Good Guys Spring National - Last Day

Well, I was so tired yesterday after a day of being in the booth and then breaking down, that I fell asleep before posting to the blog. I had every intention of providing a final update yesterday, but my eyes and body did not cooperate. The Good Guys Spring National ended yesterday and was a pretty busy day for all involved.

The weather was perfect for a car show and cruise in. The people attending seemed to really enjoy the sun and the warm weather. It was a wonderful change from all the wet weather Arizona has been experiencing for the last 3 weeks. Everyone seemed to be in a great mood yesterday and there were quite a number of people wandering around.

As usual, the cars were a sight to behold. At one point, all you had to do was to stand in one spot and watch the parade of cars go by. You can see by some of the attached pictures that the cars just kept driving. Eventually, I ran out of battery for the camera, there were so many cars to take pictures of. The vendors were both inside and outside, so if you got tired of wandering out in the sun, you could go into the very large tent area and view many vendors there too. We happened to be located inside, and it was very nice to not have to deal with the weather changes. The best part about being inside is the lack of wind. It is always a challenge to keep everything on your table and the tent in one place when the winds kick up.

I also managed to not get sunburned (which is a regular occurrence when we are outside) because we were located in that huge tent. If you ever have an opportunity to come by our booth, you would usually see me in a very large brimmed hat and a bandanna, covering as much of my skin as possible. It was so nice to not have to bundle up to protect against the sun.

On a positive note, we did get several invitations to attend other car and monster truck events that are coming up in the next few months. It is always more enjoyable to be invited as a vendor to events instead of asking to be in an event. The promoter has the opportunity to review how you respond to people and can better tell if you as a vendor would be a good fit for their upcoming event. We have usually had very good luck at events that we were invited to. That is not because the promoters are hard to deal with, but because the promoter can choose the vendor that would fit in well with their venue. We are looking forward to updating our event schedule as soon as we finalize all the new invitations.

Since we were still "on the road" yesterday, I did not take the time to weigh myself for the weekly weight update. That will be done tomorrow (I was too tired this morning to remember to weigh myself also...something like drinking a whole pot of coffee before realizing that I forgot to weigh myself...ooops...).

Until tomorrow...

Good Guys Spring Nationals - Day 2

Today is going to be a relatively short talk about how much fun we had at the Good Guys Spring Nationals in Scottsdale today (because I am VERY tired). As you can see by some of the posted pictures, there was a wide array of cars to look at and drool over. It is very amazing to see the variety of cars that people have been working on. We have seen car shows before, but not as varied as this Good Guys show has been.

They again had the races, but I didn't have the time to go out and watch. We had all kinds of people visiting our booth today, so we didn't have too much time to wander around and look. The pictures were taken on our brief times away from the booth. As a general rule, we didn't spend more than 5 minutes away, didn't want the other person to get overwhelmed.

On a business perspective, this was awesome advertising for our business. People got to wander by and see what we had to offer for sale. They got to touch and feel what we did. Potential customers can place a face and voice with the name, website and product. It is much easier to make Internet sales after the customer has seen the product work first hand. We had several opportunities to demonstrate our waterless cleaning products on the really neat cars. This show also appeared to be a good fishing ground for other promoters looking for vendors for their upcoming events. We received several invitations to other upcoming car, truck and motorcycle events while at the booth. The neat thing is that the promoters of the other venues could see how we conducted ourselves and how we presented ourselves. This way, they know what to expect for their event. It is almost like having an interview. This is a great way to locate other events in the Phoenix area.

If you want to see what other events we will be getting involved in, stay tuned to our Schedule of Events page on our website. Once we finalize the upcoming events, they are posted on the schedule. If possible, we also include an address and a website. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at hawgwash1@yahoo.com.

Tomorrow will be the last day of the Good Guys show. We are looking forward to this, but also it is a sad time since we have had so much fun here. The people we have met here have been awesome and very welcoming. We look forward to doing more Good Guys shows in the future.

Until tomorrow...

Good Guys Spring Nationals - Day 1

Well, today was the first day of the Good Guys Spring Nationals here in Scottsdale, AZ. It was a beautiful day to begin a three day show. The sun was out, the air was cool, and the cars were HOT! I took a lot of pictures, and now the most difficult part about this blog is trying to choose which cars to post... Too bad there is no photo album on this application.

As you can see there were some really cool restorations and some very HOT car modifications. These are only a few of the cars that were present at the event...and today is only Friday. I can't wait to see what tomorrow will bring. They also had a timed car driving course that we got to watch occasionally from our booth. The fastest time, and the new course record was 30.9 seconds, by a woman driver of a Camero. I didn't catch the name, but nobody else could come close to posting the times she did. The next closest time was 32.9 seconds, but another Camero driver... It was really fun to watch them drive this short course. You can really see what these cars are made for...

