10.21.2009

$9.99 REEBOK SIT DOWN STRIKE IN LOUISVILLE



A little detour out of my normal 60's and into the 80's just for fun tonight! I found a way to convert my old public show videos and commercials in you tubes. They are soooo bad but hey they are show history for the Kimmer and I loved em at the time...

Turning back the way back machine to the 80's and 90's when I was a public show manager. The biggest show tour I managed brought me to the West Pavillion of the Kentucky Fairgrounds in November of 1986.

Back then Reebok shoes had just debuted and were the "shoe" of the moment. Reeboks were very expensive and NEVER ever sold at a discounted price.



The Super Sale Show featured over 100 stores selling things at a discount and our newspaper ads looked just like this one above. almost microscopically next to $9.99 is the word FROM. NOw nearly every shopper in America knows that FROM in an ad means the price begins at 9.99 and gets higher from there.

Well we had some really sharp (re: annoying) ladies invade my show and organize a sit down strike in the shoe booth. They began demanding that we sell them Reeboks for the "advertised" price of $9.99.

No way Jose was that happening! Those shoes were normally $65-125.00 a pair. After we told these ladies the answer was no... they all sat on the floor in the shoe booth and refused to budge.


My show manager trainee Jack Grant, just couldn't be tough enough to get those ladies to motivate out the door. Jack was a southern gentleman after all. He came into my office and I stomped out there with my high heels clicking across the cement floor. My Detroit Police bodyguards were running to keep up.

"Get out of my show!" I told those women that under no uncertain terms that they were to leave my show immediately or I would have them arrested. They got up and left the show in a big hurry.

Shortly there after the local TV news hawk lady appears and tried to intimidate me. They turned the cameras on me and I did just what Lee Iococca had done about the odometer scandal Chrysler just encountered. I said oops, sorry, won't happen again!

Then I called my furniture booth owner to the office. He was a huge advertiser for that station and he told them that if they killed my show he would pull his million dollar a year ad schedule as well. Soooo they made this little clip and it was FREE advertising for the show....

This video is really crappy because we taped it on vhs tape without an antenna or cable on the TV inside the arena. But after all these years it is still funny!

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