First of all, lets whine. I hate my wireless connection. Just wrote a full report and then the internet decided to go take a walk. And now I have to write it all again.
Secondly, I HAVE to whine about how much I hate waking up early (4am!!!) espescially on a Saturday morning.
But now good stuff:
NOthing went wrong. Had a great event! No traffic, didnt get lost, found ice (sometimes we have hard time getting ice in these country places), got there exactly as planned.
Once we got there, the Vitamin Shoppe welcomed us with open arms. They offered us a full table at their booth but we decided to set up our own tables right in front of their booth to have better visibility and more room to move around (at some point they had like 10 staff members!).
We got everything organized and looking good right by the time Julie Garcia got there (Vitamin SHoppe rep).
SHe said she was very happy with us and with our set-up and everything. We already talked about one of their upcoming events (NYC Triathlon). She'll send us more info on that.
Me and Autumn took some notes about the day. Here they are:
We met a guy who had seen us promoting GURU in Hoboken.
Made a lot of new friends, espescially two guys from EMS. They were standing next to our booth practically the whole time. By the end of the day, they were like trained GURU reps:"Hey, try some GURU, it's all natural, organic, non-carbonated energy drink" they said while having people come over and of course, drinking GURU at the same time.
One of these guys is a hardcore energy drink consumer so we felt good about introducing him to a healthy way to get energy. He loved it.
One chick was all about GURU, she came to us and said: I LOVE GURU! I DREAM ABOUT GURU!
Our booth location wasnt so great for the launch-time,-it was practically across the hall from where people were having launch and the bikers didnt walk around so much anymore (mhhh, i wonder why? oh yeah, they just biked for 50 miles).
So I just took the liberty of walking around with the cooler full of cold GURU and gave everyone some. Oh, and I also put a few cases of cold GURU to the cooolers next to launch table where water and soda was.
Then I got bored and went to the finish lane, of course, again with the cooler. this time mostly full of Lemon-Lime Sports drink. I stood right next to the girls who were giving out medal to every biker who crossed the finish lane and I gave most of the finishers a cold can of GURU.
Made some new contacts, people interested in sponsorships and events. Gave them my cards so I'll just forward you guys their e-mails if they send me anything.
People were interested in ordering cases online, so we told them about amazon.com
We didnt give out so much as we had planned. We ended up giving away 40 cases of cold GURU. But because my back still hurt from loading all this product into the van the day before, I decided not to take the product back to NYC. That would only mean unloading it again cause we dont use it in NYC.
Plus, why would I bring a NJ market product to NYC. So I gave out what I had left in my van: to our new friends from EMS, to Vitamin Shoppe staff and to bikers. Of course stressing about the importance of drinking it always cold (a lot of cases had the "drink cold" sticker on it too).
So, had a great day, beautiful weather and took some nice photos too:
http://picasaweb.google.com/guruteamnyc/MSBikeTour2008
