What a crying shame!
Here at the Semoran Blvd store in Oralndo Florida things were just as bad as everywhere else. Even though my partner Carolyn and I called and talked to the "manager Elsa", when I called again this morning she kept thinking I was doing a demo for Coke! I reminded her again of her conversation with Carolyn and still she had no idea. I asked for tables she said okay and asked me where to set them up.
I get to the store and there are indeed two fold up tables, still folded up near the McDonalds which is near the enterance to the store, but again the are folded up and there are no chairs, no signs, no displays, nothing. I ask for Elsa and of course get the blank stares... finally I had to use my cell phone to actually call the store to get Elsa as the lady who said she was paging Elsa never did!
Elsa shows up and points to the tables, yes points! I advise this is a game where the players need to sit, oh, you need chairs? So she brings 4 chairs then points to my son and asks him to set them up over by the tables. At this point after 20 minutes we are still looking for anyone who knows where the supplies may be and if anyone at the store has any clue! Finally Trish shows up, she has the supplies. What a joke that was! Approx 36 pop packs, booklets and 1 latios/latias starter deck. Thanks! No distrubutor showed up, no contact info for the distrubutor so I went to stationary and took some of the helium balloons and set them up by the table. Then after putting my labcoat on and looking for "players" I spot someone with a flyer. Iasked where he got it and he said the were on a box near a tv in the front of the store. So, unless you were looking for a TV you would not see the flyers. I then went cheerfully and asked the greeter to hand them out and explained what I was doing there. She told me, well, the flyers are over there, and I can't do everything. Hmmm.... standing and saying welcome to walmarts.... full time job huh? So like a fool a spent a few minutes with her trying to hand out flyers. During this time Ivan (my son) had a couple kids show up and he demoed a couple of games, Carolyn was busy trying to talk to kids and parents. And lucky me some of my league players showed up to provide some support.
I handed out everysingle item that came in that kit and have the starter deck in the league materials for use for new players. Aside from 2-4 possible new players it was a miserable flop!
I felt as though not only did no one know what was going on, no one even cared! None of us saw the "Exclusive Walmart Deck, so I'll have to take your word about the special deck!
I have no problem whatsover doing demos, but in the future I would hope that there is a lot more communication than this. It is a poor showing on Walmart and the distrubutors! If I had any idea of the lack of communication Iwould have made my own signs and visits tothe store and requested phone numbers to the mysterious distributor who never made it to any of the stores! I sure hope that distributor doesnt get paid for any of this, and I must tell you it burns me up to know that I was the one who pointed people over to the card section so they could buy what they could of Pokemon.
