Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 8, 1993 TAG: 9308070020
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MADELYN ROSENBERG
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But my friends and I are none the richer, having failed to follow through once again on a plan that should have made us millions, if not tens of dollars.
I am speaking, of course, about the motor coach crowd.
And don't try to tell me you didn't stay awake nights thinking of ways to make money off these people.
At the very least, you sat around your dinner table, trying to find something 10,000 owners of recreational vehicles would need while they were parked in our humble 'burg.
"Hush, children," you said. "Mommy and Daddy are trying to finance your college education."
My friends and I made our strategic plan around a table loaded with bacon, potatoes and grits at the College Inn.
We went over every angle, mentally marked the points the caravan would enter and exit Blacksburg. General Custer would have been proud.
We planned all week, hailing each other in the streets, starting conversations with: "And another thing . . . ."
Carefully, we weeded out shirt and button slogans with sexual innuendos, such as: "RV owners do it behind the wheel." (Already taken, we learned later.) My friend, Peter, was a firm believer in slogans like: "I'm with him, 'cause he's king of the road" or "I'm with her 'cause she's queen of the highway."
Simplicity is best, he reasoned, and he was probably right.
But in the end, we decided not to take the risk, fearing a life's supply of clothing emblazoned with: "Grandma and Grandpa went to a motor coach convention in Blacksburg, Va., and all I got was this lousy T-shirt."
We needed something fresh, something that required less capital.
Mary Alice advocated an RV wash, with the clean team dressed in skimpy swimsuits. My roommate had promised to cover the RVs with dirt clods the night before. But we abandoned that plan, too, because deep down, we're nice people - and we couldn't figure out a way to get a water hook-up at the site.
I favored capitalizing on the age of most of the motor coachers, perhaps buying out the prune supplies in Blacksburg's grocery stores and reselling them at a generous markup. Dressed in an apron and a hat, I would walk around like a peanut barker at an Orioles game, selling regularity.
There was some discussion of setting up a lemonade stand, "d" printed backward on the sign. We figured we could hire a couple of kids, say about 7 years old, and let them into our profit-sharing program. They'd be irresistible to the older folks, and harder for Virginia Tech police to run off.
A final, brilliant suggestion came from Michael, one of our summer interns here. We could make a map pointing out homes of the stars, he said. We could say a Johnny Cash had a summer home here and put a star on the map next to President McComas' house.
Or we could say Pat Sajak lived at the home of Mayor Hedgepeth.
Or better yet, we could offer, for a nominal fee, autographs by The Sixth Statler Brother.
Only a couple of friends, I'll call them "Follow" and "Through," actually acted on a scheme.
They chipped in with three other guys, $55 a piece, and ordered bumper stickers that said, "Park it in Blacksburg: Ride it to the Blue Ridge." Mornings and afternoons, they walked among the RVs, hocking their wares.
"It was pretty dismal," said Follow, after approaching 75 people and selling only one $2 sticker.
Alas, even high-class stickers were frowned upon by owners of these motor coaches, which ranged from $50,000 to $800,000.
Last I heard, my friends were planning a big sale.
And the moral of this story is: Buttons are probably the way to go. There are seven months until the next convention in Baton Rouge.
Madelyn Rosenberg, who has been the Roanoke Times & World-News' higher-education writer, recently was named the newspaper's assistant New River editor.
by CNB