Good morning, Baltimore is what we’ll be saying early Thursday morning as we roll into town from Dayton, Ohio! We’re off to the NSCAA Convention.
We’ll be sharing a booth with Annalisa and Alison from Premier Athletic Advertising and Carlo from Traveling Teams in booth 1527.
Stop by and say hi during the Thursday evening event and then come back after 9:00pm for a special treat you can only get in Baltimore.
Watch this spot for photos, videos and stories from the 2011 NSCAA Convention.
They say this feeds fourteen people. We ate it using three.
Television adds ten pounds. It also add a few hundred square feet to a restaurant if featured on the Food Network or the Travel Channel. Case in point.
Last weekend, we were in St. Louis for the NSCAA. Our one goal was to seek out and eat a Pointersaurus pizza at Pointer’s Pizza. For those of you who have not seen the Food Network and Travel Channel segments, it is a 28″ pizza and is as large as a table top.
First, we had to find the place. It was across town, with no parking except for an Office Depot across the street. We stopped in and bought some blank CDs to ease our guilty consciences about parking in their space. The store front looked no larger than a Dominos carry out. Did we have the right place? It looked bigger on TV.
Yes, we did have the right place. We went in and there were two tables. Two. And a waiting couch the size of a dime. The rest of the store was devoted to a counter to take orders and answer phones and two rows of pizza ovens.
That’s it. Answering phones, making pizzas.
Businesses that look small are huge in this economy, as long as they stick to the knitting. Pointer’s Pizza does one thing and does it very well; makes pizza. That’s it, nothing fancy.
I can imagine how the phone call went with The Food Network:
PP: “Pointer’s Pizza. What would you like.”
FN: “We want to come in and film your big pizza you make and put you on TV.”
PP: “Ok, come in, stay clear of the ovens and the phones. You are going to pay for the pizza, aren’t you?”
Long pause…
FN: “But we’re putting your store on television….”
Longer pause…
FN: “Of course we are going to pay for the pizza.”
PP: “See you next Thursday.”
*ring*
PP: “Pointer’s Pizza. What would you like.”
Stay focused, stick to the knitting. Provide a great soccer tournament experience that includes solid marketing, scheduling, referees, team communication and hotels. Everything else is a distraction.
Sticker for Disney Tournaments
Stickers are hot. Stickers with your soccer tournament logo and your web address will get placed almost everywhere and are probably the cheapest way you can advertise.
Kids like stickers. Kids will put stickers on book covers, bags, on their notebook cover, even on their forehead and take a picture of themselves being goofy. Your tournament sticker will end up as part of a family legacy in photo albums.
We are at the NSCAA, giving out stickers to every kid in St. Louis who is walking around with their coach or parent. They are rushing up to our booth, streaming off our smiley-face stickers and wearing them everywhere in the St. Louis Convention Center. We’re loving it.
The best deal around for stickers is our friends at Sticker Giant. Great product, great service.
Just in case you were following along with us, checking off the dates until the big NSCAA soccer conference in St. Louis, here is our booth status. Almost ready!
Our TourneyCentral.com NSCAA booth. A little more nip and tuck, but we're almost there.
Meet us in St. Louis for the NSCAA.
We’re in booth 1735 and we won’t even try to sell you anything, so you can stay and chat as long as you want. Really. And, if you want to make a podcast promoting your soccer tournament, Back of the Net will help you with that. You don’t even need to be a TourneyCentral tournament.
Our NCSAA booth is out of the case and ready for the 2009 design
Hey soccer fans, we’re getting ready for the NSCAA in St. Louis and we got our display booth up and ready for our 2009 design.
It doesn’t look like much now, but stay tuned and follow along as we start adding really cool stuff to it!
We’re in booth 1735. I don’t know if that is a good spot of not (I’m told it is) but be sure to put us on your list of folks to see when you are at the convention.