<h2><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 19px;">Happy New Year and my best wishes for a healthy and prosperous 2012.</span></h2>
In one of my favorite Star Trek episodes, an alien race has Sulu the navigator convinced that if he alters the course of the Enterprise, they will all be destroyed by knives that are flying through space. No one else on the bridge or the ship sees the knives, but that doesn't matter - Sulu doesn't allow anyone to touch the controls and the Enterprise blindly maintains its course.

Just two days into 2012, I did something different I haven't done in a while; I touched the controls. Instead of just my usual circuit around the gym Monday morning, I went swimming in their pool. Yes, a nice heated indoor pool that my gym can not get a tax credit for adding a solar pool heating system too. They can put a PV system on the roof and get a tax credit, even a SWHS system for showers, but for their biggest energy hog - nope! But I digress...

After just 20 minutes I was even more exhausted than I would have been after an hour of my regular routine. Why the change? Maybe because my regular routine had become just that - too routine and I just wasn't seeing the results that I wanted.<!--more-->

Such is the way that things have been here at Aquatherm for the last few years. Doing the same old things and expecting the same results. There was a time 20, 15 or even just 10 years ago that if something wasn't working the way I'd like it to be, I'd shake it up - just like oil and vinegar I used to say. It usually worked and not only did we all survive, but we flourished.

I think it's time to shake up the oil and vinegar again. Last month if you recall, Aquatherm announced a milestone - since their introduction in 2000, shipments of our patented, bullet-proof insert molded Sunlite and its vented counterpart Ecolite collectors hit 25,000,000 sq. ft., mostly into the DIY above-ground pool market. If you didn't do the math, that's the equivalent of 635,000 - 40 sq. ft collectors! For many of those 11 years, we made as many Sunlite and Ecolite collectors as we could; usually running three shifts for 10 to 11 months out of the year only stopping long enough for our annual shut-down and to perform service to the equipment.

As I also mentioned last month, within the last year the above-ground DIY market has lost share to cheap polyethylene products from China - big time. I always felt that our insert-molded products were a bit of an over-kill for a market like that, where quality takes a back seat to price. What made these products successful was their quality and consistent ease to manufacture which of course led to these products being one of our most profitable.

Now for the shake up - our <a href="http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=7rab6hcab&amp;et=1109052712629&amp;s=0&amp;e=001pi0sicabxvCrmghDmUNHM0O7XVwIcZKG2BWgnEYH8i75gv5F95nR7dhoIec6EQfhIp1aS_tMdUBgQFoXwvUrzlhZGsjXFUBu6MtKvdJ9PHho-PlNvpcuUg==" target="_blank">Sunlite</a> (10 year limited; five year full warranty) and <a href="http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=7rab6hcab&amp;et=1109052712629&amp;s=0&amp;e=001pi0sicabxvCrmghDmUNHM0O7XVwIcZKG2BWgnEYH8i75gv5F95nR7dhoIec6EQfhIp1aS_tMdUBgQFoXwvUrzgxum_esC53TF0L5ilv6QImzZ7bswP374A==" target="_blank">Ecolite</a> (10 year full warranty) collectors are already "the most cost-effective solar thermal BTU on the planet" and our original investment has paid off many times over. These collectors have always been priced just below their respective Sun-Swim and Ultra-Swim counterparts which is about to change.

Short (but true) story that I repeat way too many times. I think the year was 1998 and I was in Mark Naylor's office along with Peter Dunbar. Mark and Peter were anxious to grow their business, but rubber mat products were dominating the builder market with low

So do you want to get different results this year? Are you ready to alter your course and do something dramatically different from your competition? Are you looking to add to your bottom line?pricing. So I asked, "how low do you need to be?" They told me and then I asked, "does it matter if the product only has a five-year warranty?" They looked at each other and replied, "no, everything else on the pad only has a one, three or five year warranty." That was a market altering decision to do something different.

Interested? Give me a call and let's shake things up together.

Dave Sizelove, President

PS - About the Chinese; don't give up yet. More US manufacturers and service companies are expanding their operations and sourcing their needs here in the US. Among the pluses are lower transportation costs, sourcing flexibility which cuts costs by shortening the supply chain, ample and cheap supplies of natural gas and stable labor rates. Though wages are still lower in China, they've been climbing at the rate of 15% a year.