HeroGear’s Profile

I know it's been quite a while since my last blog, and their is lots of things I need to tell you about in detail, but for now I'm just doing the cliff notes version of events. I'll try to do some more detailed reports soon.

We'll go by months.

November: Sales started to pick up, and requests for Les Paul skinz started pouring in. I signed a contract for IT work with a business friend of mine to cover the costs of all the new equipment. After getting my first payment from him, I received several threatening emails from Eddie Van Halens "people" about my EVH designs, had to pull them from sale and hire a copyright attorney to find out where I stand. (separate blog on this later) I ordered my new printer for making Les Paul skinz, it will print up to 14x49 inches! Began work on patterns and the new T-shirt designs while waiting for my next check to order more equipment.

December: Sales are quite good, and lots of requests are coming in for the new stuff. Managed to get enough from my IT customer to order my larger laminator, but still can't finish the new patterns until I can get my new plotter. I have refined the T-shirt designs for all the guitar models, and will launch each one shortly after the introduction of each new skin model. Was approached by a band promoter about making skinz for the bands to sell at their concerts (more on this later)

January: I launched the Les Pauls the first week of January, even though I didn't have a plotter yet, as I was expecting another check from my IT customer. My IT customer fell through on his payments, decided he wanted to renegotiate the contract for only the amount he had payed so far...panic begins to set in. I borrowed enough money from mom to buy my new plotter, but the model I originally wanted was out of stock until late February! Purchased different plotter and had to learn how to use it. Finally finished the patterns for the Les Pauls and begin filling orders. (I am way behind)

February: I finally get orders caught up the first week, and begin preparing artwork for launching the new T-shirts. Have several new competition sponsorships lined up for the spring, things are beginning to look good. Orders are coming in fast enough that I keep finding myself running out of supplies, will have to work on my ordering. On valentines day a tragic event happened in our family. My brother-in-law committed suicide and left my sister and their six kids without a father. So I have been helping take care of all the kids, and playing soccer mom taking the kids where they need to go. I'm hoping everything will get back to normal (or as close as possible) soon.

Like I said, I'll be working on blogs with more details later, but I felt like I was way past due for an update.

RedRocker

Monday, February 18, 2008

Current mood: disappointed

I guess it's been a while, and I've been avoiding sitting down to write. Been a lot of "almosts" lately. The "big time" with MoB gaming, is more of a fizzle. First only two of their players even had guitars with them, so I scrambled and skinned some of the other players guitars, only one of which made it to the final eight. Then they back up the airing of the Dallas event until NOVEMBER! I don't know after watching the first one, if it will even amount to much. They only showed the final two, and they cut both of their songs short.

I got the t-shirt press and spent 5 days sweating my ass off at the Southern Nationals softball tournament, and only sold enough shirts and prints to pay for the supplies. So I still owe my dad $500 for the press. Then I spent the next week and a half resizing and numbering 5000 action shots, and bought another domain and set up a website because all these parents were emailing me about when the pictures would be up so they could buy a cd with the their teams pictures on it....and only one person did. The next tournament was for younger girls, so we ordered more shirts in smaller sizes, and we spent two days out at the ballpark and sold only one shirt (some lady wanted a picture of her baby) so now I have even more shirts and transfers that I've invested in just sitting around.

I'm still giving away more skinz than I'm selling, and website tracking has shown very little return from any of them. I did launch HD Pimp Skinz this week, but my press release went nowhere, not a single site I sent it to posted anything about it all week. I just finished up some mockups for all the new guitar models, they are in my pictures folder here on MySpace, and will be sending out another press release today, maybe this one will go better. What really sucks is now I will have to buy 5 guitars.

I am working on some t-shirt designs, and am planning on starting the street team very soon, hopefully that will help boost sales. Well I think I've moaned and wined enough, until next time.

Oh, one small piece of good news, I'm half way through 80's on hard!

Keep Rockin

RedRocker

Thursday, September 6, 2007

Ok, let's just start at last weekend and go from there. Last weekend I got a message from Ted at RedOctane about a new gaming chair, he said he had shown them the Boba Fett and Stormtrooper skins I had made for him, and they wanted to talk to me about making skinz for the back of their chairs. I received an email from them, but haven't had time to respond...you'll understand why in a minute. their MySpace is www.myspace.com/ugcinc

On Monday, I fired up the PC to find a email from the GodFather of MoB gaming. http://mobgaming.net/ He had been told about me by Mayowa Tomori  of www.ampedesports.com and wanted to know if I could make skinz for his GH team....for the WSVG event in Dallas (actually it's in Grapevine) that started on Thursday! He had four players, including Wulfe, who came in second at the Kentucky event last month. So after some talking and such short notice, I'd outfit the guys with some of the new HD skinz (more on that next week, stay tuned) for this event, and work up some customs before the LA event. I had already spoken to Josh before all this happened, and had made a custom skin and a HeroGear shirt for him, so I actually started the event with 5 players with my skinz on them. Two of the MoB players didn't have guitars with them, Wulfe had broken his at the last event and couldn't find another one anywhere and the other member didn't bring his. But I ended up skinning Sephi's and Micheal's guitars so I was well represented.

