Leaderboard

Umm FYI True has a similar deal doing the training for the skates. It's on the management and the company. I used to head the training dept at a chain and our brand was the leader in Pro shop across 4 families of stores. And it was the least funded etc. I cared and our employees cared. I have 7 that are now Pro Equipment managers. One is now the first female EQM in PRO Men's hockey in the KHL. One is a buyer for hockey in the main office. And bunch more Dept and store managers. It's all about the culture and how much you care about teaching.

I remember my first Aluminum stick and thinking how light it was. Funny compared to Composite sticks of today.

I had the opportunity to visit the Hockey Monkey in Irvine, CA today to see how they are marketing the TRUE TF7/TF9 and was not very impressed. The sales rep, a young kid with a nice flow of hair, approached me in front of the skate wall and asked me if I was looking for some new skates so I asked him what's new and hot right now and he immediately dragged me over to Bauer to show me the Ultrasonic skates. I asked him what else is new and he took me to CCM to talk about the new AS3 Pro skates. Never once did he ask me my playing level or even the price point I was targeting. I then noticed the TRUE TF7/TF9 off in the corner, lonely by the closeout skates from previous years. I asked him to tell me a bit about TRUE as if I had never really heard of the brand. His exact words "Yeah, they seem pretty dope, but many people don't like that brand and since they are brand new. I don't really know too much about TRUE." I asked him if anyone working knew about TRUE and after asking around another guy walked over and said he tried TRUE skates 2-3 years ago and they seemed ok but he prefers Bauer because they are made better and all of the pros use Bauer. After pestering the staff a little bit they finally went in the back and grabbed me the TF7 and TF9 so I could try them on. I think it was the first time they had brought them to the floor because they seemed very interested in checking out the skates themselves. I talked with them a little bit about the TF7 and TF9, how they are different from one another, and how they compare against a Bauer or CCM. I can tell you Hockey Monkey really needs to spend more time educating their sales staff if the TF7 or TF9 is going to do well for sales at their stores. Staff also had no clue about and of the current TRUE rebates and when I showed them such they didn't seem to care. This specific location had very little TRUE product in stock, no protective, and a limited selection of AX series sticks. Tomorrow I am going to visit PURE to see if the experience there is different. I have already visited another PURE store in WA but they didn't even have any of the TRUE skates in stock.

Marketing 101... From experience I find the young players want Bauer or CCM because their favorite NHL Player wears them or because their teammate Johnny does. Older players who have always skated in Bauer or CCM and haven't had any issues tend to stay in that skate. Mako was a niche skate and True might just remain that as well.

I’m waiting for our ProSharp machine to arrive after which we will launch a mail in profiling service (out of the Netherlands). End of next month we should go live with our website.

I know it’s not the classic silver version, but I actually really like the red.