The attendees today were primarily here to meet each other after the winter break and to catch up with what they have done with their cars. They then wandered around the vendors booths to do some basic scoping out of what is available this time. The attendees we got to talk with were wonderful people and full of life. We had a lot of fun talking about cars and motorcycles to all that came by. Believe it or not, with all the chattering going on, the day flew by. I was surprised how fast 5 pm came along. By the time we slowed down, my feet were killing me. The good news is that we were so busy chatting with people that you didn't notice your discomfort until it was time to close down. My dogs are definitely barking now. This is one of the best ways to get our name and business out to the people who would use our services. If you ever wondered about effective advertising, attending a show like this (assuming you have a car-related product or service) is definitely the way to go.

We expect to see many more people and cars tomorrow, since it is Saturday. It is going to be hard to manage the booth when you can hear all the cars driving around outside. I will have to find all kinds of excuses to go out to the bathroom and take my camera. Even today, everywhere you looked, you saw very cool cars. There were some still in the improvement stages, but even those, you knew, were going to be real head-turners once all the paint and interior work is completed. I will keep you posted on how the event goes tomorrow, along with posting more pictures of the cars.

Until tomorrow...

Good Guys Car Show PreStart

Well, as promised today we update you on the preparations for the Good Guys Car show in Scottsdale this weekend. We got to WestWorld around 10 am this morning in preparation for setting up our booth. It was absolutely amazing how organized this group is. They already had vendor packets put together, they had people in golf carts driving you to your specific location. There was none of that vague waving..."your spot is out there...." . The problem with the vague waving is that you may end up setting up in the wrong location. That is bad enough, but to have to break everything down and relocate it either 10 feet or more, that is what makes you go crazy.

This group knew exactly where each and every vendor went. They also not only had the spots marked off, but they had name papers hanging on the spots so there was absolutely NO QUESTION about where you were supposed to set up. It is so nice to deal with professionals... Can you tell I am so far in love with the organizers of the Good Guy Car shows? If this show pans out as well as anticipated, we will be following the Good Guy Shows in between all of the motorcycle rallies we do.

The pictures you see on top are just a few of the really neat cars that showed up today. Tomorrow there should be so many cars, we won't be able to take enough pictures. These two cars were just outside near the RVs that came in early in anticipation of this event. The people attending take their cars for drives all around Scottsdale. It must be really neat to be a resident of Scottsdale to see all of these custom rod and cars driving around. Tomorrow we will take pictures of some of the custom cars that are in the booths and that are entered in the car show. The tough part will be trying to decide which cars to post on the blog...

The Good Guys show starts tomorrow at 8 AM and runs to 5 PM. It goes from 8 -5 on Saturday also. Sunday hours are from 8 - 3PM. Hopefully some of you will be able to attend. If you can, please come on by our booth to say hi. If you couldn't guess, we will be the Waterless Car Wash Booth inside the big tent. If you have any questions, please feel free to either leave a comment or e-mail us at hawgwash1@yahoo.com. We will not be answering e-mails until later in the day, so please don't feel ignored, we will get back to you. Tomorrow we will talk about the open event.

Until tomorrow...

Preparing for Events and Shows

Today we spent the majority of the day preparing for our first major show of 2010. It is amazing how much work is needed to prepare for a large show. As you are aware, we have been doing Outdoor Festivals at the various Bashas' stores around Arizona. This upcoming show will be our first multi-day event this fiscal year.

Even though this show, the Good Guys 1st Spring Nationals will be held in Scottsdale, AZ March 12-14th, we are preparing as if we were going to be on the road for the next six months. The reason we prepare so much is similar to why Olympic athletes prepare so hard for their competition. It is always better to plan and practice, and practice and plan before the event. That way, when you get there, you are ready for anything that may come your way. We need to be sure we have everything for the show, so that we don't have to keep running back to the house to pick up the items we forgot. We are expecting a fairly large attendance, and again, sales are based on numbers.

Preparing for a car show, motorcycle rally, or RV rally is almost the same type of work. For each event, you need to have an estimate of the attendees. Once you have an idea of how many people will be there, then you can begin to estimate how much product you need to bring to the event. One of the worst things that can happen to a vendor is to not have brought enough product for sale. Some may look on that as a good thing, but if you left product at home, then selling out at a show is a bad thing because the remainder of your inventory is sitting at home.

Inventory is money that has yet to be converted. The real trick is to figure out how much inventory you need for a show and to sell almost all of that inventory. Otherwise, you have an investment of money sitting on a shelf until the next show comes along. You can't spend inventory, you can only spend money. In this economy, it has been very difficult to predict the purchasing patterns of event attendees. It used to be that you can look at the prior year and predict a modest increase in sales for the current year. Now, it is a lot more difficult to predict any increase in sales over the prior year. It becomes especially difficult when this may be the first time you attend an event.

This blog is not intended to frighten new business owners from participating in events, but it is intended to show that you really have to plan prior to larger events. It is a very fine line we all walk when we attend multi-day events, you have to balance the quantity of inventory to the anticipated sales. With luck this event with the Good Guys will be a very exciting and busy event. We will keep you posted as the event progresses.

Until tomorrow...