Customer Appreciation Day?
- Thread starter SkullV
- Start date
The reefer
Active member
I was interested also. Is it for everyone or just the other site?
TangPolice
Banned
Post Party Wrap-up
Well things are back to normal around here. Store is put back together, my emails are caught up, bills are paid (well mostly..lol) and we are all enjoying sharing things we remembered about the party. Those of us outside had no clue what is was like inside and vice versa. Thanks so much to all of you CR members that made it up. Seeing pictures has been fun so if anyone has any, please email me or post them if you could.
So many people to thank but it must start first with thanking our Veterans for their service to our country! We hoped to do our small part in recognizing the veterans on Memorial Day and with your help and generosity, I believe we were successful. Ron and Ellen from Limpits Reef teamed up with us and as he noted, he has mailed a check in the amount of $456.46 to "Stars and Stripes Honor Flight". Thank you Ron & Ellen for your support and help with this event. In addition, there was $229.64 in the donation jars for "VetDogs". We rounded that up to $250 and submitted that earlier today. This donation is in addition to our original purchase of their toys that we purchased for their benefit. So all in all, over $400 went to this great cause. Your donations are greatly appreciated!
Original Message-----
From: "America's VetDogs Info" [info@vetdogs.org]
Date: 05/29/2014 01:11 PM
Subject: America’s VetDogs (VetDogs.org): Donation Submission Received
Thank you for your $250.00 donation to America’s VetDogs – the Veteran’s K-9 Corps, Inc. We truly appreciate your generosity in helping us help those who have served our country honorably. We train guide dogs for veterans who are blind; service dogs for those with other physical or emotional disabilities, and physical and occupational therapy dogs to work with amputees in military and VA hospitals.
Please note that your donation will show up on your credit card statement as “Guide Dog Foundation,” the sister organization of America’s VetDogs. Please rest assured that your contribution is being put to appropriate use by America’s VetDogs. You will receive your receipt in your mail when we have completed processing your donation. If you have any questions, please contact us at
info@vetdogs.org, or by phone at 866-VETDOGS (866-838-3647) Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern time.
Thank you again for your support of America’s VetDogs, and the veterans we serve.
Next I need to thank our family, friends and employees for all of their hard work, not only that day but the weeks before while we were getting prepared. Plus appreciate them putting up with me ... I am rather impulsive and intense so that adds a little extra excitement at times. :wink5: As normal, my plans and ideas are more than we can accomplish....but we came close. We again this year thank Shawn (Scote) and his brother Jason(plainrt) for their help getting those great Johnsonville brats here as well as our friends Kurt and Joyce taking care of all of the grilling. My wife Judy and daughter Dawn spent the weekend shopping and preparing everything. Our good customer and friend Rich - Tonyssrx (the quiet guy handling the raffles) helped all day setting up and tearing down. We also thank Andria, Andy, Eric and Julie for bringing their frags for you to purchase in the front showroom. Had a whole crew of other family members helping out as well. Our sales reps, Phil and LuAnn worked continuously all day and we greatly appreciate that!
We had so many of you comment on how much you enjoyed the music, Myles and Jamie. View attachment 2686They were outstanding and the whole band, Crossfire, performs somewhere every week if you are interested in seeing more of them. http://crossfirecountry.com/Crossfire/Home.html Myles and Jamie often perform by themselves as well like they did here. Also wish to thank Glen Gerard for his great magic tricks, if anyone is missing a watch....well I think I know where it went...lol. http://www.magic4you.com/View attachment 2687
We had many vendors contribute to this party this year. In no particular order (and I hope I don’t miss anyone):
Wilson Pet Supply
Central Aquatics (Kent Marine, Coral Life, Oceanic)
UPG (Perfecto, Tetra, Marineland)
SeaChem
ATI
Repashy Foods
Alternative Reef - Scott
Aquatop
eLive
General Pet
Tunze - Roger
Quality Marine
Aquatic Life
Boyd (Chemi Pure)
Sustainable Aquatics
I want to thank them all for their generosity and being a small business owner, I take special note on Scott's generosity (Alternative Reef). He is the man that makes all the frag plugs many of you use. Pretty much a one man operation yet he took the time (and expense) to send quite a few items that we gave away. Also a special shout out to Roger who distributes the Tunze line. I do very little business with him yet he was very generous in support of our veterans. This is not to take away from anyone else, you can just imagine the amount of requests they must all get for freebees throughout the year. Please support these companies when you can!
