Spring Meet comment/concern/issue - vendors

[jdean]

In my case I benefitted a lot more from the vendors than they did from me. Don Barnes worked on my carburetor to help me get going again, and I used his tools to tweak another car the next day....Lone Star Brian made his trailer (and himself) available to tow me back from the fire on 6th street along with Dee. Hey Don did not even try to sell me a fire extinguisher.....I had to corral him to buy the damn thing.

As far as Keith C. goes.....there are some engine shops I have heard about that would not show their face among so many of their customers, since a lot of their customers are pissed off. Not so in the case of KCR. It was interesting/educational to see his samples of the CNC heads he turns out too.

At least these handful of guys (and James Yale) have been as much fellow enthusiasts/members as vendors. Hell they show up at Austin, Tulsa, Run n' Gun etc. Yeah they have a marketing budget they can write off at dozens of other events, but I am glad they show up at ours.

[Mrs 66 Snake]

Lance, no need to apologize at all. I'm sorry if I made it seem like you were not welcome. Y'all ARE the kind of people we want at the meet.

But apparently I've not made my point clear enough in this thread. I DO want the people that we had at the event there - Don, Jim, Brian, Keith, Lance, Debra. All good. And all Cobra Club members. And I'd love to see Doug Reed and James Yale at next year's event.

What I DO NOT want is to open this up to any vendor with a dime to spend who wouldn't know a soul at this event and is just willing to spend $500 to park their rig in the lot and push their particular manufacturer. I'm sorry but I think it would just be flat out wrong to let Joe Bob at EnginesRUs set up a tent and tell everyone what great engines he's got, while Keith and Lance are busting their asses actually fixing people's motors.

And as far as having vendors on site to talk about their cars and what they offer, I think happy customers do that well. Sure Keith actually fixing cars at the event is impressive. But I guarantee you that people would have learned about KCM/KCR even if they weren't able to come. Happy customers and rockin' motors sell the product. Hell, it's how we found Keith. Spring meet 2003. Drew Baird and Gary Sharapata raving about him turned into an April trip to Arkadelphia to meet Keith.