Hi Don,

Fantastic! Well Done!

I hope it is very profitable for you. It certainly is a great way to get
the word out about soaring.

Paul Remde

wrote in message
...
NSM isn't the only one doing it this holiday season. I know of one
commercial operator who just opened a kiosk in a major mall. Perhaps
he will chime in with his experience.

MM

Hi Matt and fellow ras-ers.....

I'm guessing that would be me....:-)

I own/operate a comercial operation about a half hour south of
Minneapolis, MN in the
town of Faribault. I have been frustrated in the past with advertising
rates at this time of
year and always felt that my gift certificate sales should be doing
much better against
the Chia Pets! So I opened a kiosk at the Southdale Mall in Edina on
Nov 15th and
will be there through Dec 31st. Edina is an up-scale suburb of
Minneapolis, MN. There
are several other malls of similar size in the area, and of course the
mega-Mall of America,
but I decided the Edina demographic should work best with my
particular "product". My
wife Kathy and I split the now-11-hour-day at the kiosk and it has
been a very interesting
experience so far.

You can see the kiosk he http://www.crosscountrysoaring.com (then
click on "The Gift")

It's set up with a slide show running on a nice, big HP monitor at one
end. At
the other we print the certificates and take credit cards. There are
big pictures on both
sides. Sales are going well. I think we're on track to hit our ride-
target by Xmas and I have
a slate of new students already. We've also gone through about 1000
pieces of literature
(business cards, pamphlets) and we've talked to a LOT of people about
how the sport
works. There can be some major lulls in traffic though, and it's not
uncommon to go through
two cappuccinos before it picks up again! We are keeping track of
people who are Interested, Very
Interested, Buyers, Multiple Buyers, Students and Add-on ratings. I
plan to write it up for
SOARING afterwards for other clubs/commercials operators who might
want to try it.

Kiosks are expensive - especially during the holidays. In this area
they 'list' for $3000 to
$6000 per month for Nov/Dec. Yeah. Per Month. They're cheap the rest
of the year or if you
want to sign a lease for a year (nope). But the mall's leasing agents
will negotiate rather
than risk leaving a kiosk empty and you could get it for less than
half that. As you can
see I decided to use the natural beauty of the sport, captured in
pictures during the season,
to promote the rides. I blew up 14 or so and mounted them. The agent
was excited at the
idea of hanging a glider inside, but then said the holidays were too
crazy and it would have
to wait till January. Too late for me. Maybe next year. She is willing
to hang a model though.
(A 4.3 M RC model would look good).

Anyway - that's about it.
Ta-

Don Ingraham
http://www.crosscountrysoaring.com