National Tour: Eastern Canada Recap, Part 1

The eastern portion of the 2014 Stahls’ Canada National Tour wrapped up recently after visits to Halifax, Moncton, Québec City, Montréal, and Ottawa. Our eastern Tour wrap-up is a team effort, with an overview by Don Conrod and a more detailed travelogue from Spencer Ritchie. You can still register for July’s events in Toronto on our National Tour page. Read Part 2 of the eastern Canada recap.

 

Eastern National Tour Wrap-Up
by Don Conrod, Stahls’ Canada Customer Service Manager

Dan Dugas speaks with attendees in Halifax.

Our team consisting of Spencer Ritchie, Dale Mouscos, Dan Dugas, Justin Akinsara and Bill Cook (from Stahls’ Transfer Express®) have returned from our annual road trip out east with lots of interesting adventures.

Challenges included our Canadian weather as our team was travelling in a variety of conditions, including rain, freezing rain, torrential rain, high winds, fog, ice pellets, and snow, not to mention blizzard conditions on the way to Moncton.

Also, some of the hotels along the way had their own set of problems that made life interesting for our team. For example, major renovations in Moncton and a leaking roof, and challenges unloading in both Montréal and Ottawa. However, the “A” Team (as Spencer refers to them) managed to persevere and did not let it affect their true Stahls’ spirit.

There was a great deal of interest in the Epson® DTG printer, our Custom Embroidered Patch program, the forthcoming Vintage Patch program , 8 new Glitter Flake™ colours, the Roland® BN-20 print/cut system, our new Graphtec CE6000 vinyl cutter and the many offerings from Transfer Express®.

Overall, our “A” Team felt the Tour was very successful. All the attendees were enthusiastic and were happy to meet the Stahls’ team. To cap it off, members of our fantastic sales team stayed in their areas and made phone calls and arranged visits to meet their customers one-on-one.

 

Daily Dispatches

by Spencer Ritchie, Stahls’ Canada National Sales Manager

Days 1 & 2

A creative display of the 8 new Glitter Flake heat transfer material colours.

Dale and I hopped into our van, nicknamed the White Knight, fully laden with CAD-CUT® heat transfer materialsheat transfer material samples, Sport-Stitch® samples, Custom Embroidered Patches, Transfer Express screen printed transfers, DTG flyers, and our new 2014 catalogue. We also had virtually every flyer and samples of the entire line for presentation to our customers over the following week.

As we headed east to Halifax, Nova Scotia, a 9 hour drive, we came to realize just how large our country is. Upon arrival in Halifax we hooked up with Dan Dugas, our Atlantic Canada rep and Bill Cook, the Transfer Express Canadian rep. Dan and Bill had been in Atlantic Canada for several days, making sales calls, and advised great enthusiasm and anticipation for the Tour.

Halifax

As soon as we opened the doors we had 8 customers lined up to go! We were thrilled with the overall turnout and had a lot of interest in the Epson® SureColor® F2000 Direct-to-Garment printer and Business in a Box.

As we started to load up the White Knight for the trip to Moncton, we noticed the omnipresent rain was starting to fall harder and make much more noise! Yep, you guessed it – in late April we were getting hit with ice pellets and freezing rain. The ice pellets turned to a full-blown blizzard with high winds as we headed west.

We arrived safely in our two-car convoy at the Moncton Crowne Plaza and since we were on a 13 hour continuous day, we decided to unload into the room and set up early Friday morning. The concierge, Paul, was a huge help as we had to unload the vans outside and up five snow-covered slippery stairs into the room. But our intrepid team buckled down and we got it done and all inside.

Moncton

Stahls’ Canada National Sales Manager Spencer Ritchie shows National Tour attendees the benefits of the Graphtec CE6000 vinyl cutter.

We were able to spend time with each customer, explaining our products and answering their questions. Of particular interest again was the DTG machine along with our fabulous 8 new colours of CAD-CUT Glitter Flake heat transfer material. Kudos to Bill and Dan, who spent a lot time with customers, fully explaining our products.

We retired for the night to rest up for our 9 hour drive to Québec City for the second half of our quest to better educate our customers.

Check back tomorrow to read about the second half of the eastern Tour, in Québec and beyond!

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