New Sunday venue...and awesome new flier!

That. Is. Awesome.

That's like "I want a poster of it" quality design.

If it wasn't for copyright infringement, I'd say you have your new club logo!

WOW!! Seriously, that poster is friggin' unbelievable!!
I'm with Brian, I want my own full-size poster of that one for my wall!!

Now as featured in the Austin Chronicle!

Oh hells yeah! Press!!! NIIICE

Is that an ad the venue placed?

I sent in the info but missed the deadline...or so I thought.

It's the Main Event on the Sports section!

We'll see if it generates any attendance. I'm not sure what to expect Sunday, my first event without a somewhat captive audience. But at least my 9 year old son gets to help me this time.

Well the race came and went. Wasn't much of a turnout but we made the most of it.

Had my oldest Cooper with me. Then 4 other kids show up and they got busy testing their cars and racing.
We had alot of fun and ended up letting them all race 3-4 cars to get a 16 car bracket.
My son ended up winning, but the 5 year old boy who showed up was just having crazy fun with the races.
I gave every kid a Mystery car for coming out, then we just played with the cars testing against each other.
My son was making up brackets my lining up the cars...lots of fun. As usual I forgot to take pics during the fun.

Ended up setting up the track on the front sidewalk/porch of the shop as it was awesome outside and shaded.
Had one guy come by after reading the ad in the paper and a few people who just happened into the store.

Next time I'll try some strategic advertising, flier placement and maybe a place with a little more traffic...we'll see.

Bryan

I'd try to spin something up with the hobby shop itself so they have more incentive to promote the event.

Ask them to do a special on Hot Wheels that day or something. Or if you win in the tournament you get a BOGO free car or something. Maybe the winner of the tournament gets a discount coupon or something. If there's a way for the shop to benefit more directly from you being there, that will probably help.

I'm not sure how you were setup, but maybe make people go inside the shop to register. Or maybe if they show you a receipt from the shop they can enter an extra car or a special tournament or something.

I know that relies a lot on the hobby shop giving a damn, but I know if I had that shop and you came up and asked me for 10% off coupons for prizes, I'd do that all day. Coupons go a long way.

...and it sounds like you need to hire a photographer! You need photos to use when you pitch other locations But regardless, it sounds like everyone that did show up had a good time! Way to go!

They did promote it some with their customers via email and a flier up in the store.
I figured the turn out would be small the first time out, but much fun was had regardless.

I'm going to try another at the hobby shop and maybe look for an alternative location.
I'm also going to advertise and put up fliers in more locations.

The store got some business out of my customers, they all went in and bought HW's!
And some of my friends were shopping for models and slot cars, the store is opening a 55' figure 8 slot car track next Saturday...I'm going to go check it out.

Also working on a couple of ideas on how to 'spice' up the race track a little bit.
My wife is out of town for 5 days later this week, there will be experimenting after the boys are in bed!

I emailed one of the attendees who was taking photos, I'm trying to get some of those if possible...and yes, I need a photog!

Are slot cars on the way back in?

There was a Tom Thumb hobby store in my town that had a massive slot car track. I would go there to get model train parts and would end up just watching them race.

Don't you guys start leaving me for slot cars!

If you haven't looked into slot cars recently---you wouldn't believe the progress they have made. I wanted to get my boys one to bring back the fun that I had and I was floored with what I saw.

Now you can buy digital sets.

That means you can change from one lane to another.
You can have up to 8 cars running at a time.
You can set up the speed (good for the kids) and the braking of the cars.
You can have a pit road where your cars will run out of gas and you have to pit before they do or your car slows way down.
You can add in a piece that tracks each cars laps, most recent lap times, fastest lap times.
You can then hook that up to a PC and use some pretty cool software.
You can have ghost cars, where the track's computer system controls them.

Its not cheap, but it is awesome. I bought a used Carrera digital package on Craigs List and have slowly added to the track and cars. My set up, I can run 1/24 or 1/32 sized cars on the same track.