Super Promotion Idaho dealer’s campaign generates interest and income.
It's tough to be a retailer in January, but Jim Paxton, owner of Snake River Pool & Spa in Boise, Idaho, found a way to draw in plenty of customers earlier this year. His dealership held a Super Bowl kick-off return sale.
"Our objective obviously was to generate traffic and create interest in the promotion," says Paxton. "And for years we had been doing the 'Let It Snow' promotion around the New Year's time, where if it snowed so many inches, you'd get your hot tub rebated back to you, but this year we decided to change it up and do something with the Super Bowl.
"We advertised it pretty heavily in print and on TV, and the way it worked was if you purchased a Hot Spring spa, a Finnleo sauna or a Connelly billiards table between Jan. 22 and Feb. 4, and it was paid for in full, and if the opening kick-off was returned for a touchdown, then the amount you paid for that would be rebated back to you, less sales tax. It generated about $50,000 worth of additional business that we probably would not have otherwise had."
The contest, of course, was insured so Snake River didn't lose that revenue when Devin Hester of the Chicago Bears actually did return the opening kick-off of Super Bowl XLI for a touchdown.
"What's more exciting about this is the exposure we got after the fact," says Paxton. "It was priceless. We were interviewed by all the major network affiliates, we made the front page of the newspaper, we were on talk radio shows, and some syndicated writers called me for an interview."
As part of this promotion, one particularly lucky family actually won a hot tub from Snake River for the second time. They had won their first tub 10 years ago.
Aqua Out & About
IN FEBRUARY, AQUA'S senior editor Karen Erstad escaped Wisconsin's cold and snow for a few days when she headed south to Florida. She met up with Brian van Bower, president of Aquatic Consultants in Miami and a principal of the Genesis 3 Design Group, for a tour of a few pools he had designed. In the process, she learned quite a bit about edge details, particularly perimeter-overflow edges, and how to plumb these special effects.
