STAR 2018 Full survey results

[stevegrab]

I wish there was a way to verify this..... it is  my guess that the majority of tickets sold pre-STAR the last few years were to people planning to attend STAR.   But that’s just a guess on my part.

We know for sure that last year the sales AT STAR were 2X what we sold pre-STAR.

Just curious, are these number of tickets or ticket revenue?  Because I figure many of the pre-STAR tickets were sold at a discount($8 vs. $10), so ticket revenue may be a better measure.

One thing I haven't seen discussed is the Aerostitch suit (2nd prize, need to be present) I presume the club pays for that, somewhere in the 800-1000 range. Would dropping that be something we consider, to help break even or make more?

I agree if we are having trouble breaking even on a cheaper bike, we need to do something. Opening it up to non MSTA might be the answer, but that comes with its own set of issues.

[Patmo]

Just curious, are these number of tickets or ticket revenue?  Because I figure many of the pre-STAR tickets were sold at a discount($8 vs. $10), so ticket revenue may be a better measure.

One thing I haven't seen discussed is the Aerostitch suit (2nd prize, need to be present) I PRESUME the club pays for that, somewhere in the 800-1000 range. Would dropping that be something we consider, to help break even or make more?

Answers....


Dollars,,,because that’s what Tim can give us.  This year was the FIRST year that the sales at STAR exceeeded the pre-STAR sales.  Last year it was close to even. But the year before, and all of the prior years that we have numbers on, it was HUGELY n favor of PRE-STAR.  Sometimes as much as 10:1.

I did unintentionally misrepresent the actual ratio of pre-STAR to STAR sales.  I went back an rechecked the numbers Tim sent out last week.  The ratio was smaller, but we did have $1400 MORE in sales AT STAR, then we did in sales prior to STAR......that’s not an additional 1400 in sales at STAR, it’s that we matched the pre-sales dollars and then did 1400 dollars more.  (I hope that is clear).  At 10.00 per ticket that’s 100-140 more tickets being sold during STAR then were sold in all of the months prior.

You presume wrong.. .  Aerostitch DONATES the certificate every year.  The tire set certificates are also donated.


The only two years that we have lost money on the raffle were 2016/Vermont, and this past year.  The BMW given out in Vermont was by far the most expensive bike we have raffled off in recent history.  We lost $3677 on that raffle and $239 this past year. This year’s bike cost us a little over 1/2 what the BMW cost us. ( 7500 vs 14,900. ).  EVERY other year it has been a money maker for the club.

[RichGrab]

You presume wrong.. .  Aerostitch DONATES the certificate every year.  The tire set certificates are also donated.

OK, that is really good to know. I think I have the solution!!! We need to find a sponsor to donate the bike. Simple - right.

[Patmo]

Here is a few numbers that should concern everyone.....

Including this year, the last 9 bike raffles averaged $13,500 in sales, and it was pretty consistent every year.  One year (Johnson City) we did $18,000* in sales, this year we did $7,000*.  But, if you take that high and low out, we averaged $13,800!

* rounded to the closest 1000

This year we did $7,269.00 in sales.

We can’t explain that drop on the bike alone, or even a drop in #of Members (as that has stabilized over the last 3 years), or lack of effort or generosity on behalf of the STAR attendees and staff.

[Patmo]

You presume wrong.. .  Aerostitch DONATES the certificate every year.  The tire set certificates are also donated.

OK, that is really good to know. I think I have the solution!!! We need to find a sponsor to donate the bike. Simple - right.

Anyone know of a slightly used BMW that is available?  LOL 😂

[Ohiomsta]

Somehow it seems clear to me. When the tickets were $5 each and every member was mailed tickets the bike made money.
Then the tickets were raised to $8/$10 and no tickets were mailed to the members and 2 out of 3 years the bike looses money.

[RichGrab]

You presume wrong.. .  Aerostitch DONATES the certificate every year.  The tire set certificates are also donated.

OK, that is really good to know. I think I have the solution!!! We need to find a sponsor to donate the bike. Simple - right.

Anyone know of a slightly used BMW that is available?  LOL 😂

Now cut that out. After your posting the the numbers, makes me wonder if I need to change my by-line.

[naustin]

Does the actual prize have to be a bike?   Instead, 1/2 the proceeds of the ticket sales could be used toward smaller (but still top shelf) prizes like tires, or gift certificates for helmets, gear, luggage, etc.  Maybe the club could buy discounted gift cards from a particular vendor in exchange for advertising in the STAReview. 


