A number of us in Glendale have been reading Eddie Rickenbacker's autobiography. Published in 1967, it chronicles the life history of America's WWI "Ace of Aces" - from his early days as an automobile racer and manufacturer, through his fighting days in the skies above France, and concluding with his twenty plus years at the helm of Eastern Air Lines. Reading autobiographies is a great way to learn how past business masters approached and solved the pivotal problems of managing large organizations. Not surprisingly, whether you're reading Firestone, Carnegie or any number of other historical business greats, the solutions they "discovered" to the common problems of business were, often as not, identical.

Rickenbacker, for example, discovered early on in his business career that inventory was the key to closing sales. Commenting on the difference between a good car dealer and a poor one he observed "Some dealers were willing to invest capital in inventory so that when a customer was ready to buy a car, it was there waiting for him. But dealers who would order a car from the factory only when they had a hot lead often found that by the time the car arrived, the customer, tired of waiting, had purchased another make elsewhere."

This scenario should be quite familiar to everyone in the Glenair family: Our Same Day Inventory enables us to close the sale when the customer is ready to buy. And at the end of the day, everyone involved comes out a winner: The customer wins because he gets his parts now, instead of waiting weeks or even months for his order; Our sales representatives and international offices win because they're not losing business to the competition over long lead times and poor availability; And Glenair wins because our factories are kept busy producing - and shipping - profitable work.

This April we published a new format of our Same Day Inventory list and distributed the book via our worldwide network of sales reps and Glenair country offices. We sincerely believe, much as Rickenbacker did, that an extensive inventory is the key to closing sales. We also believe that no other single marketing program can match the value our Same Day Inventory has in the eyes of the customer - you just can't beat availability when it comes to selling commercial-off-the-shelf and standard Mil-Spec products.

I hope you will all take the opportunity to brush up on the ever expanding range of part numbers now in stock, in quantity and ready for immediate shipment from Glenair. I also hope you will take the time to promote the benefits of our Same Day Program in your interactions with Glenair customers. Making sure they all get a hand-delivered copy of the book is a great place to start!

And by the way, at the pace we are adding new part numbers to stock, look for a new release of our Same Day Inventory list in the near future. Not content to just stock Mil-Spec accessories, we're continuously adding new commercial accessories, Micro-D connectors, Geo-Marine® products, fiber optic components, and a wide range of other Glenair part numbers to the "Win-Win of Same Day."