So Thursday morning I went to the Gaylord to see this event for myself. After getting all my skinz installed, I settled in to watch the open players try to make it into the field of 32. I must say there was a wide range of players, some even playing on hard, and were as young as eight. Though there were some who clearly needed much more practice, there were actually more good players than available slots as there were only seven spots open. My friend Michael Gross was one of the unlucky ones to be cut, he is quite good and even had the PMS girls as his backup...each one sporting a guitar and doing the "Addicted to Love" moves while he played in a suit! I must admit that the judging was not perfect, but then again this is only the second time an event of this type has ever been done. But with guys like Daniel Juarez, Eric Miller, Mike "Priest" Holmes, and even Freddy Wong coming from the open players round we knew that we were in for a hellava show.

Friday started off with another couple of hours of open round, with several trying to improve their earlier scores and then kicked off the first round of 32. After that, I don't know what else to say the rest of the day was just a blur, with one great performance after another it was truely amazing. This is what I had always thought Guitar Hero should be. Every way a guitar hero controller could be played, was done. We had players jumping off stage (even over the monitors at times) and playing in the crowd from memory, Behind the head, back, between the legs, stage slides, you name it they did it.

On Saturday the round of 16 started, and the judging changed, Sluggo himself came in to judge on accuracy, he was quite tough but I think he was much more consistant. The players now hit levels beyond anything I had ever imagined, from helicopters, and back flips, to Wulfe (in full Angus Young gear no less) who played in ways I've never seen before. It completely blew me away. I can't come up with the words to discribe the round of eight or the finals, when it was all over I felt like I had been to a full on concert, complete with ringing ears and horse from screaming! They have just posted a video of Freddy Wong playing YYZ in the round of eight (he even scored an 11!), if this is the way it will look on CBS next month this is going to be something else. You have to see it yourself to believe it.
http://www.ampedesports.com/news/3940/Freddy-Wong-Finals-Vod/

NOW, for some exclusive news only for those reading my RockBand blog!

After spending the last three days talking to all the competitors I can tell you they are all looking forward to RockBand! Many have said they won't even be buying GH3. Many of them are especially excited about playing it in competition. Sluggo told me that he's gotten to play an early build and says it is amazing. Also, the interview of Vince Neil should be very interesting to all of you as well.

http://www.ampedesports.com/news/3938/Vince-Neil-Guitar-Hero-Connoisseur/

I just don't know what else to say, make sure to check the AmpedEsports and WSVG websites

for much more info, I took lots of pictures, as soon as I get them all resized I'll be adding a slide show for it.

http://www.ampedesports.com/
http://www.thewsvg.com/

RedRocker

Sunday, July 8, 2007

Well after another trip to the emergency room less than a week after the first one, they have decided that this is all stress/depression related. So now along with the blood pressure meds and Xanax they have put me on Prozac. I still get some symptoms of an attack (tingling in arms, some chest pressure) nearly every time I try to work on anything, but they say Prozac takes 3 weeks before it really starts to work. But enough of this, on to something positive.

 Johnny Napalm, who I met last year at the MGC tournaments, will be our first A.M.P.S. member and will be competing at the WSVG here in Dallas this week, I wish him lots of luck and hope to go watch the event myself. Also, jUdY nAiLs, who also competed at MGC, will be our second A.M.P.S. member and is planning a tour around the country promoting HeroGear.

I'll be explaining A.M.P.S. here very soon, but I've got to get a few more things ready first so stay tuned.

RedRocker 

Monday, July 2, 2007

Between working on the new website design, filling orders, making and sending out sponsor packs, designing HD Pimp Skinz, A.M.P.S., GearHeads, not to mention all the normal problems/stresses of life, I guess it was inevitable. Early Monday morning I found myself with tingling limbs and a BP reading of 219/200. Monday afternoon when they finally let me go home I was feeling much better, had a brand new prescription for blood pressure medicine (and some Xanax )

After spending the rest of the week taking it easy (as much as I can) I'm doing much better. I'm trying to not let everything stress me out so much. I've decided that I'm going to finish the update to the online store, but hold off on the total redesign for now. After talking to my Dean at a Alumni function last night, I found out that I can have a team from Devry do my website redesign as their senior project. That will take one very large problem off of my plate, since on top of everything else I was trying to teach myself Dream weaver and Flash.

I hope to make an announcement in the next week or two regarding A.M.P.S. and GearHeads, and will be sending out press releases at the same time to try and get some much needed press coverage. Stat tuned.

RedRocker

Friday, June 22, 2007