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Old 2013.04.28, 06:50 PM   #3
Geo-Z
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Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Sydney Aust.
Posts: 70
First day of business!

As soon as the doors to mall opened a small stream of early birds starting trickling in and walking past our track. They would mostly walk at normal pace and slow down when they got to our track as soon as they saw our cars zipping around. They thought it was gimmicky and that's it.

At this point my friend, his girlfriend, our electrician friend and I were clad in vests bearing the Mini-Z logo and smiling behind a display table containing boxed mr03's and a few printed signs. Now and then one of us would rotate between that and giving the cars a whizz 'round the track. It certainly drew a lot of stares.

Twenty minutes later we had our first customer.

A lady in her mid thirties asked if her daughter could use one of the rental cars and my friend let her inside while I explained how to use the KT-18. Right away the little girl went full on forward and slammed the car into the wall so we rushed over to correct her. She was having difficulty getting the proportional throttle/steering right and couldn't activate reverse because of the break. Soon her time was up and her mother smiled and thanked us. This didn't come as a surprise to me at all and I talked to my friend about it but he just said that it was all part of promoting awareness. Personally I would not let a youngster touch my Mini-Z unless I was sure he or she had previous experience in something similar and even then it had to be monitored.

Anyway, after that we managed to get lots of attention and more parents started unloading their kids at our stall while they went and got a few groceries. Pretty soon we had a line of kids stretching around five metres around our barrier at any given time.

At this point, my friend was advertising a 'go' at one of 4 rental cars for free as part of the opening day specials. It worried me a lot because our original plan was to use cheap Firelaps for exhibition instead - however our shipment of Firelaps was arrested in customs for random checking. So my friend used Mini-Z's instead.

Soon, I and all the staff available were kneeling down and instructing kids aged 3-13 about how to operate Z's and watching them crash into walls, bash the cars around and do donuts. It was distressing to watch because I knew that these cars were not being used in a proper way. Whenever they smashed the Z's we would gently inform them of how to do it correctly and they would more or less make the effort to do so. This stream of kids died down around noon and picked up again at 1:30 when everyone had finished lunch. It really was a kid-magnet! Some adults were interested too and went in for a go though it really was the kids who showed the most interest.

At the end of the day we had had one enquiry about the mini-z's and a lot of kids. No sales were made and if anything the price of the MR03's turned a lot of people off.

Make no mistake, I really liked working with kids. Most young children are naturally angels possessing a sort of innocence, free of judgement. Their hearts had not yet been hardened and they were naturally curious and really intent on having a go and I was always glad to help.

After cleaning the stall and packing up our track we got together and discussed putting a suitable rental price on our cars. We agreed to charge $3 for five minutes and $6 for ten minutes over the weekend before making a final call to customs to ask about the progress of our Firelap shipment which was still waiting to cleared. Aussie customs are known for their laidback attitude and our shipment was over three weeks overdue so our electrician friend said he would drive over there on saturday and pick up the boxes himself.

We examined the cars that the kids had used and, surprisingly, their bodies held up well. We used F355 bodies with coloured stickers to differentiate between them and they had only got a few scratches. Wings, lights and side mirrors were all smashed off but it was okay - as long as the cars worked. The firelap motors that we'd installed into them was slow enough for beginners but we thought it would be best to slow 'em down more so we dialled the throttle to 50% speed.

Though we made no money that day the weekend was coming up which would mark the first day of the Easter holidays. We were determined to see it done right.
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