Show biz! The big one, of course, was the three-day (Oct 19th to 21st) Ski Show in Schaumburg at the Renaissance Hotel and Convention Center. The show was intended for visitors interested in winter sports to meet retailers and ski clubs, manufacturers’ reps, resorts and travel agencies, and appearances by professional skiers and snowboarders. Of course, on display attractively priced, were new and used boots, skis, and sport clothes, all at the hug1e Ski and Gear Swap adjacent to the ski show itself.
Your writer showed up Sat. 20th, about 12:30 in time for his 1 to 5 PM shift when he was scheduled to relieve Jackie U. and Jack G, who had been at the club booth meeting the skiing public since late Saturday morning.
Before leaving, Jackie helped your writer get acquainted with the multi-colored, party-size roulette wheel parked on the lead table. It was a really sharp looking device, the wheel divided into 14 equal pie segments in opposite colored pairs.
The spinning wheel of course on its printed segments offered winners harmless prizes of all kinds, such as candy packets or small gadgets but some were “far more formidable”, such as discounts on club memberships. A prize wheel is always a great way to lure ski show browsers to slow down and linger at our booth.
There was no charge to the players of course, but wheel time gave the booth workers a special chance to talk up the club and lead them around the snappy glossy trip and lodge posters-on-easels, and also enter the player’s required name and email address to the club database on their smartphones. Children and teens could play, too, only their parents had to - guess what – enter their name and email address first. Not bad.
Our posters, by the way, like the tri-folds mentioned below, describe our club and its trips and our assets such as the lodge and Four Winds has been creating some attractive show sets lately that help our volunteers to interact with visitors.
Roulette winners are led back to a table where they select their prizes and got a better look at letter-size trip sheets and tri-fold's. We pass out trifold because basically, trifolds are serious business. Visitors take them home to read and decide, and volunteers need them as reference for their spiels.
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Just before Jackie left, Four Winds president Russ Butler dropped by the booth for a non-scheduled shift to help Tony Z until his relief arrived, since he was the only volunteer scheduled for the 1-5 shift. No problemo.
After he was relieved at about 3:30 PM (!) by Caroline and Pat, your writer snapped a few pictures of other booths: both the Four Winds' one and the one operated by CMSC.