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Lots of people across the country talk about their crazy weather, but how many places does it snow one week and hit 80 degrees the following week? Welcome to springtime in the Rockies! Hopefully your customer's water features (and your employees) are doing well as they finally break free from their winter hibernation!

This month's newsletter includes a seminar update, a timely blog from Greg Wittstock, a product update including the latest tariff information, and this month's Aquascape video. 

Happy Pondering,

The True Pump Team

Spring Seminars
Our spring seminars wrapped up with a very successful pondless waterfall training class. It was quite a project to complete in one day but thanks to everyone's hard work we made it happen. Together we learned a lot, had some fun and the homeowners LOVE their new waterfall!  Check out the cool video below that Chris Lombardo from Aquascape put together summarizing the day.

Aquascape Contractor Build A Pondless Waterfall Training - True Pump
Aquascape Contractor Build A Pondless Waterfall Training - True Pump

How the Real World Works
The challenge of finding good employees is one that is hitting the green industry especially hard. With that in mind we'd like to share this blog from Greg Wittstock, The Pond Guy.

"But how do you get a good job if you don't go to College Mr Wittstock?!"  It was a legitimate question from yet another misdirected youth!  "But if you were interviewing two candidates, one with a College degree, one without, who would you give the nod to Mr Wittstock?!"  My reply "the one who interviewed better, had done more homework on my business and looked me in the eye with a smile on their face while giving me a firm handshake!"  Common sense ain't so common anymore! I love love love getting to share with high school and College age kids about how it works in the real world.

And for any "snowplow parents" (you know the kind that try to clear all the obstacles from their kids path) you might be able to buy a degree from USC or Stanford and maybe even pull some strings to help your precious baby get a job but once they work for me or any other CEO worth his salt if they can't pull their own weight they aren't going anywhere in the organization!!!  Folks, "someone" is raising these kids to believe the world works in totally different ways than it actually does.




Product Update
We currently have a nice variety of water lillies and marginal plants. We are waiting until it warms up a bit to order water hyacinths and water lettuce, we should have those around Memorial Day.

After moving our fish tanks to their new location it's taken us longer than expected to get the tanks balanced. We are hopeful to have a good selection of fish available for you to purchase just before Memorial Day also. Thanks for your patience!

As trade talks continue between the United States and China there is the possibility of increased tariffs and therefore, increased product prices later this year. We recently received the following from Jeff Payton at Aquascape:

"I am sure that many of you have been following the news story of the latest in the US/China trade wars. We definitely have at Aquascape with all of the tariffs we have been dealing with since last summer. Our hope was that they were a temporary thing but it does not appear to be.

Yesterday we were sent the official notice from the USTR (US Trade Representative) that is being posted in the Federal Register today. That notice is increasing the tariff on $200B in Chinese imports (referred to as "List 3") from the 10% tariff they are currently at to 25% - effective tomorrow, May 10th!

Besides this official announcement, there have also been threats to put the same 25% tariff on the rest of the products that are imported into the country from China. This would mean all products made in China would now have a 25% tariff on them.

We are not sure if this announcement is a scare tactic ahead of the US/China trade talks that are going on today and tomorrow or if they are truly going to be carried out. Right now, we are looking into all of the POs that have List 3 products on them that we currently have on the water or in production to determine when those products will be coming into stock. We are also looking at all of the products that we have in stock and seeing when those run out. Based on when the current stock runs out and when the new stock comes in will determine if/when we need to implement a price increase.

As soon as we have more information on this issue we will let everyone know."

Aquascape Video
Most of you already follow  Greg Wittstock, The Pond Guy 's YouTube channel but how about Team Aquascape? There's lots of great content here too including this latest video on the NEW Design Center at Aqualand.

NEW Aquascape Design Center: Build & REVEAL
NEW Aquascape Design Center: Build & REVEAL

Think about it . . .
"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it." -Henry David Thoreau

Calendar
Spring Hours:
Monday - Friday 7:30 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Saturday  10:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.
Closed Sunday

CLOSED for Memorial Day  May 25 - 27


"Your Pond Store"