Part 2: The Booth
During the days in Amsterdam, I spent most of my time at our table in the expo center. There were tables all around the main floor of the club, called the Power Zone. It was a pretty big place too. Probably 10,000 ft or so with a stage on one side and a couple bars out in the middle and stairs up to a balcony type thing. Our table was right at the bottom of the stairs but across the aisle so we were facing straight up the stairs (great location) and we were flanked by 2 seed stores. Upstairs somewhere there were talks or something going on so every hour or so there would be a big flood of people coming down the stairs and then the salesmen would have at it.
Really, the basis of the sales pitch was easy. If you're trying to sell someone a pipe, smoke them out with that pipe to show them how nice it is. We had 2 demo units going at the table, averaging about 300-500 hits per day per pipe, for 5 days. People only had to look towards the table and Mitch would yell out "Hey, have you tried the Incredibowl yet? Come take a free hit." We would get crowds of 10-15 people around the table and Mitch and Mike would just be going down the line with the two bowls. To simplify and speed up the process, they were lighting and opening the pipe for everyone who hit it. (Because of the unique design, it can take a few sessions before you get good at lighting and timing your hits.) After everyone had hit it, Mitch would recite what was essentially an abridged version of the web site and then answer questions. Periodically, he would ask the crowd if there was anyone who had filtered in that hadn't tried it yet and we'd smoke all of them out too. When it got really busy, I would be sitting behind them grinding weed, cleaning, and packing bowls for them to use up front, and whenever theirs was cached, they'd hand it back to me. Even though we only had 2 Incredibowls going, we probably had 8 glass bowls floating around. They'd get smoked, removed from the Incredibowl, set somewhere to cool, cleaned, repacked, and then back into the Incredibowl.
Now obviously, Mitch and Mike can't keep this up all day, so when they would go take breaks, it would be up to the engineers to sell things. This rarely worked particularly well, but I did sell a couple. Typically, they would take breaks during lulls in traffic and I would let the more extroverted engineer handle things while I cleaned up the table and prepped all of the glass and pulled more units out of the boxes to make sure we always had a full selection on hand. We had 3 different anodizing colors and 2 different case colors to choose from.
The major thing that made this business plan possible was donations from growers and coffee shops. They were trying to get as many people to vote for their weed as possible, so they would give us weed to use at the table on the condition that we tell people what they're smoking. On the first day we bought from a coffee shop before going in, but by halfway through the day we were out. We had to keep telling people that someone was on a weed run and would be back shortly so they could try it out. But then the shops at the expo came to our rescue and continued to supply us for the rest of the week. It's kinda strange to think that during that week, I handled probably $2k worth of pot and never even though twice about it. To be honest, we were almost sacrilegious about it. To demonstrate how durable the Incredibowl is and how easy it is to dump out, Mitch would just bang it on the table. This impressed a lot of people, so he tended to do it rather often, meaning that he would be dumping out bowls that were still half green. We would end up with this mess of ash and ground weed all over the table and we would just sweep it off onto the floor. If I saw myself acting like that in this country, my stoner status would have to be revoked.
Given that for whatever reason, pot was being smoked continuously at close to half of the tables in the club, as well as most of the judges walking around with a joint, that whole club filled up with smoke in no time. The days just blur together as one big indistinct experience. Smoke weed, talk about the Incredibowl, smoke weed, pack bowl, ad nauseam. Not surprisingly, the clearest thing I remember from there was a girl in a hot little dress and pink hair that was handing out schwag for someone. I ended up with a lot of ads from a seed bank that I don't remember though, so that might have been it. I just never payed any attention to what she was handing me.
A very happy, and hazy, Thanksgiving for me.
During the days in Amsterdam, I spent most of my time at our table in the expo center. There were tables all around the main floor of the club, called the Power Zone. It was a pretty big place too. Probably 10,000 ft or so with a stage on one side and a couple bars out in the middle and stairs up to a balcony type thing. Our table was right at the bottom of the stairs but across the aisle so we were facing straight up the stairs (great location) and we were flanked by 2 seed stores. Upstairs somewhere there were talks or something going on so every hour or so there would be a big flood of people coming down the stairs and then the salesmen would have at it.
Really, the basis of the sales pitch was easy. If you're trying to sell someone a pipe, smoke them out with that pipe to show them how nice it is. We had 2 demo units going at the table, averaging about 300-500 hits per day per pipe, for 5 days. People only had to look towards the table and Mitch would yell out "Hey, have you tried the Incredibowl yet? Come take a free hit." We would get crowds of 10-15 people around the table and Mitch and Mike would just be going down the line with the two bowls. To simplify and speed up the process, they were lighting and opening the pipe for everyone who hit it. (Because of the unique design, it can take a few sessions before you get good at lighting and timing your hits.) After everyone had hit it, Mitch would recite what was essentially an abridged version of the web site and then answer questions. Periodically, he would ask the crowd if there was anyone who had filtered in that hadn't tried it yet and we'd smoke all of them out too. When it got really busy, I would be sitting behind them grinding weed, cleaning, and packing bowls for them to use up front, and whenever theirs was cached, they'd hand it back to me. Even though we only had 2 Incredibowls going, we probably had 8 glass bowls floating around. They'd get smoked, removed from the Incredibowl, set somewhere to cool, cleaned, repacked, and then back into the Incredibowl.
Now obviously, Mitch and Mike can't keep this up all day, so when they would go take breaks, it would be up to the engineers to sell things. This rarely worked particularly well, but I did sell a couple. Typically, they would take breaks during lulls in traffic and I would let the more extroverted engineer handle things while I cleaned up the table and prepped all of the glass and pulled more units out of the boxes to make sure we always had a full selection on hand. We had 3 different anodizing colors and 2 different case colors to choose from.
The major thing that made this business plan possible was donations from growers and coffee shops. They were trying to get as many people to vote for their weed as possible, so they would give us weed to use at the table on the condition that we tell people what they're smoking. On the first day we bought from a coffee shop before going in, but by halfway through the day we were out. We had to keep telling people that someone was on a weed run and would be back shortly so they could try it out. But then the shops at the expo came to our rescue and continued to supply us for the rest of the week. It's kinda strange to think that during that week, I handled probably $2k worth of pot and never even though twice about it. To be honest, we were almost sacrilegious about it. To demonstrate how durable the Incredibowl is and how easy it is to dump out, Mitch would just bang it on the table. This impressed a lot of people, so he tended to do it rather often, meaning that he would be dumping out bowls that were still half green. We would end up with this mess of ash and ground weed all over the table and we would just sweep it off onto the floor. If I saw myself acting like that in this country, my stoner status would have to be revoked.
Given that for whatever reason, pot was being smoked continuously at close to half of the tables in the club, as well as most of the judges walking around with a joint, that whole club filled up with smoke in no time. The days just blur together as one big indistinct experience. Smoke weed, talk about the Incredibowl, smoke weed, pack bowl, ad nauseam. Not surprisingly, the clearest thing I remember from there was a girl in a hot little dress and pink hair that was handing out schwag for someone. I ended up with a lot of ads from a seed bank that I don't remember though, so that might have been it. I just never payed any attention to what she was handing me.
A very happy, and hazy, Thanksgiving for me.
dark_cabal:
Man, it sounds like you had quite the trip out there. Glad to hear your Incredibowl was successful. I'll have to take another test run of it again sometime soon. *Insert cool stoner smilie*
jonnyjonnyh:
Seriously, that sounds amazing. I need to come visit so I can try your new contraption. 