My Return to Seattle
Pre-Opening Day meeting with our volunteers with my co-founder Vic. In this photo, I’m telling our volunteers about our web traffic and how I think that the stats will translate into record crowds that day. It did.
We had our opening day of Exotics at Redmond Town Center last week Saturday and what an event. It was a chance to put on my volunteer shirt and jacket and another chance to work the greatest weekly car show in the US and it was an opportunity to see my old friends and co-volunteers again. It was a lot of fun and lots of laughs with record crowds.
We had room for only about 530 cars, but we’re guessing around 700 showed up and well over 150 didn’t get in. We were full by 8:30 AM and we estimate that about 3,000 people attended. It’s hard to believe that something started by two guys with a little bit of spare time could turn into something this huge.
This is all because of an interesting marketing method that built a community and all without a substantial marketing budget. It’s a combination of words meeting experience and keeping them one in the same.
Our Opening Day family. We have roughly 36 volunteers, most of which worked opening day.
We began in the upper left corner in 2009 with just 32 cars and one tiny section of the parking lot.
Redmond Town Center’s center circle. Cars go all the way around the mall.
The crowds in full swing at around 10 AM.
Me in the black hat with my back facing us chatting it up with old friends.
It was wonderful to spend time with friends and reconnect but as I was walking around, Missouri felt like a dream. The ideal world I now live in felt so distant among thousands of people and hundreds of exotic cars.
When I came home, I was back in my wild animal kingdom where I had to chase a stubborn armadillo off the driveway just to keep moving, where the deer stand and watch me eat breakfast, and where we see endless animals in the tranquil setting of the Ozarks.
It was nice to be back, but I sure missed my home, my dog and my life here. Seattle keeps moving in one direction, and me in another. It’s now a nice place to visit, but only for a short time. Missouri is now home and I was glad to be back.