Thursday, March 5

Day 6

Today was such a great day! We were all able to sleep in a little bit because our first meeting was with VF and didn't start until 1pm. A couple of us got a little bored in the hotel and Nathan suggested we go see the local grocery stores. We ended up going to two, one upscale and one normal. The upscale grocery store didn't have very many Honduran products. The majority of the products were from the US or Europe. It looked like any other grocery store here in the US, but with many more guards. The other grocery store was more what we were expecting. I found the largest carrot I have ever seen! We found out the bag boys in the stores are actually only paid in tips. They don't get a salary but they do get lunch, and many of them go to school for part of the day and bag groceries the rest. When we got back to the hotel we had to get ready for the VF tour. We met with many of the managers at VF and even the man who started the facility! They had a short presentation prepared for us as well as a tour of the Red Kap facility. We found out that in that one facility they manufacture about 1350 lots (a lot is a sku, but doesn't include sizes)! After the tour we went back to the hotel to get ready for the reception Maersk and the NC Ports put on to celebrate the new link between Puerto Cortes and the Port of Wilmington! It was held at a new boutique hotel called Isabella. We met many executives from Maersk's sales department as well as two of their commercial managers. Overall the day and night were pretty amazing!