The Phillies Parade + Press Release = A long day

Earlier this week, I sent out a press release to the local media about YoYo Joe's opening. In the past, at Mitchell's, I experienced mixed results on press releases. Sometimes local media responded, other times, no so much. So, I did not expect anything when sending out the press release.

Flash forward to Wednesday, when my beloved Philadelphia Phillies actually won the World Series. I have followed the Phillies since I was ten years old and I once actually interviewed for the position of the Phillies mascot - The Philly Phanatic (true story!). Anyhoo, when the Phils won, my brother and I both thought we should probably try to get to the parade that was scheduled for Friday. Both of us figured this might never happen again, and we should try to see something like that before we kicked off (the last championship for a major Philly sport was in 1983!) So, we headed up to Philly. About a half hour after we arrived, I got a call on my cell phone. A reporter from the Wilmington News Journal was responding to my press release and was interested in interviewing me and taking a picture of Emily and I at our store. At 2:30. About 45 minutes after the ceremony was scheduled to begin, and it took about 35 minutes to get back home. Tom & I bagged the parade (sorry, Tom!) and headed home where I barely made it to the store in time for the interview. The result - a big ole article about YoYo Joe's in the Saturday paper! Yay us!

T-Minus five days...

...and counting to our 'unofficial' opening. Our 'official' opening remains November 1st, but we're doing everything we can to be in final shape by Monday....

Yikes! Looking around the back room, there's stacks of merchandise to get onto the sales floor. There's stacks of merchandise on the sales floor too. Gee, we've got a lot of merchandise, and more keeps arriving each day! Today, I went on a trip to Philly to get more shelving while Emily was at the store. Of course, 80 boxes showed up today between UPS and Fedex...plus, the balance of the metal shelving arrived from the powder coaters...poor Emily!

Have I mentioned that my dad (YoYo Joe Sr) has marked a giant chunk of our merchandise? He's spent hours here marking stuff with official YoYo Joe's price labels. You say, "hmm...didn't you say, Joe, that you're using a Point Of Sale system?." How detail-oriented of you to remember...that's right, we're using a POS, but there's nothing I hate more than shopping somewhere and there's no label on the package and there's no price sticker near the item, so we're marking everything. (OK, there's actually sooo much stuff I hate more than that, but you know what I mean)

Kris and Nate (the shipbuilder) show up tomorrow to fit out the rest of the pirate ship. Yep, rest of the pirate ship. Including a ship's wheel, a yardarm, a sail and more...

Oh, and thanks to my ludicrously late hours here at YoYo Joe's - I missed the entire game four of the National League Championship Series last night. I only missed what many people are calling one of the greatest games in Phillies history. Oh well, thank God for internet video.