Cappie’s Blog

The wake up call I had scheduled for 7am yeserday went off at 4am this morning. I heard the phone ringing and cursed at Missy to stop it because it was on her side of th bed. It took me a while to realise that I was alone and had to make it stop myself. I took ages to get to sleep last night so it was a struggle to wake up when my alarm finally went off. I got ready and hurried off to my breakfast meeting worrying that I wouldn’t recognise the man I was meant to meet. It’s hard when you know you’re meeting someone, you just don’t know who.

Breakfast was at the Marriot, and everyone was very formally dressed, except myself in my mr Messy shirt. It was the only shirt other than the Gibson 5 Star Dealer shirt that i had, and the proper shirts are still way to wrinkled to wear, despite the fact they’ve been hanging since i got here. Silly things. After staring at the wrong person a few times I was met by a lovely gentleman who showed me to a fancy special breakfast room where we could talk. We got ourselves something to eat (I bumped the table knocking the vase over and spilling water everywhere… trust me!) and talked. He knows so much about the industry. He’s done it all. been head of so many brands it’s ridiculous. Yet he’s just so very nice. instantly put me at ease and didn’t make me feel like the minnow playing in the shark tank at all. I feel like that often when I see the amount some people spend. It doesn’t worry me, more amuses me.

He gave us the brand I had been after for a year, as well as their fancier sister brand that I loved the look of but was worried the investment would be too huge. It’s incredibly reasonable so we’re thrilled. It’s the main thing I wanted to come over here to see about getting, and we got it! I think we’ll do really well with the product. check out www.kaces.com and www.reunionblues.com for details. I would like there but I’m sure they monitor who links where and i hate to think what they’d think reading my blog !

That finished about half an hour before the halls opened so I got some more magazines and sat down to read until it all started again. Once the doors opened I looked through some more products, met up with a few more people we were already dealing with, got a few more leads on other products, and just looked around until the personal development sessions began. NAMM get great speakers in to talk about different things, so I went to learna bout how we can use social networking things (Faceboopk, myspace etc) to further our business and our brand. It was very informative. After that was one on hwo to get customers in to your store cheaply (one example was put an ad in the personal section of the classifieds saying “ADULTS – Want to put some excitement into your life? Call 555-6789 today!” Then have a message talkinga bout playing an instrument and to call the store, mention the recording and get blah blah. 85% of people who dont’ play an instrument want to, and that is a cheap thing to put in the paper. Can’t hurt to try. He also gave a lot of other ideas, that was just my favorite.

He also took a session on selling to customers who are trying to beat you down on price. That was really good also. Next was an hour long panel about redisigning yoru shop cheaply. They had before and after pics, as well as lots of advice. It was a brilliant panel with stacks of great ideas. I have hundreds of notes, I just hope i can read them.

My bag was full of mags and brochures and quite heavy, and i wanted to talk to Missy so I went back to the room and chatted to her. I missed seeing Mike from MxPx play but I’d rather chat to Missy. After talking to her and sorting my bag it was time to head back to the show. I stopped for some lunch at a great mexican place. Everything was fresh. While I was eating some deliveries of fruit and salad stuff arrived. The beef was proper beef just ground up so you could still see where it had broken apart after being cooked. The bell peppers were delicious as was the onion. I had two as well as a churro. I had to point at what I want. It’s not a chu-rO it’s a chew-rro.

Back at NAMM I walked through the bits I hadn’t seen, finally caught up with someone I’d been earching for the last two days (he was never at the booth. I saw him up the other end of the place, luckily he was wearing very rainbow socks which I’d been told to watch for) I took a few pics of some interesting stuff, and I talked to the Sparrow guys. I also ran up to the Gibson booth for an awesome brochure. Con, the head of the Australian Gibson importer, rang me specially to make sure I got some, which was really nice of him.

The show closed at 6 but I waited around to meet the guy from kaces who quickly showed me through everything and told me what the best sellers were before walking back to the hotel again. It’s my last night here. I’m trying to stay up late so that my bed time is around 7 home time, that way jet lag shouldn’t be too bad (I hope).

Here’s some pics from the day anyway.

This thing looks really interesting. You plug the lead into you guitar and into it, then put this over the machine head, and pluck a string. It automatically tunes the guitar. It’s also affordable which is fantastic.

Skull machine heads… awesome. Not as cool as the ones we do though.

This are some of the hard cases we are now distributing.

The cymbal and drum bags we’re now doing.

the drum pads we’re doing. these are awesome!

Clarinet bag we’re doing.

Playboy guitar. I want one. Is that wrong?

The new Sparrow shape. I really like it. Playable, smooth looking. It should be great. At the moment it’s only made in Canada, so it’s quite expensive, however if the do a chinese one I think it will do well.

These are plastic things that go over the top of the tuners to keep a guitar in tune when in a soft bag. Not a bad idea for parents, I don’t see stores embracing them and reccomending them to consumers though.

These guys call themselves guitar bras and they make covers for guitars. An interesting idea I guess. Not my cup of tea, but interesting.

So that’s me for another year here at NAMM. I fly home tomorrow. Don’t catch the bus to the airport til 7.30 so there’s a lot of time to kill between checkout and then. I’ll walk to church since it’s only 3 miles or so then I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m hacked into the internet from the hotel next door, so I might sit in the lobby and update this while i wait for the bus, who knows. If not I’ll talk to you all back home! If you want to call me it’s just a0 normal call to mobile cost, just dial my number. I’m either 5 (NSW) or 6 (QLD) hours ahead.