We estimate we had over 400 people attend. Just a guess but we do know that we gave out 227 gifts and in theory that was one per family. Most people came with at least one or two other people, so that’s how we came up with that number.
View attachment 2688
Had a number of people come up from the Chicago area. Always great to see them!! Then we had our Madison area and Fox Valley/Green Bay area customers make the trip as well. We do thank you all!
I want to share a couple posts from some Chicago people that made the trip.
“Brian and Judy,
Thank you so much for yet another awesome event. Your obvious honoring of our veterans is so great and you definitely outdid yourselves this year. For anyone who hasn't had a chance to attend one of these, imagine a full swap, but outdoors with free food (oh God the brats!), even better deals, an awesome live band and a pretty damn good magician. That'll give you a pretty good picture. Thanks again for fostering and welcoming the reefing community in such a big way. I had fully intended to capture a bunch of photos for this post, but I was just too busy having a blast!”
Nate
“Judy saw me and gave me one of her fabulous smiles and said she didn't know I was there. I told her I was laying low because I knew how busy everyone was and I didn't want anyone to have any kind of breakdown. You guys were working your huge hearts out. Thanks again and as always, it was great seeing everyone there. I hope you guys got some rest.
Walt”
We all greatly appreciate their comments, and their friendship. Means a lot to us!. We hope you all had a similar experiences.
The great weather sure was a relief. That’s the obvious huge concern in an event like this. We had 125' of tents put up but rain would have made things very uncomfortable. In spite of being such a large group, I have to say we are all pleased that everyone had such a great attitude and was so patient. Overall I think the wait time was not unreasonable and there really is not much more that can be done to reduce it. We have our "after party Employees Party" coming up next week where we talk about what was good and what we can do better in the future, so I am sure we will have some changes. (we just look for excuses to go out with the crew besides their birthdays...lol) We again will toss the idea around about having a "number system" for being waited on, though in the past we decided against it. Always open for suggestions.
I was too busy to know who won the big prize raffles this year... The 29 gal Bio cube and Stand, The 16 gal Innovative Marine Setup, The 93 Cube Tank and Stand and the Radion G2 Light. So congrats to all of you. The final Veteran raffle, a 75 gallon tank with furniture stand was won by Jason Jones and we all want to thank him for his service!!! We tried to ask everyone if they were a vet since they received a few extra goodies courtesy of Best Fish. We again want to thank all of you who served.
Overall I am pleased with the format this year. We added the entertainment and extra seating with the idea of making it a nicer day for all. This provided a relief from the inside crowds. Bringing more products outside helped as well. We will have to make some decisions about what direction we take this in the future. The growth of this since our first event is rather amazing. We can not handle any more people inside so I do believe more things outside is the key.....but now we are back to the weather concerns. I mentioned Bradley Center to Judy and she mentioned .....well I can't repeat what she said...lol. But seriously, we are all very thankful that we were able to do this for everyone. Judy and I, as well as the whole "Best Fish Crew" hope we always meet your expectations and sure hoped you enjoyed yourselves!
Judy, Brian, Kevin, Laura, Tyler, Mark as well as our families and friends. God Bless ~
Well things are back to normal around here. Store is put back together, my emails are caught up, bills are paid (well mostly..lol) and we are all enjoying sharing things we remembered about the party. Those of us outside had no clue what is was like inside and vice versa. Thanks so much to all of you CR members that made it up. Seeing pictures has been fun so if anyone has any, please email me or post them if you could.
So many people to thank but it must start first with thanking our Veterans for their service to our country! We hoped to do our small part in recognizing the veterans on Memorial Day and with your help and generosity, I believe we were successful. Ron and Ellen from Limpits Reef teamed up with us and as he noted, he has mailed a check in the amount of $456.46 to "Stars and Stripes Honor Flight". Thank you Ron & Ellen for your support and help with this event. In addition, there was $229.64 in the donation jars for "VetDogs". We rounded that up to $250 and submitted that earlier today. This donation is in addition to our original purchase of their toys that we purchased for their benefit. So all in all, over $400 went to this great cause. Your donations are greatly appreciated!
Original Message-----
From: "America's VetDogs Info" [info@vetdogs.org]
Date: 05/29/2014 01:11 PM
Subject: America’s VetDogs (VetDogs.org): Donation Submission Received
Thank you for your $250.00 donation to America’s VetDogs – the Veteran’s K-9 Corps, Inc. We truly appreciate your generosity in helping us help those who have served our country honorably. We train guide dogs for veterans who are blind; service dogs for those with other physical or emotional disabilities, and physical and occupational therapy dogs to work with amputees in military and VA hospitals.
