This would have been up sooner but I've been beat for the last two days and haven't had the energy. So without further adieu
Gen con Day 6,
I roll out of bed exhausted, barley functional. Too many days without sleep. Too many days spent being infomercial guy. Ugh.
K-biz finds some more magnet packs we didn’t cut and feels like we need to do them right now. So I don’t get out of the hotel until 9:30. The dealer’s room opens at 10am and our booth isn’t set up.
K-biz: hey I’ll be down around 10:30.
Me (to myself): F-ing great.
I try to stop of me daily breakfast burrito but to no avail. Time is ticking and I don’t want to be late.
I get down to the dealer’s room and finish setting up at 9:55. The doors open and the initial rush I was hoping for never comes. The day drags out and sales are much slower than Saturday. I get some final shopping done, pick up a dragon which breathes smoke for BZ, and some final pieces of swag. At days end we’ve sold 25 boards, which is about double Thursday or Friday, but still less than Saturday. We pack up and get the hell out of dodge. Actually I do most of the packing and K-biz sits in the car.
So the final figures for the weekend: total sales 85 but with the return, 83. I outsold K-biz by a little more than double, 718$ in cash sales to me, 304$ in cash sales to him. We also did 391 in credit sales, most of which were also by me.
For being Mr. professional, K-biz really doesn’t know much about selling.
I had forgotten how condescending he is at times and really doesn’t seem to give people any respect. Maybe I’m just more genuine.
Here is an example from the trip home.
We get a ways out of Indianapolis and swing into a steak and shake for dinner. Our waitress is a bit chatty(friendly) as many people in the middle of the country are. She asks where we are from, we tell her NY and CT. And she asks us about 9-11, were we there when it happened, ect. Here’s our responses.
Me: No, I was in Groton, just across the sound, but I had friends who were there, only a block away or so. It was just horrible. They couldn’t really speak about it for weeks afterward.
Waitress: That must have been awful. I cried when it was happening.
K-biz: I wasn’t there at the time, but I wish I had been.
(I’m thinking that he was implying he could have tried to help or something, but he continues)
K-biz: Property in the city was really cheap after it happened and if I was there I could have cashed in.
Waitress:…..(look of disbelief and rightly so)
We’re talking about the most emotional thing that’s happened to the country in the past 10 years and here is K-biz babbling about not being able to make a profit off of it.
I steer the conversation back to the horror and into new terrorist threats and it ends up being a good conversation after K-biz shuts up some. Now I’m no master of reading people and their attitudes, ect, but K-biz just is clueless.
Also he is clueless as to direction, as we got lost just about every time he was in charge of getting us anywhere we didn’t have map quest directions to.
So to end this lovely trip.
Me: Hey, it would be a lot easier for me if we could drive back into Ct and I wouldn’t have to take the train. (As I trained into the city and hauled all my shit there for the start of this trip, it seems fair to me.)
K-biz: ……
A 10 minutes pass
K-biz: I’m worried about traffic. If we get in after 6am we’re going to hit a lot of it.
Me: It shouldn’t be a problem. (I run the numbers in my head going the speed limit we’ll be there around 6am. I’m driving so this won’t be a problem)
K-biz: yeah but there could be a lot of traffic.
Me: we’ll if its getting close we could take the tappen ze bridge and miss all of the city traffic.
K-biz: ……..
A few hours go by. K-biz passes out. He wakes up about 2 hours outside the city. It’s a little after 3am.
K-biz: we made good time. I should be able to drop you off at grand central station.
Me: Actually I wanted to drive into Ct.
K-biz: … oh … Well … When would you bring the car back?
Me: What?
K-biz: the car, Tracy will need it this week so when would you bring it back.
Me: what are you talking about?
K-biz: She will need the car and
Me: I get that. Where do you plan to be for this trip? Do expect me to drop you off at some train station along the way?
K-biz: What do you mean?
(so apparently at this point he thinks I’m going to drive him to his house, then want to borrow the car to drive back to Ct alone, which is insane.
Me: I want to drive back to my place, then you can take the car back to NYC.
K-biz: oh .. .. I don’t want to drive that far. (this after I’ve busted ass through over half this trip all in one stint. If he was driving we’d still be in no where penn.
Me: (trying to compromise) Ok, well then maybe you can drop me off at the train station in Grenich.
K-biz: I guess I could drop you off in secunus. (this stop is still in jersey and from there I would have to train in to grand central, then back out to ct.)
Me: what would be the sense in that?
We go back and forth about what would be faster. He won’t give an inch and finally I’m just fed up with it and drive us into grand central.
I pull the 6 bags of stuff I have from the car, which is almost more than I can possibly carry and drag it all into the train station.
I get onto the train. It cost 25$ and the ride to new haven takes a little over 2.5 hours, which is more time than it would have taken me to drive all the way to new London and K-biz to drive back to new haven from there. Thankfully BZ takes the day off and comes to pick me up in new haven, otherwise it would have been another 1.5 hours on the train and a cab ride back to the house.
Its fairly safe to say I won’t be taking another of these trips with K-biz again, which is sad as it was going pretty well up to the drive home.
I spend most of Monday half passed out or buzzing around talking about the con. I take Tuesday off too to recuperate.
All in all we did well. We were just 100$ shy of fully recouping the con costs plus the manufacture costs of the boards sold. Hopefully we will generate enough online sales to make that back. We would have done better if there hadn’t been two other stands selling initiative boards. I must say ours was the best and I can only hope the other two guys too a big hit at this con and pack it up.
Oh I also blame them on K-biz as if we had held back our launch until we were ready to go and didn’t have him passing the idea and some demos around last year, I don’t think anyone else would have thought to launch a product like this.
