"Houston we have a problem"
Never have I thought that I would experience a situation that I would feel that sentence would be SO appropriate!
I have not long arrived home from working on the SSQ stand at Olympia.
I sat on the demo chair for 8 hrs straight yesterday and loved every minute of it.
I can assure you all that at our team meeting last night, the talk was on how we could improve on how things had panned out during the day.
Samuel has worked like a Trojan to bring us the new system and thankfully today it was proven to work like a dream.
Yesterday we suffered a wi-fi failure, it wasn't just our stand, but due to the sheer volume of customers that are at our stand, it makes everything VERY obvious that we have a problem.
EVERY single member of the team yesterday would have given the right arm to have made things better for the patient customers that queued far longer than we wanted them to have to
I remember visiting the stand 10- 15 years ago when I was competing, and even though it was busy, it wasn't anything out of the ordinary.
Most of the stock items were there, you had some show deals, but we mostly went to the show, especially the CND stand, to talk to the people that we would never normally get the chance to meet; to watch the masters at work doing demos; to chat to fellow geeks.
The industry had changed.
Sweet Squared invest a huge amount in Education, marketing and developing new product launches.
The large amount of customers purchasing Shellac means that the deals that they bring have to be centred around it.
The cost of putting on a 2-day show would make your eyes water!
That cost has to be made somehow, massive discounts would not achieve that.
The number of people buying the larger show deals means that there is literally NO room to store all of the sundries like solar oil etc.
they had a mini warehouse at our stand this time, there were in excess of 20 people just picking and packing the products!
There was plenty of room around the demo desks, and I was constantly having conversations with people in the queue as well.
I think due to the nature of how sweet squared have decided to run the stand, people need to do as lots of people have suggested and weigh up whether queuing is worth what they are purchasing or whether it would be better to order online on the Tuesday.
I'm also confused as to why some have mentioned being disappointed when they queued for hours only to find out that they couldn't buy what they wanted.
The show deal sheets were handed out the minute you entered the stand?
To say that because the show experience wasn't how you would have liked it to be, you will consider changing to another brand is a tad short sighted?
If you chose a brand that is massively popular, you must have made that decision based on customer demand, it wouldn't be good business surely to change brands on those reasons?
I have read the thread on the train home, and thank you to the people that put a smile back on my face with your positive comments.
The ones that are justifiably feeling disappointed after their experience, you are really entitled to feel that way and sometimes it feels better to rant.
I hope that you know now that we wished we could always meet and exceed your expectations.
Roll on Excel ! X