Please note that your donation will show up on your credit card statement as “Guide Dog Foundation,” the sister organization of America’s VetDogs. Please rest assured that your contribution is being put to appropriate use by America’s VetDogs. You will receive your receipt in your mail when we have completed processing your donation. If you have any questions, please contact us at
info@vetdogs.org, or by phone at 866-VETDOGS (866-838-3647) Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern time.
Thank you again for your support of America’s VetDogs, and the veterans we serve.
Next I need to thank our family, friends and employees for all of their hard work, not only that day but the weeks before while we were getting prepared. Plus appreciate them putting up with me ... I am rather impulsive and intense so that adds a little extra excitement at times. :wink5: As normal, my plans and ideas are more than we can accomplish....but we came close. We again this year thank Shawn (Scote) and his brother Jason(plainrt) for their help getting those great Johnsonville brats here as well as our friends Kurt and Joyce taking care of all of the grilling. My wife Judy and daughter Dawn spent the weekend shopping and preparing everything. Our good customer and friend Rich - Tonyssrx (the quiet guy handling the raffles) helped all day setting up and tearing down. We also thank Andria, Andy, Eric and Julie for bringing their frags for you to purchase in the front showroom. Had a whole crew of other family members helping out as well. Our sales reps, Phil and LuAnn worked continuously all day and we greatly appreciate that!
We had so many of you comment on how much you enjoyed the music, Myles and Jamie. View attachment 2686They were outstanding and the whole band, Crossfire, performs somewhere every week if you are interested in seeing more of them. http://crossfirecountry.com/Crossfire/Home.html Myles and Jamie often perform by themselves as well like they did here. Also wish to thank Glen Gerard for his great magic tricks, if anyone is missing a watch....well I think I know where it went...lol. http://www.magic4you.com/View attachment 2687
We had many vendors contribute to this party this year. In no particular order (and I hope I don’t miss anyone):
Wilson Pet Supply
Central Aquatics (Kent Marine, Coral Life, Oceanic)
UPG (Perfecto, Tetra, Marineland)
SeaChem
ATI
Repashy Foods
Alternative Reef - Scott
Aquatop
eLive
General Pet
Tunze - Roger
Quality Marine
Aquatic Life
Boyd (Chemi Pure)
Sustainable Aquatics
I want to thank them all for their generosity and being a small business owner, I take special note on Scott's generosity (Alternative Reef). He is the man that makes all the frag plugs many of you use. Pretty much a one man operation yet he took the time (and expense) to send quite a few items that we gave away. Also a special shout out to Roger who distributes the Tunze line. I do very little business with him yet he was very generous in support of our veterans. This is not to take away from anyone else, you can just imagine the amount of requests they must all get for freebees throughout the year. Please support these companies when you can!
We estimate we had over 400 people attend. Just a guess but we do know that we gave out 227 gifts and in theory that was one per family. Most people came with at least one or two other people, so that’s how we came up with that number.
View attachment 2688
Had a number of people come up from the Chicago area. Always great to see them!! Then we had our Madison area and Fox Valley/Green Bay area customers make the trip as well. We do thank you all!
I want to share a couple posts from some Chicago people that made the trip.
“Brian and Judy,
Thank you so much for yet another awesome event. Your obvious honoring of our veterans is so great and you definitely outdid yourselves this year. For anyone who hasn't had a chance to attend one of these, imagine a full swap, but outdoors with free food (oh God the brats!), even better deals, an awesome live band and a pretty damn good magician. That'll give you a pretty good picture. Thanks again for fostering and welcoming the reefing community in such a big way. I had fully intended to capture a bunch of photos for this post, but I was just too busy having a blast!”
Nate
“Judy saw me and gave me one of her fabulous smiles and said she didn't know I was there. I told her I was laying low because I knew how busy everyone was and I didn't want anyone to have any kind of breakdown. You guys were working your huge hearts out. Thanks again and as always, it was great seeing everyone there. I hope you guys got some rest.
Walt”
We all greatly appreciate their comments, and their friendship. Means a lot to us!. We hope you all had a similar experiences.
The great weather sure was a relief. That’s the obvious huge concern in an event like this. We had 125' of tents put up but rain would have made things very uncomfortable. In spite of being such a large group, I have to say we are all pleased that everyone had such a great attitude and was so patient. Overall I think the wait time was not unreasonable and there really is not much more that can be done to reduce it. We have our "after party Employees Party" coming up next week where we talk about what was good and what we can do better in the future, so I am sure we will have some changes. (we just look for excuses to go out with the crew besides their birthdays...lol) We again will toss the idea around about having a "number system" for being waited on, though in the past we decided against it. Always open for suggestions.
