Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

WalMart Pokemon day

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Maybe next time allow the PTO's and Tournament organizers do them. These "Reps" that were suppose to show up with supplies sound really unreliable.

Ever have a feeling you will see them appear on ebay sometime soon?
 
Concerned Parent said:
Out of the 6 stores listed as running the event none of them actually did. They didn’t get the stuff, the person who was going to run the event didn’t show, or both and none of the stores had the exclusive starter deck. When we were at the store on Marks one of the Wal-Mart employees had us ask the people stocking the card game shelves (Legends distributor) about the event. When we did they told us that they had to cancel it since it a Wal-Mart employees was supposed to be running it but none of them would (I thought it was supposed to be a volunteer Pokemon player not a Wal-Mart employee?). Eventually they gave us our one pack each and said they would be at one of the other stores from 2-4 even though it says it’s supposed to be 10-12. The thing is though one of my friends went there later and the store didn’t have any of the items (which mean they obviously took it with them). Someone else we know went to the store Legends was at from 2-4 and they said you had to be 12 and under to get anything (obviously they should not be allowed to do anything like this again since it defiantly seems like they signed up with no intentions of doing anything they were supposed too).

EDIT: Who was supposed to run these events (Wal-Mart employee, Professor, or one of the distributors)? Also is there a list of who signed up to run these events?
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from what i know it was for professors .... there are 3 in nevada, me, dukefirebird, and pikachika ... pikachika was out of town, dukefirebird, working and i had a store on rainbow which was much like what hapened to the other stores ... why the other NV store were listed, i dont know cause from what i know, the only walmart that had a volunteer was the one on rainbow (me) unless there was an out of state prof that was supposed to come or something, or PTO(i dont know) ...
 
The way I understood this to work.
The event is being held at Wal-Mart.
POP sends the distributor the supplies for the event.
The distributor of the cards are the ones responsible for getting the supplies to the store, Making sure of the place to play, have a person from the representative be there.
Then a Professor or other volunteer shows up to help out & probably do the demoing.

It worked like that around here. Mainly because I put in a little effort beforehand & got with the distributor. The person I talked to was at the store that I worked & his boss was at another.

The only real problem we had was the Wal-Mart exclusive theme decks were sent to another store, so I just went there & bought them.

Next time there should be more organization though.
 
The stops I heard about (This is from the Oregon area) all the wal-marts had no idea who we were or what we were talking about. Proffessors were at each "Event" doing a bunch of nothing cuz there was nothing we COULD do. My store was selling ONLY the trainer kit 2 and a crapload of yu-gi-oh cards.

Bought some junk, went to a video game store, and came back home. Waste of a day considering how early i had to get up and how long of a drive it was.

I hate wal-mart.
 
i was to team up with the Hubbs at walmart out in union park(florida), but it was a total bust!! no-one knew anything about it. when we found someone who knew, there was no product for demos, no tables,chairs, nada!we were then told we could use product from the shelves, but they had none to spare.IMO,this was very poorly organized. better luck next time.(if there is a next time that is)
 
Concerned Parent: Don't blame the Prof's that volunteered. First off, not every location had a prof volunteer for it. Second, prof's were told to just show up and demo, and not do anything else. Those that went above and beyond; to arrange things beforehand, set up using their own materials; major kudos to them!!
Many profs, myself included, had asked for contact info to speak to the distributors beforehand, but couldn't get it.

The saddest thing is that at a lot of the locations had little to no Pokemon product for sale, so what would we have been promoting even if we set up ourselves?

"Hey, Pokemon cards are great fun! Too bad you can't buy any here!"

On another note, I would have been more than happy to run the event.
Have the Prof sign up, send the kit to them directly, give them contact info for the Walmart manager and/or distributor to coordinate with. The special Precons would have had to go directly to the Walmarts, of course.
I don't see how it couldn't have worked better.
 
