.