Gen con Day 6,
I roll out of bed exhausted, barley functional. Too many days without sleep. Too many days spent being infomercial guy. Ugh.
K-biz finds some more magnet packs we didn’t cut and feels like we need to do them right now. So I don’t get out of the hotel until 9:30. The dealer’s room opens at 10am and our booth isn’t set up.
K-biz: hey I’ll be down around 10:30.
Me (to myself): F-ing great.
I try to stop of me daily breakfast burrito but to no avail. Time is ticking and I don’t want to be late.
I get down to the dealer’s room and finish setting up at 9:55. The doors open and the initial rush I was hoping for never comes. The day drags out and sales are much slower than Saturday. I get some final shopping done, pick up a dragon which breathes smoke for BZ, and some final pieces of swag. At days end we’ve sold 25 boards, which is about double Thursday or Friday, but still less than Saturday. We pack up and get the hell out of dodge. Actually I do most of the packing and K-biz sits in the car.
So the final figures for the weekend: total sales 85 but with the return, 83. I outsold K-biz by a little more than double, 718$ in cash sales to me, 304$ in cash sales to him. We also did 391 in credit sales, most of which were also by me.
For being Mr. professional, K-biz really doesn’t know much about selling.
I had forgotten how condescending he is at times and really doesn’t seem to give people any respect. Maybe I’m just more genuine.
Here is an example from the trip home.
We get a ways out of Indianapolis and swing into a steak and shake for dinner. Our waitress is a bit chatty(friendly) as many people in the middle of the country are. She asks where we are from, we tell her NY and CT. And she asks us about 9-11, were we there when it happened, ect. Here’s our responses.
Me: No, I was in Groton, just across the sound, but I had friends who were there, only a block away or so. It was just horrible. They couldn’t really speak about it for weeks afterward.
Waitress: That must have been awful. I cried when it was happening.
K-biz: I wasn’t there at the time, but I wish I had been.
(I’m thinking that he was implying he could have tried to help or something, but he continues)
K-biz: Property in the city was really cheap after it happened and if I was there I could have cashed in.
Waitress:…..(look of disbelief and rightly so)
We’re talking about the most emotional thing that’s happened to the country in the past 10 years and here is K-biz babbling about not being able to make a profit off of it.
I steer the conversation back to the horror and into new terrorist threats and it ends up being a good conversation after K-biz shuts up some. Now I’m no master of reading people and their attitudes, ect, but K-biz just is clueless.
Also he is clueless as to direction, as we got lost just about every time he was in charge of getting us anywhere we didn’t have map quest directions to.
So to end this lovely trip.
Me: Hey, it would be a lot easier for me if we could drive back into Ct and I wouldn’t have to take the train. (As I trained into the city and hauled all my shit there for the start of this trip, it seems fair to me.)
K-biz: ……
A 10 minutes pass
K-biz: I’m worried about traffic. If we get in after 6am we’re going to hit a lot of it.
Me: It shouldn’t be a problem. (I run the numbers in my head going the speed limit we’ll be there around 6am. I’m driving so this won’t be a problem)
K-biz: yeah but there could be a lot of traffic.
Me: we’ll if its getting close we could take the tappen ze bridge and miss all of the city traffic.
K-biz: ……..
A few hours go by. K-biz passes out. He wakes up about 2 hours outside the city. It’s a little after 3am.
K-biz: we made good time. I should be able to drop you off at grand central station.
Me: Actually I wanted to drive into Ct.
K-biz: … oh … Well … When would you bring the car back?
Me: What?
K-biz: the car, Tracy will need it this week so when would you bring it back.
Me: what are you talking about?
K-biz: She will need the car and
Me: I get that. Where do you plan to be for this trip? Do expect me to drop you off at some train station along the way?
K-biz: What do you mean?
(so apparently at this point he thinks I’m going to drive him to his house, then want to borrow the car to drive back to Ct alone, which is insane.
Me: I want to drive back to my place, then you can take the car back to NYC.
K-biz: oh .. .. I don’t want to drive that far. (this after I’ve busted ass through over half this trip all in one stint. If he was driving we’d still be in no where penn.
Me: (trying to compromise) Ok, well then maybe you can drop me off at the train station in Grenich.
K-biz: I guess I could drop you off in secunus. (this stop is still in jersey and from there I would have to train in to grand central, then back out to ct.)
Me: what would be the sense in that?
We go back and forth about what would be faster. He won’t give an inch and finally I’m just fed up with it and drive us into grand central.
I pull the 6 bags of stuff I have from the car, which is almost more than I can possibly carry and drag it all into the train station.
I get onto the train. It cost 25$ and the ride to new haven takes a little over 2.5 hours, which is more time than it would have taken me to drive all the way to new London and K-biz to drive back to new haven from there. Thankfully BZ takes the day off and comes to pick me up in new haven, otherwise it would have been another 1.5 hours on the train and a cab ride back to the house.
Its fairly safe to say I won’t be taking another of these trips with K-biz again, which is sad as it was going pretty well up to the drive home.
I spend most of Monday half passed out or buzzing around talking about the con. I take Tuesday off too to recuperate.
All in all we did well. We were just 100$ shy of fully recouping the con costs plus the manufacture costs of the boards sold. Hopefully we will generate enough online sales to make that back. We would have done better if there hadn’t been two other stands selling initiative boards. I must say ours was the best and I can only hope the other two guys too a big hit at this con and pack it up.
Oh I also blame them on K-biz as if we had held back our launch until we were ready to go and didn’t have him passing the idea and some demos around last year, I don’t think anyone else would have thought to launch a product like this.
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