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RECORD STORE TALES Part 175: Flyers
No, not the Philadelphia Flyers. I’ve never been the biggest Scott Hartnell fan despite the Sideshow Bob haircut.
Back in ’96, we decided to promote one of our new stores the old fashioned way: by running around parking lots sticking flyers on cars. Now, me personally, I don’t know anyone who enjoys finding those things on their windshield. I thought it was a waste of money, personally, but since they were going to pay me to do it, I volunteered. It was summer and it seemed a great way to spend a nice sunny Saturday.
T-Rev volunteered too. I packed a cooler full of pop, and we decided to hit up three of the local malls. We started first thing in the nice, cool morning but before too long it got really hot. Good thing we wore hats.
After only an hour, we discovered that we had to flyer the cars strategically. T-Rev was the first one to get yelled at.
“Hey! Get away from my car!”
T-Rev just handed him the flyer instead. The dude was not impressed. We came up with a set of rules. We wouldn’t flyer any cars that had obvious alarms. We wouldn’t flyer any nice expensive cars. And if we saw someone approaching, we wouldn’t flyer any cars in the area they seemed to be walking to.
“Mike, that’s a ‘Vette! Don’t put a flyer on that one!” That kind of thing.
It wasn’t a total loss. A couple people said they would come in to the store. Unfortunately by the end of it, dozens of flyers littered the parking lot, as people ripped them from their windshields. T-Rev and I still made a day’s wage working outside. Not a bad way to earn a day’s pay!
NEXT TIME ON RECORD STORE TALES:
Part 176: The story of the laziest man at the mall…