That way, the club could guaranty a 50% Profit every year, whether ticket sales are $5k or $25k and vary the number of prizes/winners accordingly.  More people win, and have more chances to win.


Frankly, I’d be just as happy to win set of tires for my bike, as I would winning a bike I might not love.  I barely have time to ride the bike I liked enough to buy!


Just ideas.  Not saying any is a magic bullet, or even a good idea.  Just ideas.

[Brick]

You presume wrong.. .  Aerostitch DONATES the certificate every year.  The tire set certificates are also donated.

Hmmm... very interesting. During the 12 years I was involved with the HSTA/MSTA the early years Aerostich donated any riding suit... the later years in talking to Andy Goldfine he changed it to he donated 50% of any new suit. We the club paid the other 50%.
So it’s back to full donation... I like that.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Patmo]

Somehow it seems clear to me. When the tickets were $5 each and every member was mailed tickets the bike made money.
Then the tickets were raised to $8/$10 and no tickets were mailed to the members and 2 out of 3 years the bike looses money.

The FIRST year, 2015, where the club went to exclusively on-ine for presale and didn’t mail out anything, we had 13,700 dollars in presale tickets and 1,900 at STAR. But the NEXT year it dipped to 7,500 and it’s gone down considerably over the last two years.

Your points are well taken though.  Online sales only doesn’t seem to be generating much enthusiasm.  Getting consistent physical mailed reminders that someone can touch, feel, and read seem to be far more effective.  For example...the “Save The Date” cards so many of us get for weddings and birthday party announcements.  We hang them on the refrigerator or by our desk and see them everyday, unlike an email that gets buried in a long list of saved ones.  When we got the tickets mailed out to us I would always put them with my other bills and buy them at the same time I was paying the other bills.  We don’t even need to actually send out tickets, with stubs for people to keep, we only need to send out an order form.  People can fill it out, send the bottom half back in, keep the top part for their records, and we can have the actual physical entires computer generated so that they match the ones sold at the event.  That way we aren’t printing up thousands of tickets that aren’t used, which cuts printing costs.


Sending out postcard “reminders” to encourage people to both purchase raffle tickets, and to attend STAR (put pictures of the bike and/or the STAR location on them) is something we can look at too.  Postcards are much less expensive to mail out, we can get bulk rates, and it can be easily automated so that it takes little or no labor on the part of anyone in the club to get them sent out.


There are lots of options and ways to do this.

[Landon]

Sending out postcard “reminders” to encourage people to both purchase raffle tickets, and to attend STAR (put pictures of the bike and/or the STAR location on them) is something we can look at too.  Postcards are much less expensive to mail out, we can get bulk rates, and it can be easily automated so that it takes little or no labor on the part of anyone in the club to get them sent out.

I like this idea (It beats the hell out of stuffing envelops and mailing stuff out). A postcard with a section that can be filled out, torn off, and sent back in with the money. But how does the info then get from the mailed back portion and generated into a ticket? I assume it will require someone to type the information into a computer so it can be printed on a ticket? I assume when a ticket is purchased online that the buyer types their info in and then Harry can automatically transfer that to a ticket? Of course that's just a guess, I'm not sure how Harry works his magic and gets the info on the tickets.

[Ride4MS]

Maybe a long time member can help with this question.  The bike raffle started when it was HSTA and I believe Honda gave a bike, or at least gave a very big discount.  Is that correct?
Bike prices have gone up and the way Honda and other companies do business have changed, so I can understand why they would no longer provide a bike, especially when it is no longer HSTA.


Boy, this is getting way off the original topic, "STAR survey results".  Yea, I know, I am not helping to stay on track.  But, I am interested in trying to find a resolution for the future, when we have such great interested talent such as Nick A.

[stevegrab]

Just curious, are these number of tickets or ticket revenue?  Because I figure many of the pre-STAR tickets were sold at a discount($8 vs. $10), so ticket revenue may be a better measure.

One thing I haven't seen discussed is the Aerostitch suit (2nd prize, need to be present) I PRESUME the club pays for that, somewhere in the 800-1000 range. Would dropping that be something we consider, to help break even or make more?

Answers....


Dollars,,,because that’s what Tim can give us.  This year was the FIRST year that the sales at STAR exceeeded the pre-STAR sales.  Last year it was close to even. But the year before, and all of the prior years that we have numbers on, it was HUGELY n favor of PRE-STAR.  Sometimes as much as 10:1.

