Wrap up on the National Open

Wrap up on the National Open in regards to my 2 projects, the SilverBack Chess Clock and the EZNotate scorekeeping system. Have to apologize to all of you who met me at the tournament...I was on the tail end of being sick and felt AWFUL.

Now to the fun parts...the results! This was the first BIG tournament we were able to sell the SilverBack Chess Clock. We brought 80 in Black and our color clocks showed up in Rochester the Wednesday of the tournament. We had one of our partners overnight a case of mixed color clocks(20)to us at the Flamingo in Las Vegas. Funny thing is UPS decided to deliver our box to the Venitian,which was a ½ mile down the road...despite the box being addressed to the Flamingo. It took me over 2hours to get the box from the other casino. But in the end we had 100 clocks to sell.

We ended up selling approximately 60 clocks. For the colors, ran out of the White (we only had 5),sold 4 of the Red, and 4 of the Blue. The remainder sold were the Black. Out of the 60+ clocks we sold, 12 of them were sold to Tournament Directors. As soon as I showed them all the pre-sets, the“TD Adjust” function, and all the other things the clocks did...they sold FAST. If I am remembering correctly I sold 12 clocks to the 15 tournament directors I showed the clock to. This means I sold 48 to the players at the tournament. We did sell another 10 to one of my top wholesale guys at the end of the tournament.

As for the EZNotate system with the paper scoresheets and my custom app, it was accepted VERY well. If I had a sign up sheet for Beta-testers, I would have filled the front and back of the sheet. That is how well is was accepted. Sunil Weermentary from Hunter College School in NYC and NSCF liked it so much he wanted to test it out with his kindergarten group. Everyone I showed it to loved how easy it made it to not only take their notation, but also to learn from the games in an easy fashion. The app worked almost flawlessly. There was a hiccup or 2, but nothing we did not know about. We did get some amazing feedback on the app and value people saw in the project. A couple of people even asked about investing in the project.

I just want to thank Alan Losoff and Glenn Panner on running such an amazing tournament, they actually understand how we as the vendor should be treated as a partner in the tournament instead of a piggybank. The National Open is my favorite tournament to sell at and one of the few that is still worth setting up a store there.

Wait till next year...I will BLOW YOUR MINDS!!!! Working out a deal where we would hand out a free SilverBack Chess clock to the winner of each section. These will be in a color not offered to the public. It will only be available to people who win the sections of the big tournaments we partner with.