It takes a lot of hard work to make it in retail, but the rewards of offering quality products and great service make all that hard work worth it. The Boss, three of my favorite fellow coworkers, and I just got back from a lot of hard work out in Salt Lake City, UT. We were out there to attend the Outdoor Retailer trade show, which is a gathering of 40,000 or so vendors, retailers, media personnel, sponsored athletes, and long-underwear models. We go out there for a number of reasons: to check out next year’s winter gear, to complain to our reps about things that make our customers complain, and to get the inside scoop on spectacular rock-bottom-priced closeout items that are sure to set our sales on fire. We also happen to drink a lot of free beer, which many vendors offer as gratitude for the business we did last year and in appreciation of the business we’ll do next year. We, of course, accept the free beer because it is customary and the last thing we want is to appear rude.
I would say that the free beer goodwill stops there, but there may very well be an ulterior motive. Our reps always seem to wait until we’ve had a couple free beers before they pull out the list of show specials, which is a secret list of spectacular rock-bottom-priced closeout items that are going quick and need to be purchased immediately because they’ll be gone tomorrow if they aren’t gone by the end of the day. I’ve been to a lot of shows, and I’m starting to notice that the large dent we put in that list is oddly congruent to the large dent we put in the keg. We see many different vendors at the show, and many different lists, and well, we work very hard.
The first day at OR is the All Mountain Demo, where we work especially hard, like dogs in fact, tele skiing on next year’s tele skis. From first chair to last, with only a lunch break in between, we put our noses to the grindstone and search for hidden powder stashes to be used as testing grounds to highlight a particular ski’s characteristics, so that when asked by discerning customers, we will respond with as much knowledge and experience as possible. It took half of the day and a lot of hard work, but eventually we found many hidden stashes on a part of the mountain that had been closed earlier in the day, so that all the fresh snow that had been piling up overnight could be bombed for avalanche control. As soon as they opened the gate once the area was deemed safe, we made our way along a traverse until we discovered a steep, wide open swath of the mountain covered in a fresh blanket of waist deep Wasatch powder, which was perfect for the very hard work of testing the powder-surfing qualities of many different tele skis.
Committed as we were to the job at hand, we kept going back to that swath, over and over again, always finding more fresh lines, until we got to know the skis as though they were our own, so that when we mark them down to 50 percent off at the end of next season, and finally sell a pair or two, we will be able to describe from firsthand experience what those particular skis are capable of.
By the end of the demo, we were exhausted from such a hard day’s work. I worked so hard I could barely walk, and for three days after my body felt like it had been run over by a truck loaded with multiple pallets of spectacular rock-bottom-priced closeout items heading to Vermont. I hadn’t had enough days on the hill prior to the trip to get my legs in shape for such a hard day’s work, and all the free 3.2-percent beer in the world couldn’t numb all of the pain. But a sore body is a small price to pay for the experience and knowledge I gained which I will apply on the sales floor in the name of great service.
On our first day back to work after the show, for some reason, our fellow coworkers weren’t too interested in hearing about all of our hard work. When the spectacular rock-bottom-priced closeout items arrived at the shop on multiple pallets a few days later, amassing to nothing more than a spectacular assortment of random poles, bindings, and roller skis, they shook their heads and asked whose spectacular idea it was to buy this stuff. As we started digging through the boxes, we were suddenly reminded of two golden rules: free beer and buying don’t go together, and if an item is still too expensive at 50 percent off, you know you’re in trouble. Next year we’ll have to work like dogs just to remember that.
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