I did unintentionally misrepresent the actual ratio of pre-STAR to STAR sales.  I went back an rechecked the numbers Tim sent out last week.  The ratio was smaller, but we did have $1400 MORE in sales AT STAR, then we did in sales prior to STAR......that’s not an additional 1400 in sales at STAR, it’s that we matched the pre-sales dollars and then did 1400 dollars more.  (I hope that is clear).  At 10.00 per ticket that’s 100-140 more tickets being sold during STAR then were sold in all of the months prior.

You presume wrong.. .  Aerostitch DONATES the certificate every year.  The tire set certificates are also donated.


The only two years that we have lost money on the raffle were 2016/Vermont, and this past year.  The BMW given out in Vermont was by far the most expensive bike we have raffled off in recent history.  We lost $3677 on that raffle and $239 this past year. This year’s bike cost us a little over 1/2 what the BMW cost us. ( 7500 vs 14,900. ).  EVERY other year it has been a money maker for the club.

Thanks for the info Pat, I had never heard anything about Aerostitch donating that prize, so I wasn't going to assume they did. Nice to know we have some really good partners in the industry.


Rich is right, if only we could get somebody to donate a bike.


Those numbers show a major drop in ticket sales from 2016 to 2018, not sure about 2017. Wow, just read the other post with the numbers over last 9 years, major drop from average this year.


Not sure I can think of any explanation. Did the financial situation with the club, and the 2017 bike winner donating it back to the club impact sales?

[stevegrab]

Sending out postcard “reminders” to encourage people to both purchase raffle tickets, and to attend STAR (put pictures of the bike and/or the STAR location on them) is something we can look at too.  Postcards are much less expensive to mail out, we can get bulk rates, and it can be easily automated so that it takes little or no labor on the part of anyone in the club to get them sent out.

I like this idea (It beats the hell out of stuffing envelops and mailing stuff out). A postcard with a section that can be filled out, torn off, and sent back in with the money. But how does the info then get from the mailed back portion and generated into a ticket? I assume it will require someone to type the information into a computer so it can be printed on a ticket? I assume when a ticket is purchased online that the buyer types their info in and then Harry can automatically transfer that to a ticket? Of course that's just a guess, I'm not sure how Harry works his magic and gets the info on the tickets.

Pat said the the postcard would be a reminder about the raffle, not a way to actually purchase tickets. But that is a good idea. It would still require an envelope, and sending a check or other payment info. This may also help get some sales from those who still don't like doing stuff online. Tickets would be added the same way they did them at STAR, when I bought mine I saw Tim Macy adding them to a list, which I figure they took later and wrote out tickets to put in the barrel. (Yes that's more work for a volunteer.)


If STAR were later in the year I was going to suggest we could try selling tickets at the other events, but not sure there are enough before mid-June, or that we'd get many sales we wouldn't get otherwise (generally those attending events are involved, engaged and support the club regularly).


Hopefully we are giving Pat and the rest of the EC some good ideas, and not just spinning them in 100 different directions.


Carl,
Regarding the bike raffle and discounts from Honda, I had heard that too, in the past, the old HSTA days when the raffle bike was very often a Honda. Not sure how steep those discounts were, and that has impacted our ability to make a profit. But the bigger issue is very low ticket sales, especially this year.

[RichGrab]

OK, so I'll go back to a suggestion I made back on page 2 or 3 of this thread I believe - with some tweaks. So, the postcards instead of being in a separate mailing could be included inside the STARReview say first issue of the year. Then maybe a separate mailing in April or May to try to generate additional interest. This of course would require that the raffle bike be chosen by near years end, so that in the first issue of the magazine it would be ready to go. I really think that if the magazine is supposed to be the official communication organ of the club, we should use it, since it's already an expense (and adding a page or 2 won't increase cost that much) and we all get it in the mail. Why can't there be a page of tickets printed in the magazine? And then the member just has to fill them in, write a check, address and envelope and mail it in. And then a couple months before STAR they get a postcard reminder in the mail to buy tickets.

And yes, hopefully we are giving the EC some ideas and not just making their heads spin.

As for the question on "does it have to be a bike raffle?" I think the answer is really no - but something tells me people would buy even fewer tickets if the prizes were just gift certificates for stuff, but I might be wrong.