Open Houses

Being this is open house weekend, in St. Albans and the surrounding area, surely some member on Maple trader will post about what they seen for us that would love to be there! I personally had a treatment for my battle with Cancer yesterday or would be there, back in 2011 I had the privilege to bring my friend Henry Brenneman to the open houses, he was a dealer for leader evaporator! That year was a quirky year because Easter fell on the third weekend and the last weekend of the month had something to do with the dealers closing the books, April 14, 15th was the open houses. Almost all sugar camps was still running so as soon as Henry’s meetings was over for the day we took off from St. Albans and across the mountain to Fairfield Vt. Visited several sugar camps, the three Corey brothers, Gary only had 35000 taps then,now has 120000 per a Nate Bissell video I recently watch! Needless to say we visited about quarter million taps in total, JR Sloan at time had 45000 taps now working with 285000 again per Nate Video, Georgia Mountain was not in operation then, per my CDL friend they have around 200000 taps. Enjoy the event and post for us that couldn’t get there?
Mark220maple

We went to the open house again this year. We visited Leader/H2O, Lapierre, Memprotec, Dominion and Grimm, and CDL.

Memprotec visit was just to drop in to say hello as we bought an RO from them last year and wanted to let them know how happy we are with it.

Leader had no catalogs available so they gave you little post-it pads and a pen to write down the number of an item you saw on their shelf that you may be interested in (more on this later in my complaint comment at the end). This was a huge miss in my opinion. Either someone dropped the ball at Leader itself, or the printer didn't deliver on time. Pretty bad mistake for an open house weekend I'd say. Ate lunch there on Saturday; hot dogs, chips and cookies. Sat with some friends from the Mass Maple Producers Association while we ate and had some great conversation. Met a nice couple from Woodstock, CT there as well.

CDL had some nice tin cans and tin can sealers they were selling. We bottle everything in glass and try to stay away from plastic (personal choice). Unfortunately, we have a lot of people asking us to ship product which is tough with glass. Tin cans could be an option for us, but we really need to investigate further. Got a great deal on 3/16 end slide fitting there; $0.05 each! Bought two bags. They had a vendor there that used their nectar to make some sweetened seltzer. I drink seltzer water all the time so that was kind of neat to try. One version was sweeter than the other; in sugar maker terms he told us it was basically 3 brix and 6 brix versions. Gave us samples to take home which are cooling off in the fridge now.

Lapierre was good. Bought some 5/15 slide fittings there and a bunch of FLEXClip 2.0 mainline fittings. They look very interesting to me and do not require a special mainline hole punch to install. We'll see.... Also grabbed a Pruno tubing spooler there. Best price for it that we found! Got maple creemees there...very good. Vendor inside was selling Maple Caramel Corn Puffs. They should call it Maple Caramel Crack it's so addicting! Bought a bag to bring home to our daughter who wasn't able to come with us.

D&G was interesting. We missed that place last year. Spoke with one of the sales guys for quite a while. Their free creemees were slightly better than Lapierre's IMHO...

Now for my biggest complaint: Why in the world would these places not have prices marked on their items for open house weekend? We are a small operation and we need to price shop. It's not just Leader as I mentioned at the beginning; all of the places are the same. It is a total PITA to see something you're interested in, jot down the item number, stand in line at the counter, and have someone look it up for you. Then you need to decide if you want it or not, go back and find the item again, grab it, stand in line again and pay for it.. Leader didn't have any catalogs, but that would have only partially helped as none of these vendors put prices in their catalogs either! The catalogs we did get at Lapierre, CDL and D&G all just list part numbers. Basom's next weekend will be the same except at least their catalog will have the regular non-open house price listed. There were times that the counters were so busy that people just turned away; I assume most came back later like we did, but it's a huge pain. How hard would it be to either print out a bunch of price sheets and tape them to the shelving near the items themselves or print out special open house price sheets to stick into their catalogs? Imagine how frustrating it would be if grocery stores or places like Home Depot operated that way? I just don't understand it....

What would I do next time? I'd really like to take the time next year to do some of the factory and sugarbush tours.

I think the price thing is that they sell through dealers, and the manufacturers don't dictate to the dealers what price they'll sell them for?
Also complicated by all the possible options.
Not actually sure, that's just my guess.

This is just one of the reasons I like Smoky Lake so much, not only is a lot of their equipment innovative, but they are willing to put prices on EVERYTHING online and in their catalog, and often give discounts and free shipping as well. There is no good reason to be as secretive on pricing as all the other manufacturers are.