Good News???

(copied/pasted from an email I sent to friends, just to save time. More thorough updates as I know more...)

Things are starting to happen. Things that may keep us employed. One of the largest gutter suppliers in the country is interested in beginning to operate in Charlotte to fill the void that RDE is going to leave. If they were to do it and listen to our advice, I really think we could keep our customer base and even expand on that by bringing in some of our occasional customers on a more full time basis. There's nothing definite yet, but they were scheduled to come by and talk Monday...now the head of the company is on his way here tomorrow to look at the place, the potential and to look at us. We've been told to be prepared to interview tomorrow. Interesting. If they do go through with it I could see them hiring a few more people as they do a lot of their own manufacturing. How much, if any of that they would do out of Charlotte, we don't know, but I still imagine they'd want to add at least one more person in the warehouse anyway. I'm sure there will be a transitional period, and it's likely that RDE would co-exist with them for about a month or so until they get all their stuff in place. Also one of our customers put in a good word for Bull over at one of our competitors and they called his house today. He says if it works out that this deal ends up going through, he'd rather stay with us, but at least he has another option out there. Out of all of us, I was worried most for him.

The fast tracking of the whole thing has me really optimistic though. I think they see the upside of the Charlotte market and they have the means to be a major thorn in the sides of our competitors. I wouldn't be surprised if they brought in someone else to help oversee the whole thing, so we would likely have to change our work habits a little, but that wouldn't be a bad thing. It could be something big and we could be looking at a better situation than we've already been in.