I was too busy to know who won the big prize raffles this year... The 29 gal Bio cube and Stand, The 16 gal Innovative Marine Setup, The 93 Cube Tank and Stand and the Radion G2 Light. So congrats to all of you. The final Veteran raffle, a 75 gallon tank with furniture stand was won by Jason Jones and we all want to thank him for his service!!! We tried to ask everyone if they were a vet since they received a few extra goodies courtesy of Best Fish. We again want to thank all of you who served.
Overall I am pleased with the format this year. We added the entertainment and extra seating with the idea of making it a nicer day for all. This provided a relief from the inside crowds. Bringing more products outside helped as well. We will have to make some decisions about what direction we take this in the future. The growth of this since our first event is rather amazing. We can not handle any more people inside so I do believe more things outside is the key.....but now we are back to the weather concerns. I mentioned Bradley Center to Judy and she mentioned .....well I can't repeat what she said...lol. But seriously, we are all very thankful that we were able to do this for everyone. Judy and I, as well as the whole "Best Fish Crew" hope we always meet your expectations and sure hoped you enjoyed yourselves!
Judy, Brian, Kevin, Laura, Tyler, Mark as well as our families and friends. God Bless ~
Last edited:
Rich130981
New member
Epic Fail...lol
The reefer
Active member
Lol! oops wrong site.
OPEN to everyoneYa you guys should come up it's a great time and fantasic prices a very large selection of inventory and don't forget to were your Chicago reefs shirts
Sorry for any confusion about our Memorial Day event. I apologize to anyone that may have felt slighted because I did not post the information on CR. Our focus for that day is two fold....to give back to our customers that have supported us over the years and to honor our veterans. The event has grown to the point where our biggest challenge is to keep the size of the crowd manageable so that requires me to make some choices. Our intent is not to grow business this day and in fact this day costs us quite a bit of money. We personally give out many thousands of dollars worth of merchandise besides all the generous donations from the vendors listed.
CR has grown tremendously since I first found the site a few short years ago. My fear of posting the "invite" on this site was that it may actually generate more interest than we could handle. However we did not discourage your attendance. As you can see from the timeline of the posts, Tonyssrx did respond as well as others that read about this event elsewhere. So even though I did not "personally" extend an invitation on here, the info was out there. Further because our intent is to give back to past customers, everyone, including CR members that has been here and signed up for our monthly emails, received an invitation directly from us. We had many people from CR attend, and in fact Tonyssrx who helped us with our giveaways proudly wore his CR shirt that day.
I guess I also need to apologize for not being aware of CR policy regarding referencing other sites. On my "wrap up" post I attributed the two quotes to members of a different site and my post was edited by someone from CR to make it appear they were from Chicago Reefs and all links were deleted. Admittedly I did not read posting rules or etiquette so entirely my fault. Here in Wisconsin we also have 3 or 4 sites that I often refer to in my emails and posts. I never gave it any thought before as I always assumed that it was great that hobbyists have so many choices to share information and their joy of this hobby. I actively tell people about your site as well as other sites. Probably not the smartest business move...lol... sending my customers elsewhere to purchase frags, etc. So when I go out of business you can all say how dumb I was
. Regardless, if this is CR policy, I certainly will respect that in the future and will avoid posts where I reference other sites. Finally, I chose to post the "wrap-up" post on CR for a couple of reasons. First it never occurred to me that it would bother people that they read about the event elsewhere and not here. My wrap-up post has a couple of purposes. First and foremost is to recognize and thank all involved. So the more people that see who generously donated and worked so hard to make this such a success, the better in my mind. Second, I do want people to see what we are all about. We understand we are not your neighborhood LFS, but do hope you do stop when in the area. I have met some great people from CR and at this stage in our life's, that's very important to us! Finally, but should probably be the most important reason, was to keep our Veterans in mind and in your prayers. We can not thank them enough!
We have a great relationship with our customers as I am sure many of you do with the many great LFS's in your area. You are very lucky to have so many well run stores to choose from as well as having CR and other forums to learn and share things about this hobby. We realize we can not please everyone, but promise we will not stop trying!
