We have published a table to help you figure out what size soccer field you'd like to build or help match a set of soccer goals to an already existing field. A soccer field can vary quite a bit for players 16 to 35 years old and even more for those outside that range. If you have any questions about your field or the goals you'll need for your field, we'd love to help you answer your questions.

• Recommended Soccer Field Size, Goal Size and Team Size

Traditionally, the Friday after Thanksgiving is called "Black Friday". It's the day when the Christmas buying rush kicks off and many retailer income statements shift from negative (Red) to positive (Black). On Black Friday, Internet retailers don't worry to much that shoppers are running through the malls instead of their websites. In fact, since most people have 'Black Friday' off, it makes sense to spend that time out and about with family and friends and offline. However, everyone is back in the office and on the web the following Monday - "Cyber Monday"!

We at OpenYard.com do our best to make it Cyber Monday throughout most of the year with great deals everyday, but none the less, happy shopping or 'price checking' and enjoy this wonderful Internet shopping day! We hope you find what you're looking for on our site and if you have any questions at all, please contact us!

We thought maybe you'd be curious if we were running any huge Black Friday blow-out sales. Essentially, we run a Black Friday blow-out sales all year. All year long, we strive to provide the best prices and customer service in the most efficient and effective way possible! If you have any questions, just contact us. All orders placed during the Thanksgiving 2008 Holiday Weekend will be shipping out between Monday and Tuesday (Dec 1st - 2nd) ! Happy Shopping!

We just broke down all of our soccer nets into an easy to read table. You can start by finding your size goal and then by choosing the material, color, mesh width. When you've found the net you're looking for, just click on it.

Here's a link: Replacement Soccer Net Chart.

#1 - We've got a brand new logo.

We consulted with the guys over at Blonde Creative and they helped us out quite a bit with the process - they've got a great team over there.

#2 - We upgraded our phone system.

While we did implement a pretty fancy phone system that will help us route calls better, we made it easy to connect with customer service. There will be no need to push a number to talk to a department, unless you want to connect to particular person. In that case, you'll just need their extension.

When you call, you'll have the choice between Option 2 ( Order Tracking Request ), Option 3 ( Sales & Support ), Option 9 ( Employee Directory ). Hopefully this doesn't annoy anyone too much - we've designed the system to help us streamline our customer service processes and ultimately be better at helping you.

The Wall Street Journal referenced OpenYard LLC in the an article discussing entrepreneurial ambitions within the workforce".

Please, take a moment to watch a video I made to help you get a better feel about OpenYard.com as we strive to support your future sports equipment purchases.

Labels: videos

So far this summer, we've given you access to the Stackhouse product line. We've also developed a mobile OpenYard website. Another thing we've done is upgraded our servers so everything continues running fast and efficiently. As always, if you have any problems with our site or finding anything, please contact us. We look forward to supplying your with sports equipment this season!

We're doing our best to stay on top of everything but our prices have jumped an average of 10% across the board as we head into Summer. Our mission at Openyard.com is provide quality customer service, great products and great prices. Since we run our margins pretty low (and focus on our efficiencies), we're forced to be a little more dynamic with our prices at times. Because of this, you might notice that the prices advertised on the page are different than the prices you ultimately see in your cart. There's a great technical reason for this and you can trust that it in no way is meant to deceive you. We like to keep Openyard.com as a 'what-you-see-is-what-you-get' shop. We don't like running promotions or sales. All we want to be is your place online that you can count on for good customer service, great products and low prices.

The sporting equipment world has shown that it's not protected against outside economic activities. We're not normally an industry of rapid price changes. Just to give you some perspective, one of our manufacturers changed prices mid-year for the first time in 55 years of operation!

So listen up everyone! We're all into sports. We've all know what it's like to not give up and not give in. Price changes like this are very scary!!! But Open Yard is here to stay to stay and we hope you are too! We're doing whatever it takes to make sure we'll be in business for years to come and we hope you're coming with us. And just to prove it, we're offering Email Pep talks free of charge. Just use our contact box, tell us your situation, and we'll send some inspiration your way!

Calculating prices for truck ship products like this accurately and efficiently is a real tough problem in our industry and I imagine many others. When UPS or FedEx won't ship your item, it means you've got an unusual item and not necessarily a heavy one. UPS, for example, won't ship volleyball standards because of their height even though they are relatively light weight. A lacrosse goal comes in two sections, one square 6FT tall by 6FT wide and another triangle 6FT wide by 7FT tall. Then you've got a soccer goal with narrow posts up to 24ft long or a 10 inch wide bleacher planks or a pair of goose neck football goal posts. All these items are truck ship and all have very different dimensions and weight densities. To make matters worse, shipping these items is very expensive so if we don't do it correctly it can create negative financial experiences which go both ways.

A common solution is having you call in every time you'd like to order any item that ships truck. This might be the most accurate but it creates a lot of costs to our company and can be an inconvenience for you. A complicated order process decreases order volumes and requires additional work. Ultimately, these costs get added into the price of the product so this solution doesn't necessarily save the most money. Also, we believe a website should be full-service 100% of the time. While we don't mind taking the extra step to talk to you and calculate shipping for you, we don't like relying completely on this solution. This is why we calculate our truck shipping automatically and adjust our algorithms overtime in order to offer the most accurate and competitive shipping quotes. We believe that the efficiency produced by this method will ultimately equal a lower overall product price and a better overall customer service experience. If any of our shipping prices don't look correct to you, please let us know and we'll make changes.

As always - growing our business is about building great trust with our customers. This is why we continue to highlight the problems we face together and our solutions because all our decisions effect mutually effect us. If you've got any other ideas for us or a different solution, please let us know!

Labels: shipping