May 17 | Dedham, MA | 10-1
Dedham is exactly the kind of place you would imagine if you only heard it's name. It's a town that shares a border with one of the worst parts of Boston. Needless to say, the Toys 'R' Us in such a place shared qualities similar to the entire town.
The first thing we noticed upon arriving in the parking lot was the employee cars parked all in a row and Jeff said to me "I wonder where the employees are supposed to park" or something to that effect. The store was not yet open, so I decided to play the good ol' match the employee to the vehicle game. We were informed to show up 15 minutes early, so when that time rolled around we decided to follow an employee into the exit door. A manager came to the door, and at first gave us the strangest look. Then almost simultaneously we all thought and vocalized something similar to "Yo-Yos". He was a portly man, who was mostly bald. His bright red shirt and his far too short khaki pants only made me want to chuckle more as he walked us to the area in which we would set up.
We took inventory of what they had stocked. and noticed there were only two Duncan Pulses (our most frequently sold yo-yo at this point). We requested a restock and he informed us that there were several more in the store and he would get 'someone on that' (which never happened). The display was much like the others we had seen so far. There were other brands of yo-yos including one that depicted a character from an anime/strategy game series that I later noticed children recognizing. We did our best to clean the display up as we awaited a table for our setup. What I could have only guessed was the actual manager of this store then came out briefly and asked us very kindly and with much interest how we were doing and after our table arrived, ordered one of the employees to go get us a table cloth.
This was the first show in which we realized it would be a very good idea to set up all of our yo-yos by price point, left to right with the corresponding yo-yos to try sitting in front of them. This proved to be the best way to make the walk ins who came by easily understand the product line.
The foot traffic was very slow, which I attribute to it being early on a Sunday in Dedham, Massachusetts. Some of the people that entered the store were surprised to see such a spectacle in a toy store. Most were enthused. There were several people who tried the yo-yos and reminisced about their younger days. It wasn't until afternoon that a good number of children came into the store and we began to do some teaching.
Shout out to the man that confused me with an employee and asked me where the bubbles were, and when I tried to start to explain to him that I had no idea and that I wasn't an employee said "oh yes.. your a... yo-yo".
Another shout out is in order for the yo-yo kid who showed up as we were packing up. He had a metal yo-yo clutched in his hand and two on his belt loop in yomega holsters. They were sadly all yomega yo-yos, but he did show us a neat trick in which you wrap your string around your head, and then quickly remove it. You were the coolest!
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