Respectfully
Brian - "Best Fish"
SkullV
New member
Thank you for supporting the veterans, but frankly, that is BS. Your friend on the other site posts something like this:
And since the date of this thread being started, you managed to post a lengthy reply on the other site (but prior to the event). There was a group of members from CR planning to go as well as one of my friends who was looking for a large glass tank. Best of luck in your endeavors, I guess I'll just stick with LFS with no "exclusivity policy".
Triggerdood
Active member
Hmm. I haven't heard of many businesses worried about generating too much interest.
Thanks for your feedback. I cant (or wont) comment on the post you referenced made by someone else. I barely have time to defend my own posts...lol.
Best of luck to you as well!!
Yes we are very lucky to have such a huge turnout for this. We had a line outside waiting to get into the store.View attachment 2751 We can not grow anymore and still provide an enjoyable experience.
Last edited:
BigKev23
Active member
This has been an interesting thread to read, as I am all for supporting local fish stores....
But I think it is rude that another site was specifically invited to the party and then a review of the party was posted here to basically show everyone what they weren't openly invited to. When called out on it, the reasoning is because too many people might have come, which doesn't seem like a bad thing when you are trying to raise money for a great cause. While I do understand the reasoning with the limited amount of space in the store, I do not feel like this is a good way of promoting a business or an event.
I hope that this thread does not steer people away from checking out Best Fish, as I do feel like it is worth checking out if someone is in the Milwaukee area.
But I think it is rude that another site was specifically invited to the party and then a review of the party was posted here to basically show everyone what they weren't openly invited to. When called out on it, the reasoning is because too many people might have come, which doesn't seem like a bad thing when you are trying to raise money for a great cause. While I do understand the reasoning with the limited amount of space in the store, I do not feel like this is a good way of promoting a business or an event.
I hope that this thread does not steer people away from checking out Best Fish, as I do feel like it is worth checking out if someone is in the Milwaukee area.
Point well taken and I do appreciate the courteous reply and constructive criticism. I can see now how that it could come across that way so I will be much more conscious of that in the future. I have no interest in any particular site, and I do not post the same things on all forums. I also do not treat every one the same. I have offered better prices for our long distance customers in posts.... right here on CR....that are better than I offer our local people. I also have had "zip code sales" on Northern Wisconsin sites with better deals. Maybe that needs to be reconsidered as well. If you Google our posts about the party, you will see that if was not specific to any site....again I just posted it, I do not control what is said or changed by others. As I said, my post was modified on here by CR, so perhaps that may occur elsewhere as well.
Also as far as promoting the event to create more traffic, that's just not possible. I believe it was last year or the year before that I specifically emailed some CR members (one still a current moderator I believe) saying that I would like them to come and to bring along some good friends but I couldn't post on the site as I was not equipped to handle too big of a crowd. Hopefully someone will jump in and verify that. We give away a lot of things that I wanted to go to current customers. There is just so much money. I actually do not email this out to our freshwater customers either since its geared towards saltwater and would be too disruptive. But everyone on this forum that have been in our store or signed up on our email list received a direct email invitation from us. Reality says I need to pick and choose. My error may have been posting anything after the fact but I was just thanking all that attended plus promoting the store of course. Perhaps I let my pride in what we accomplished interfere with good judgement by not realizing some people that were not directly invited might be offended.
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SkullV
New member
Posts from others inviting people are credible, but posts from others advocating the exclusivity of the event are not? They seem pretty credible when even your stock list only links (and prior to the event used the same link) to the one thread on the one forum:
Come on, would have been much easier, and gone a lot further to just say "I'm sorry".
[video=youtube;9u0EL_u4nvw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9u0EL_u4nvw[/video]
Come on, would have been much easier, and gone a lot further to just say "I'm sorry".
[video=youtube;9u0EL_u4nvw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9u0EL_u4nvw[/video]
Well I think this is the longest I have ever been on a forum...lol.... I repeat..."I apologize to anyone that may have felt slighted because I did not post the information on CR."
Since you look at our stock list, you will see that I feature a web site every week. I pick them by relevancy, customers sites, and to help out startups. So I had just featured that "other forum" and this was a perk for them to use their link. I just never considered/realized that there was such a divide between the sites. If you wish and its allowed, I can post all the links to my posts on other forums where they were not mentioned. You posted the only one outside of their site I believe.
But back to your point, a simple "I'm sorry" may have been a better option. I have always said that sales, parties, giveaways, creates the most dissatisfied customers and its not good that I contributed to that dissatisfaction.
Nothing else I can say, appreciate all the input. We take all of our reps, employees and people who helped out on Saturday. We go over all that we did right and wrong. This will certainly be a topic that will be discussed....at least until I had too many drinks.