doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com EPIC Game Fair 1st Impressions

This whole event just reminds me of the "Atlanta mindset". Most of you probably won't understand this, but, there is Atlanta (Ga.) and then there is the rest of Georgia. Most of the movers and shakers there don't have a clue what the rest of Georgia thinks, or care how we feel. Do not misunderstand me, please. I am not saying the rest of Georgia is red-neck and backwoods, quite the contrary. The biggest difference is in the peoples' values. I have respect for some from Atlanta, there are many fine people who live and work there, I'm not painting everyone there with the same brush. But, to think that they could draw 30,000 people to an outdoors oriented event in Atlanta, while doing numerous things to alienate the greatest base they had, was ludicrous. But, the organizers apparently really did think they could do it. Just shows either how out of touch they are, or that they were listening to some people who were giving them some very bad advice. I did my part to protest the lead shot ban, in letter (e-mail) and by not attending. The letter was answered by Marty Fischer, a friend of mine who helped organize the event, and some respectful disagreement ensued in the follow ups.

I don't see this mindset to the same degree in our neighboring states of Alabama and South Carolina. Columbia and Montgomery just don't seem so "light years away" from the rest of their state(s) as Georgia.

My apologies to any board members who may choose to live in Atlanta, and my sympathies as well. It is not my intention to disparage the hard working folks who live there. Mostly the politicians and corporate biggies who make decisions that affect the rest of the state. It's gotten a little better in the state government, IMO, but the mindset is hard to die.

SRH

It's amazing how easy it was to figure out what Stan is talking about without ever setting foot in Atlanta or the EPIC grounds. Just reading the program was enough of an education for us in the rest of the world.

I hope this EPIC flop sends a strong message not only to the organizers, but also to those in the industry, organizations and shooting magazines who have been relentlessly flogging the shooting public on the need to throw out their old guns and replace them with new steel friendly ones. They may find their customers and members voting with their feet as well.

No doubt if EPIC had been even a moderate success, some would have pointed to it as proof that "green" shoots are the wave of the future and hailed it as the largest "green" shooting event of its kind. By reaching only 5% of their attendance goal, it's going to be hard to argue that the lead shot ban didn't have huge negative impact.

Instead of being a showcase for the new "green" era, it turned out to be the Solyndra of the shooting world.

Not only did they spend lavishly on a new temporary Marty Fischer designed sporting clays course just for this event, a couple of free country music concerts, a new viewing pavillion, polo matches and infrastrure for 30K people who didn't show up (as one attendee sarcastically put it, there were more porta-pottys than people there); they put tickets up for sale for half price on Groupon, but still only mangaged to sell 62 half price tickets.

Let's hope the financial loss for SCI & QU isn't so bad that it seriously impacts the good work they do on behalf of hunters and wildlife.

Heard from a vendor this morning that the initial loss estimate for the weekend was over $1 million.

The thing about it is with the proper press and smart advertising $ applied they might have had a better turnout. I really think having such a varied palette of outdoor activities they should have partnered up with Cabelas as lead dog. SCI has their own niche of high brow activities and participants, but this was an outdoor fair in the South for gosh sakes

Hopefully this will be a lesson to them, that you don't have 2 opposing shooting events the same weekend, and don't even try to poke no-tox up our rear end

The advertising aspect is where they failed. I have spoken with many people this week who knew nothing about it. It's a shame as it has the potential to be a great event.

That sounds plausible. A sponsor told me the event needed to sell 20,000 full price tickets to break even. He was told there were 1500 attendees, though there is skepticisim that figure represents actual ticket sales because some tickets were given out for free, some were sold for half price to people who came after 3 pm for the concerts, and some were sold for half price on Groupon and other discount websites. The number may also have included vendors and other comps.

Whatever the final number, it's going to be a lot of money SCI & Quail Unlimited could have put to much better use.

Makes me sick that QU fell for this and got involved. As I understand it QU is under totally new leadership and has new headquarters, etc.

I had high hopes that the organization, which was plagued by bad leadership in the past, had fresh wind under its' wings and was bound for good things. Now, I'm not very optimistic.

QU used to host a very fine sporting clay shoot every spring as a fundraiser. When it "reorganized" under new leadership last year(?) a big sporting shoot was planned for this past spring at Forest City Gun Club, in Savannah, the site of several in the past. It was cancelled due to lack of sponsorship.

Waterhauls, like the EPIC Game Fair debacle, can only make it harder to garner needed corporate sponsors. Who wants to support an organization that makes such large scale bad decisions as this?

Sad, sad.

SRH

You have to be concerned when this is part of the President's Message on the QU website:

"As most of you are aware, QU has been struggling financially for quite some time. We are still very financially challenged, but we should all be proud of the recovery efforts and our accomplishments over the last year. We have reduced the vendor debt that was incurred by others by over half. We will continue to pay back and support our great network of chapters as well. We have already reduced our chapter pay back by two-thirds.

We held a successful Conservation Hunt Event in Albany again this year. We have partnered with SCI Foundation to host the first ever annual EPIC Game Fair event. It will be held outside of Atlanta, Georgia, at the incredibly beautiful Fox Hall Resort the last weekend of September 2011."