When Amy and I go to shows, like High Point or Atlanta, they are filled with beautiful things for us to sort through and decide what will be cool in the next Design House. The look, quality, uniqueness, and price is what we look for and we feel pretty confident in what were doing.
So this week, my son Wyatt and I travelled to San Diego to go to the largest internet retailing conference in the world. We hoped to learn everything we would need to know about the ins and outs of having an online store. Well, we walk into the giant conference center to encounter a sea of 10x10 booths with names like Aexiom, Liquid Pixels, Iksula, Optaros, Ixtens, Colinear, AFMS, Bilsi, Listrak, Certona, yea, I'm still naming them because there are 500 of them just like that... XPO, Accertify, Lotendo, Mobisus, OK, I'll stop. So we're really kind of just laughing to ourselves because we literally have absolutely no idea how to approach all of these bloodthirsty, smiling salesmen. We decide to head over the the help center for advice, where they couldn't have been any nicer and promptly signed us up for a private consultation.
Our consultant then takes us over to a special little consulting table where we proceed to tell him our whole story, who we are, what our store is like, and what our vision is. All the while he is furiously scribbling lots of things down on his little sheet of paper, and keeps looking to us to keep talking (which I'll do all day long when prompted!) So then he says "Was that helpful?" I was wondering if this was kinda like therapy, where you tell your story for and hour and go home. It was all I could do to not get hysterical laughing because it was all so funny.... the entire scene. I was thinking, "was what helpful?" Fortunately, Wyatt is very kind and told the gentleman thank you, and assured him that it was indeed helpful.
"Now what?" We thought, back to the Acadaca, Invesp, Upic, Invesp, Edgenet, DydaCorp, Padopolis.... All I knew was that this is NMW (not my world!) So we wandered, made eye contact with some reps and eventually headed to the beer booth before we called it a day. We went back to our condo to do some more research and begin thinking of a better direction and questions for the next day. Fortunately the day was saved when we found a hysterically fun piano bar called "Shout!"
Unfortunately, we enjoyed "Shout!" a little too much yesterday and were both left a bit bleary eyed today. But Wyatt was ready for one of the software companies and while he talked to them, I had high hopes for another shot at the help desk. I wandered over and a woman was promptly right there, offering another consultation. I thought, "What the hell?" So I told her my plight and how difficult it was to navigate through the mindless array of identically named companies. She said, "Oh I could never navigate through this." "Yea, and none of them are even very cute," I responded. "Well don't pick one because it's cute... So was I helpful to you?"
Umm...
Bronto, Certona, Zoony, Venda.... Corona!!
P.S. All of the kooky names we mentioned are real companies from the conference
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
NMW (Not My World!)
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