May 16 | Peabody, MA | 10-1
Our first show! How exciting! ....or so we thought.
Peabody was really disappointing for us. Here's some of the things we were expecting when we got there: a crowd (even if it was small), the manager to be at least somewhat excited that we were there, an endcap full of Duncan yo-yos, and to have a good location to demonstrate in. Here's what we got: nobody there but regular foot traffic; a very lackluster manager; an endcap with Duncans, Yomegas, YoYoBalls, some anime yo-yos, and some really cheap, crappy wooden ones; and tossed aside like a second thought.
One major problem with this show that we would later find to be true with all the shows is the lack of advertising. You would think that if a company was sending representatives to your store to demonstrate product and help your sales, you would let people know. Instead, we just ended up as some memo on the desk of the store manager and that's it. I don't know if the problem is with corporate or with the individual stores, but either way, this whole thing was handled really poorly and that's a damn shame. Not only for us as demonstrators, but also for the stores, yo-yo sales, and for getting more people into yo-yoing.
With that out of the way, the first big issue was that we really didn't know what to do or how to set up. So, we set ourselves near the yo-yo endcap with just a banner. The directions on what to do that we were given by Duncan were for if we had a crowd. Which, of course, we did not at all. So, we just hung around, yo-yoed, and greeted people who seemed semi interested. For the people who didn't just keep walking, we asked if they wanted to try. Most people seemed really not interested. It also didn't help that the people who were coming in were mostly either parents without their kids or people on a mission for what toys they wanted. There were a few exceptions to this, but we were off to a rough start.
I guess there's not much else to say about this demo. It was pretty dull. Oh and going along with the dull theme, apparently they don't play music in T'R'U's. Whatever. At any rate, we were pretty glad to get out of that store and were really hoping that the next one would be better.
Shoutouts go to: that really cute 20-something Asian girl who was totally interested in learning tricks and who Nate and I were interested in doing tricks to (if you catch my drift), that random guy wanting a Metal Zero, that employee who reminded us of Meredith from The Office, and last, but definitely not least, Mike R. Mike R was an employee that was totally awesome. He was what we thought that toy store employees should be like. He also hung around with us for a while and learned some yo-yo tricks. He even got as advanced as Braintwister! Mike R, we love you.
Quick video from our Peabody show.
