SNEWS® Outdoor Survey — it's easy to complete online or by downloading our PDF version

The annual SNEWS® Outdoor Retailer Survey closing deadline is fast approaching. We hope — as we know industry manufacturers hope — you’ll join the many who have already let us know what they think by taking part if you haven’t already to make this year’s results even more compelling, eye-opening and informative than last year’s.

Your opinion as a retailer is valuable and it’s easy to participate. You can take the survey quickly and easily online, sending us the results electronically AND you’ll also qualify for a thank-you gift. Just go to: www.outsidebusinessjournal.com/outdoorsurvey. Results are due by Oct. 15, 2008, so we can tabulate them in time to include in the January 2009 SNEWS Outdoor magazine.

If you don’t want to fill out the survey online, we’ve made it even easier by providing a PDF version of the survey for you to download to your computer and fill out at your leisure — click here to download. You can then either print out the completed survey and fax back to us at 530-268-1973 or email it back to us at survey@snewsnet.com. Either way, we’ll take care of the entry online for you.

For those who have started the survey but haven’t finished: Remember to get back to it. If you are on the same computer, you can go back in to the above link and it should take you back to where you left off. If there is any problem with that, please drop an email or call us at 530-268-8295 so we can answer your questions or help you finish it on the phone. Everybody’s voice is important (and you won’t qualify for our discount if you don’t finish the whole thing.)

As a thank-you for helping us and the industry by giving of your valuable time to share your insights, we are happy to offer one individual, one-year SNEWS® All Access subscription at 50 percent off for new subscribers – that’s a $97.50 savings. The discount is good for you to activate a new subscription for yourself, a manager, employee or friend of the industry, or upgrade from a SNEWS Freebie. (The All Access is far different from a SNEWS® Freebie subscription some of you may have. With a SNEWS® All Access you gain access to all the archives, special features, full survey results, plus you add features such as personal PR posting, printing capability and other cool stuff. A Freebie only gets you the current week’s headline news.)

A few things to know:

• If you have more than one store, please have one buyer or manager take responsibility for answering for your entire group. We do verify all responses, so multiple submissions will be combined into one, and all non-retailer submissions (yes, there are those of you who have tried to skew the results) will be removed.
• Each question needs a response (so we can better track annual changes and so you can get your subscription discount).
• Most of the questions need only a couple of words or names filled in or something checked. The system won’t let you go to the next page unless you’ve put some mark in all the boxes.
• For the last two questions, please take the time to share your wisdom by writing in your thoughts and comments.
• Individual responses will ALWAYS be confidential; we will NEVER share which stores took part or what each said — even with the offer of million-dollar bribes.

Remember, we need completed survey responses by Oct. 15. Once we receive your survey, we will email you instructions on how to activate your discount subscription, so be sure to include a valid email. If you have any general questions, please call the SNEWS® office, 530-268-8295, or email survey@snewsnet.com. And if you missed the 2008 survey results, check them out at www.outsidebusinessjournal.com/surveys or download the PDF version of the survey for completing offline by clicking here.