When I worked at Magic Masters, we sold a ton of Svengali Decks, it;s about the presentation, sometimes less is more.

I don't know how many decks I've sold over the years, but I do know that I went in to my magic shop at 7pm on Thanksgiving and left at 10pm on Friday ... with only a 3 hour nap in the stock room, that amounts to 24 hours on the floor. A long profitable stretch ... sometimes I wonder if I'm actually aging, it doesn't feel like it.

-JoeJoe

Fantastic to see so many decks in a truck being sold at your stores..nice one. Great pic.

Like a few of the comments above I do a 10 min show which includes attracting a crowd whether at a festival or tradeshow then doing a 6 min routine
with the deck using lots of comedy & 3 people in the crowd then finally the pitch.

Markets you can sell on average 80-100 decks here for about 3 hrs work. Tradeshow pitch I have sold over 300 decks in a day on my own which over 3 days works well but that was so hard to do and a couple of years ago now...I worked the markets,malls & tradeshows soley with Svengali decks for 7 years.

Im performing more of my own professional corporate gigs now so the pitch has taken a bit of a back seat but who knows....

Few photos on this thread from various pitching events...

https://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/view......orum=192

Hey Brent!

So good to see you back here!

I recently went through the entire sub forum from the beginning, trying to get pointers on pitching and picking up on tips from all the guys who used to post here 10 years ago and your name always stood out... I was always impressed by your numbers, looks like you absolutely tore it up in NZ for the last few years.

Would love a quick chat with you at some point, just to pick your brains. Would you mind helping out a newbie?

Funny how the OP starts pointing out others then starts bragging on how AMAZING he is...! LOL!

I ain't gonna brag but I'll say this... It's a tough business and as Mark Lewis has said before.. ITS NOT FOR BABIES! I look up to all who work behind a pitch joint! My hats off to all..!

I love this business model, I actually experienced it about 13 years ago on a trip to Florida. We were at Universal Studios, walking around and saw a sign saying 'magic show, about to start'. The chap outside talked us into going in (quite an easy sell as it was air-conditioned and it was tempting to get a break from the Florida sun!) and we enjoyed a 25- 30 min show of the 5 items above. Then of course, the 'magician' offered us the chance to buy any of them, or all of them as a special deal. It looked like almost half the room bought something, and many of them were taking bulk deals.

I smiled and thought 'this is genius'. Fair play to them, they were grinding out the shows as as soon as we left, more people were being squeezed in.

The variation between this and Hustler's idea is that they don't pay any admission fee, but then they never really see anything other than dems of the 5 products they can buy so it's not really a 'magic show' in the purest sense. Still free entertainment though, so all is fair.

Might have to scout out a few tourist attractions near me and try it myself!

Sounds much different from regular outdoor pitching at fairs or fleas but it does sounds like it works great! Working crowds at tourist locations are also so much easier to turn.. Might go check it out some day when I take a trip down to Florida..!

Yeah, you're kind of offering a different deal.

Pitching at fairs and fleas, as you know very well... you're offering an instant bit of entertainment to those who are curious, which then turns into a sale (usually because they just want to know how it's done!) and then they are on their way.

This is more of offering to solve the pain they are in at the time: 'if you're tired and hot, come and rest your legs in a nice air conditioned theatre while watching free entertainment to keep the kids happy!"

I can vouch for how effective it is.. especially (as well you know) tourists LOVE spending money....

I think I read somewhere recently, maybe in one of Marshall's obits, or tributes that he had sold 17 million decks.

At 10k per month, it would take about 141 years to sells as many. Wow. Now that's a trick!

Hi Cosermann,

I know Marshall Brodien’s TV ad campaign in the 70s was a success and made him a very wealthy man, but I don’t think it was anywhere near that many units they shifted.

My understanding was it was around a million decks. Perhaps it was 1.7million?

Just sharing what I read in some of the articles after Mr. Brodien's death. His branded "TV Magic Cards" weren't sold just in the 70's. They're still sold locally in my town. That said, it would be easy for a decimal point to get misplaced in an article.

Oh, if they were sold for decades afterwards then he may well have made that much, I wouldn’t know for sure either way. Sadly, people like S David Walker and Don Driver have passed away now or else they’d pop up to tell us the answer!