Bill, you would be surprised how many people think this and I would love to be able to, but the reality is, we shut down the store Monday (two days ago) and I doubt we will be fully operational until Feb 23 or Feb 24. We are bringing everything but the kitchen sink! Packing it all up, preparing to deliver it to the show on Tuesday of next week, then two full days to setup. After the show, pack up, bring it all back, unpack it all, set it all back up and then haul all the crates and boxes back to storage and pack away. We are talking 5 racks, huge rubber maid containers of cables, multiple DAC’s, multiple transports, 8 Vicoustic Victotems, multiple turntables, multiple amps, multiple speakers, multiple phonostages, power conditioners, grounding stations, R2R decks, etc. All the while, the phone keeps ringing and people keep walking in. We had this couple come in the store yesterday and they must have thought they had entered a war zone! We had crates and boxes and rubber made containers and moving blankets everywhere.
We have also had to take a hard line on “Suncoast Audio DOES NOT LOAN EQUIPMENT FOR THE SHOW!” You can’t believe the number of calls I’ve received from industry folks, “oh, can we just borrow some speakers so we don’t have to ship ours?”, “oh, can we just borrow some amplifiers so we don’t have to ship ours?”, “oh can we borrow some racks so we don’t have to ship ours?” I even had “can we borrow some of your sales people for the show? We will take a room, ship our stuff, but your sales people can maybe work our room for us” [emoji15]. NO, NO, NO and NO! We have to take this hard line because the amount of work involved for us in packing, transport, unpacking, packing transport and unpacking and then hauling everything to storage after the show is tremendous, not to mention the risk of damage! Just think about rack assembly alone! Heavy amps. Heavy speakers. Etc. We need to get everything back and get operational again as soon as possible! Combine all this with our responsibilities of running the show! Yeah, it’s a wee bit stressful.