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I got to my local Wal-Mart right at 10am. They had an area set up in lawn and garden with a display of cards including packs of Crystal Guardians for $3.47/pack. Before the release/shelf date as someone else already said as well. They had the activity books and POP packs but no decks or trainer kits of every kind. They said you were supposed to have brought your own deck and I guess they ended up having a 2 person tournament as most people that showed seemed to have come for the exclusive theme deck. One dad with his 3 kids said he travels over an hour to get the deck but instead left within 5 minutes with just 1 POP pack for each kid. I left my house quickly as I was running late and didn't realize until I got there that I didn't even bring my deck. I wanted to help them demo and such but with no decks or trainer kits there it wasn't really possible. They packed things up by 10:30-10:45 already. Then I heard they had a Madden 07 tournament starting at 11am for XBOX 360 on a 61" TV. At 11am there were 3 people signed up in total. I beat both of the other people that signed up (one being a Wal-Mart employee that was working the Pokemon day that flopped). So I assumed I had won the 'tourney' and a $75 giftcard. But then they say the tourney is scheduled until 5pm and people still had time to sign up. I think around 1pm some people were still signing up. They ended up with 10 people. I had to play the Wal-Mart employee a 2nd time because they said they messed up the brackets. That put me into the finals where I lost, got 2nd, and got nothing after wasting my whole day at Wal-Mart. I was there from 10am until a bit past 5pm. So both the Pokemon day and Madden tournament were poorly ran and a waste of my day.

But, don't worry, there's always next year!
 
The Walmart in NJ had an interesting failure, from my point of veiw anyway. None of the employees knew anything about the Demo, and when the customer service called the Manager, she reffered to it as "The Pokemon Trader... Something..."

Walmarts a top seller and the employees don't even know the name?

The manager comfirrmed that at least something was supposed to be going on, but he thought the demo was the previous week.

It seems to me that these "Distributors" were either inexperienced, or trying to spoil Pokemon.
 
PokePop said:
Concerned Parent: Don't blame the Prof's that volunteered. First off, not every location had a prof volunteer for it. Second, prof's were told to just show up and demo, and not do anything else. Those that went above and beyond; to arrange things beforehand, set up using their own materials; major kudos to them!!
Many profs, myself included, had asked for contact info to speak to the distributors beforehand, but couldn't get it.

The saddest thing is that at a lot of the locations had little to no Pokemon product for sale, so what would we have been promoting even if we set up ourselves?

"Hey, Pokemon cards are great fun! Too bad you can't buy any here!"

On another note, I would have been more than happy to run the event.
Have the Prof sign up, send the kit to them directly, give them contact info for the Walmart manager and/or distributor to coordinate with. The special Precons would have had to go directly to the Walmarts, of course.
I don't see how it couldn't have worked better.
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yea, i agree with your suggestion, the main supplies get sent to the prof and decks to the store. that would have solved a lot of problems since you would already have the main materials with you. my store had all the current sets (with exception of team magma packs they were trying to get rid of) ... when she went to look for any supplies she only found their regular shipment of pokemon merchandise ... -_-'
 
annisarich said:
The problem wan not wal mart
It was the distributers
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Walmart is to share in the blame. The home office knew of this event. Weeks and weeks of calling some of the walmarts around texas showed me that this would be a bust here. I am willing to bet not one walfart manager ever called the home office to see what was going on. I gave two managers the website for information and the call back said No we ain't having it.

Not that this has anything to do with it but do you really think a store that does not give there employees satisfactory health care really care about pokemon. The only reason I say this is everytime I pass a walmart I worry about the poor souls that work there.
 
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Flygonian Gardy said:
we were then told we could use product from the shelves, but they had none to spare.
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they were going to let you just use what was on the shelves? thats pretty neat... they told me if i didn't have anything with me i would just be able to buy some stuff to do demos with (which i did) ... i didn't have a table, so i did them on the checkout-convar(sp?) belt right next to the card isle (the isle was closed so there was no casier using it) ... the mananger had no problem with me staying in the isle doing demos there ... i just wish i had more to work with, lol ...
 
Wow! Looks like a MAJOR communications gaffe somewhere. I hope that someone will take ownership for this, as it clearly involved planning and rearranging of schedules for many professors/players out there. Clearly, PUI, the distributors, and WM need to follow up here and determine what went awry. Worst situation is in the case where non-players heard about the event, showed up, and were met by clueless WM employees. PUI just lost potential customers.
While I wouldn't expect this to be the focus of WMs day, certainly the toy dept./trading card folks/involved store managers should have been more in the loop. This just looks.... sloppy :mad:
 
When a problem like this happens a typical walfart manager will blame the distributor and yell at him to get your cards off my shelf. I have already seen several stores that no longer stock product since they could not get the vendor to come to the store and work. That is one reason why some of the walmarts on the list to hold the event did not have anything. I would think a couple of more stores will soon drop also so that the manager can spend more time in the bread section. If they would have had one in store #5080 It would have been a hugh success even without any professor support. Linda the beckett vendor would have been there to make sure all the kids would be happy. Sorry for the kids that missed out.
 
With the pokemon walmart day being a faillure, do you think the next time they will make at another store? Like toysrus.
 
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