I don’t know exactly where this mentality comes from…possibly from online sources…but, once in a while, we get a customer in who asks about our “back room.” The idea is a noble one; that a “core” shop like ours has a secret room stashed floor to ceiling with premium goods: Precision trucks; rare, obscure, or otherwise exotic boards; secret formula wheels; and space-grade bearings. The hitch is, we don’t share this room with just regular ol’ customers, it’s something for just our friends.
Now, back in August, we had a guy flat-out insist that we had some kind of private stash of skate gear that we wouldn’t sell him, and he was getting upset over it. I mean, yes, we do have storage space…like every other store out there…wherein we keep spare stuff. But no, it’s not a secret back room full of unobtainable parts.
So what did I do? I ran with it. We’ve got blank, generic, unbranded stuff. I’m not saying our blank stuff is poor quality, quite the opposite. It’s pretty darn good for being blank. But, I busted out a box of blank bearings and made a little display thing out of it. I drew the name of the bearings (“Private Stash Back-Room Bearings!”) on the box and put them in our cabinet, for all the customers to see. Now, whenever anyone asks me if we have a secret stash of stuff, I just point towards the bearings.
Don’t judge me. It’s amusing.
Board Life 