To all,
Before beginning this letter I would like to let everyone know on Wednesday 11/18 between 2-6am CST, elitefts.com will be offline for maintenance. This will allow us to provide an even better user experience throughout the Holiday Season.
Keeping you updated…
Earlier this year, I wrote to you explaining some of the communication opportunities that we missed during the rollout of our new site at the end of January. Thanks to the overwhelming feedback and valued input from readers like you—coupled with ongoing technological investments—I am pleased to share that today’s elitefts.com is much improved from a year ago and provides an even greater user experience.
But we are not stopping there.
We are continuing to refine the site and experiment with new technologies designed to make the information you seek more readily available. Moreover, we are currently testing new commerce capabilities with the shopping cart and, as you might have noticed this week, have begun initiating a series of pre-holiday sales. Our “Better Than Black Friday” Sale was the first of our pre-holiday “tests.” Once we have had a chance to refine the most recent site changes, we will deploy a series of additional sales in the coming days, with a deadline of completing our updates before Black Friday. The goal is to then extend our promotions across the entire store.
Remaining steadfast in our mission.
Our goal is to remain the industry’s top information and equipment destination for strength athletes or anyone else that places training at a high priority in their life. And we will continue to do everything in our power to deliver best-in-class service while striving to create the greatest possible customer experience each and every time.
RECENT: Staying Committed to the Future: The New elitefts.com
We do this by offering a robust “one-stop” platform that offers more than 17,000 items, ranging from strength equipment, powerlifting gear, bars and weights, to apparel, a full range of accessories, supplements and books and multimedia; complemented by the widest range of free educational resources available anywhere, including direct access to world-class strength athletes, coaches, and trainers.
Staying responsive to our great asset: you, the reader.
We respect as well as anyone that the time, money, effort and dedication you put into your training goals are valuable commodities. In response, our entire drive is centered around inspiring readers to maximize their own training and personal development. As evidenced in this letter to you, we will listen and learn from customer feedback, comments, and thoughts to improve the total user experience—whether that means making certain that you find the latest authoritative training information, locating the products you want, or making sure your transaction is handled promptly and professionally.
Looking ahead.
Given the significant operational changes and new site accomplishments, one could imagine it might be challenging to find time to chart a course for the next few years. But as we thought strategically these past 18 months, our commitment to the future became even more important. This means balancing all of those elements that have been essential to launching and refining the new site, while anticipating those the future will demand in order to sustain that level of excellence and achieve even greater heights. During this typically “quiet” period before the holidays, we have been busier than ever planning for 2016—from new product innovations and offerings to experiential events such as seminars and continued education related initiatives.
WATCH: Table Talk — Curing Common Powerlifter Pain
In closing, I just want to say thank you for being an extremely valued part of our family. Training is an intense, personal journey upon which we are proud to help you travel. To that end, I again encourage you to tell us how we are doing. We want to hear from you.
P.S. On a more personal note, I recently started posting an ongoing series of industry/business-related blogs. In these writings, I’ve decide to take the filter off and lay out what I see as the truth about what's really going on behind the scenes in the strength and fitness industry. And sometimes, things will get ugly. Real ugly. But I also am as passionate with my praises as I am with my critiques. I encourage you to give them a read.
Live, Learn, Pass On
Dave Tate
Founder Elitefts.com Inc
Dave's Coaching Blog
Thank you for continuously providing great content free of charge. As a purely recreational lifter, I am much indebted to you and rest of the elitefts team for giving me insights I could not possibly have reached on my own. Thank you.