December's NEAFP Note discussed the importance of reviewing your past years successes and challenges and planning your next year's goals. Well, over the last 4 weeks we have been busy taking our own advice recounting our successes and challenges while creating our "A List" of activities for the up coming year. Reviewing the past years activities is a very valuable tool. By examining the details of successes or things you could have executed better, a renewed enthusiasm is found for next years goals. It is exhilarating to feel the excitement of starting a new/better business every year.

At the top of our "A List", is the design of a brand new sock we will be debuting in a couple of weeks. Across the board we all felt it was important for us to continue to re-invent our products so, we have taken our lessons learned over the last few years and applied them to a brand new sock design. By cleaning the slate, and designing a brand new yarn specifically for this new sock, we feel we have really come up with a winner that will surely impact all our products. We matched the comfort of alpaca with the durability and wear of main stream socks and couldn't be happier with the results. Stay tuned over the next couple of weeks for more information and for when they will hit the shelves.

Over the next few months we plan on taking this new clean slate approach to the rest of the product catalog and introduce several new innovative items. Besides our products, NEAFP has also been working towards providing better resources to our customer base. We are adding new features to the Fiber Bank, allowing customers to look up order history and also better track the status of their open orders. Wholesale for both retailers and fiber contributors will be made easier and more straight forward. NEAFP will also be adding Phone Support this upcoming year to keep better in touch with our customers.

When we aren't in the office implementing these upcoming improvements, we will be taking our show on the road attending several alpaca shows this season. As always, we will be providing information to interested breeders, showcasing our products, meeting the folks we already do business with, and running Fiber Collections to help you save on shipping costs. As soon as we confirm the shows we will attend, we will let you all know so you can plan accordingly.

Overall, these are very exciting times for all of us as more and more people become fascinated by these charismatic animals and the tremendous qualities of their fiber. We are looking forward to this up and coming year, and hope you are as well.