Find solutions to industry challenges … while at this year’s BCA Expo. We don’t have all the answers, but the expanded Business of Billiards Seminar Series can provide you with ideas to improve your business. If you haven’t been to the BCA Expo Web site lately, then take a few moments to check out the speaker profiles and seminar descriptions. These guest speakers are some of the best in their fields, so your time will be well-spent. The content will provide critical tools that can help you grow your business: methodologies to improve traffic in your store(s); Internet marketing strategies; drilled down information about the consumer market; and marketing inexpensively through community groups and non-profit partnering.

Seminar Spotlight: Your Customer is More Sophisticated: Are You?

As customers have become both price and product savvy, retailers have had to raise their level of sophistication just to keep pace. This presentation will deliver dynamic tools for retail merchandising, product presentation and interactive media. Details also include how to draw customers through signage and window displays, insider information on how to save thousands of dollars on your store displays and fixtures, designing store lighting for maximum impact and increased sales, and merchandising and display techniques that will keep customers in your store — and keep them buying. Join us for Jeff Grant’s seminar on June 13, 2008, at 1:00 p.m., at the Charlotte Convention Center — and only at the 2008 BCA Expo.

Your specialist for this seminar is Jeff Grant, with TRIO Display, who comes from three generations of shopfitters. Both his father and grandfather were in the shopfitting trade and the family’s history in the display business dates back to 1925. Grant himself has been actively involved in designing, equipping, and building retail projects since 1978. He has worked on projects with high-profile specialty retailers including Disney, Universal Studios, RMS Titanic, the United States Olympic Committee, and numerous professional sports teams including the Yankees, Dodgers, Angels and Bears. However, his specialty is helping small retailers of all types maximize their investment when planning and building their stores.

Grant is the author of The Budget Guide to Store Planning and Design and is a principal in TRIO Display. Grant lives in San Diego, California, travels extensively and works with over 1,000 merchants a year designing stores, providing retail fixtures and displays and dispensing advice, ideas, and suggestions.

Make your plans now to join us in Charlotte, June 12-14, 2008.  Additional details, including more information on the Business of Billiards Seminar Series, can be found on the BCA Expo Web site.  Register today!  There are just a few weeks remaining for FREE registration (before March 31, 2008) for BCA members.

Whether you’re selling a product, a service or getting people to your 2008 BCA Expo booth ... marketing helps get your message across.  (That whole “build it and they will come” concept doesn’t work all that often.)  Marketing doesn’t have to be trying, just targeted. Here are three tips to ensure successful marketing (it’s an ART form):

• AUDIENCE: Use your current database and unearth that book of leads from the drawer!  You can also trade customer lists with a local restaurant, bowling alley or fitness center.

• REPETITION: Very important.  Use more than one marketing medium with similar messages (combine direct mail, Web marketing and phone calls, for example). Then do it again.  And again.

• TIMING: Market before, during and after an event (whether it’s a sale or the BCA Expo). Be sure to give your audience a way to get more information and give them lots of reasons to come see you.

Exhibiting at the 2008 BCA Expo?  The BCA Expo team has amassed a marketing arsenal for you: direct mail pieces; logos; links; and text (all for free).  Just shoot an e-mail to Melissa Cowan, BCA coordinator of trade services, at melissa@bca-pool.com.  She's here to help!  Visit the BCA Expo Web site for more marketing ideas.

The BCA recently issued the official sponsorship offers to qualified BCA members … and solicited sealed bids for product sponsorships and non-competing advertising opportunities in support of the upcoming championships. For the first time, the 2008 GenerationPool.com 9-Ball Championships will be held in conjunction with the International Billiard & Home Recreation Expo, June 12-14, in Charlotte, North Carolina. The tournament’s semi-finals and finals events will take place June 11-12 in the Grand Ballroom at the Charlotte Convention Center, with ESPN broadcast taping of the semi-finals and finals at the close of the event. The BCA would like to give special thanks to the 2008 sponsors:

Further, ESPN is committing more time to showing the GenerationPool.com 9-Ball Championships on ESPN and ESPN2 in 2008. After speaking with ESPN about the innovative changes developed for the , they were thrilled to add two additional hours of programming for the event, meaning the event will air for a minimum of six hours. These additional hours of airtime will add more than 30 percent of first-run coverage shown on television. The BCA will also be inducting its 52nd member into the BCA Hall of Fame during the intermission between the men’s and women’s GenerationPool.com 9-Ball Championships final matches on Thursday, June 12. This exclusive ceremony will take place in the main arena and will continue the long tradition of recognizing and paying tribute to the world’s greatest billiard players and contributors.

Unclaimed product categories (chalk and rack) are still available, along with associated, non-competing ad placement on the arena scoreboard and sideline rotating banners. Bidding remains restricted to BCA members in good standing and more details may be requested by e-mail to Trish Chavez, BCA marketing director, at trish@bca-pool.com.

Be sure to keep an eye on the 2008 GenerationPool.com 9-Ball Championships page on the BCA Web site, as well as GenerationPool.com, for the latest and greatest information regarding the tournament.

The Billiard Education Foundation (BEF) … has scheduled the 20th Annual Junior Nationals, to be played in conjunction with the Association of College Unions International (ACUI) Collegiate 9-Ball Championships for the fourth consecutive year. The University of Arizona, Tucson, will host this prestigious tournament July 8-13, 2008. ACUI competition will be held July 8-10, while the junior excitement will take place Thursday to Sunday, July 10-13.

The Student Union Memorial Center will be the stage to an expected 250 young athletes competing for scholarships, prizes and invitations to represent the United States at the World Pool-Billiard Association (WPA) Junior World Championships.

To participate in the BEF Junior Nationals, players must earn an entry through a BEF qualifier or must be appointed by their local junior league. Qualifiers for the four divisions: 19 & Under Boys; 19 & Under Girls; 14 & Under Boys; and 14 & Under Girls will be held through May 2008. For more information about hosting a qualifier, league guidelines or upcoming qualifier dates and locations, visit www.BilliardEducation.org. Collegiate participants must be invited to participate through an ACUI regional tournament. Visit www.acui.org for more information.