February 15, 2016

Good Morning to all,

It appears we do still have winter in our great north east! As I am penning this narrative Cathy and I have just returned from the Allentown, PA show and while she is home readying herself for her upcoming operation, I am waiting for my oil man at the shop where it is 40 degrees inside. Seems our -10 degree Saturday night cold spell wrecked a bit of havoc about our town, our own properties included.

A house we recently purchased had a burst pipe that caused the fire company to pump out about 2 feet of basement water into a drain several hundred yards away while we were hoping to sell guns on Sunday at the show. Luckily, my son-in-law Chris was able to oversee that operation, however today every window is fully iced over and we had no sales on Sunday in Allentown. Talk about scheduling conflicts; four shows that weekend.

Then, when Chris checked the shop all seemed fine but because of the bitter cold I must have run out of oil in the middle of Sunday evening and it is now pretty cold in here while waiting for a delivery and to restart the shop furnace. There is never a dull moment in being a property owner. That "Did we miss winter?" feeling that came over all of us; it was suddenly changed back to reality on this Valentine’s Day.

I mentioned Cathy’s operation above; let me explain; this Wednesday she is having a hysterectomy and will be recuperating for a while. We explained the situation to friends, members and exhibitors at our recent Saratoga show at the City Center because we wanted to alert everyone as to the probability of us not getting everything needing to be done on time for all of these NEACA shows. And also that we would very much appreciate all of you getting timely applications into our office with due diligence. We hope everything will come out satisfactorily but one never knows. So, by all of you helping out with early applications, conversing word of mouth promotions, putting up our fliers and sending warm thoughts and prayers to the home front will all make our lives a little less stressful. We will let all of you know how everything is going as we know it.

Cathy will not be attending the show in Albany this coming weekend at the Polish Community Center but my son David and me will take care of things. Cathy and family took over my job once at the old Catskill Show while I was out of commission for a weekend so I hope we can do as good a job as her replacement; we will see! Basically we are sold out of tables; I have 3 left to sell as of this writing. Last February at our first show there we had about 1200 public attending the show plus dealers and members so this should be even better. The food should be as good as last year for the full weekend and we hope the attendees bring some extra money to keep this "great economy" going.

Our January Saratoga Show was great; and a sell-out! We had a very good crowd and they brought cash to spend; even I did real well. As I have been reporting, "Saratoga is always the place to be!" Our March 18, 19, 20 flier is enclosed, lots of tables already sold, so get your applications in today. If you did not already deposit for your same tables you may miss out on them unless I get an early application; read the flier, there is a late fee. All of our costs are up again, must be the 1% inflation kicking up the rising economic factors.

Also enclosed is our Manchester Center, VT flier for April 8, 9, 10; please get it filled out and send it in, it is only three weeks after Saratoga. This is going to be a great new show in a terrific Vermont village, home of Orvis and near all of the retail outlets. There are plenty of good motels and restaurants and all of the dealers made money at our first show last September. We have three scheduled for this year and I hope you sign up for all of them, we have room for 300 tables and it is a great place to do business.

Then on to Saugerties and the Kiwanis Ice Arena on April 22, 23, 24 where you all know we have a very good event there. No doubt our 200 tables will again be full because we are getting new exhibitors at all of our NEACA shows. Some of our regulars think they need to travel hundreds of miles into Ohio, Pennsylvania or Massachusetts and that is fine, but when their tables are taken over by new dealers who end up making money closer to home, perhaps they will realize again that our NEACA shows are well run and bring in the buyers and collectors; all I need to say. The Saugerties flier is enclosed; again a 1 table deposit is all we need, send yours in now.

All of our 2016 shows can be found on our NEACA.com website; go to our Gun Show pages. We get many nice comments from all of the folks who go there and we are trying to upgrade to a new format but it does take time, and know that we have little of that available right now. Those of you still without computers may at least have a smart phone -- you can find our site on there also. I hope all of you get into this 21st century if you haven’t yet discovered all of the new technology. Even that little cell phone can be an amazing instrument with just a little training; a new trick for us old dogs. The print advertising is nearly becoming a thing of the past. We still have to do it but it is more and more a waste of money. Social Media is where folks learn about what is going on so we are spending more time and effort on that and Emails. If we don’t have yours, please send it to me at sales@neaca.com . Then spread our word to your network of friends and ask them to pass it on. If all of you just do that one little thing our message of show dates will reach thousands of folks in just a few short hours.

We sincerely appreciate your participation in our shows and realize each of you certainly can’t exhibit at all of them – though some of our very loyal supporters do – and Cathy and I do know who you are. And we know who you are who promote all of our shows to other exhibitors and we appreciate that also. When we accept you as a NEACA Member we try to give you our best effort but also ask you to do your part to further our cause of promoting well attended and profitable gun shows. Your membership should also include your willingness to help grow "your shows" so all Members can benefit from the actions of us all. We really do try hard and do appreciate your help. See you at Gun Show time!

Thanks, Cathy & Dave