Why Didn't I Think of This?

We went to the mall for lunch today, and as we were walking around noticed a new store hidden away in the corner of the mall. I don’t recall the name, but it was basically a poker supply store. It had some nice tables, t-shirts, a pretty good selection of poker chips and other assorted gambling paraphernalia. It definitely wasn’t a very flashy store. There were no fancy displays or anything. It looked like one of those “As Seen on TV” type stores, with the merchandise kind of haphazardly arranged.

But it really didn’t need anything fancy. I have to think poker supplies sell themselves these days, so the store concept was probably a no brainer. But here’s the brilliant part. They had promotions where you would get some free poker package of chips or a table or something as long as you signed up with Party Poker through them. Depending on their affiliate deal, that could be a gold mine. Selling the chips and other supplies becomes irrelevant to being able to sell their customers on online poker. Honestly, I don’t know why they didn’t hype some of the other sites that offer pretty good affiliate deals, such as Pacific Poker or even PokerRoom. The salesman tried to get us to sign up with Party, but we already all played there. It would have made sense to have a backup site or two, especially since chances are if someone plays online, they play on Party.

The other genius thing about this store is that the salesman was just sitting there behind a desk when we first came in. We were the only ones in the store, but he didn’t get up to talk to us until we had looked around for at least five minutes. I have to believe that he was just sitting there playing online poker. How great would that be? Compare your standard crappy mall job to one where you actually get paid to sit around and play online poker. Hmmm, tough choice. And if he wasn’t playing poker, then he should have been. What better way to get people to sign up than to let them see how well you are doing?

If only I’d thought of this a few years ago…