We’re pretty excited because this weekend is our second ever “Webkinz Extravaganza Weekend” in our stores. Last year the event was a BIG success… lots of happy people with lots of great Webkinz freebies (as well as painted faces for the little ones!) at the end of the weekend.

What you might not realize is that a lot of fretting goes into this event- and into ALL of our events and promotions- before the fact. As much as we would like to wake up and say “You know what would be fun this weekend? A huge promotion! Minions! To work!” we can’t… mainly because we don’t have any minions (but we’re working on a team of toy robots to help us; I am hoping that the Wowwee people can make it happen).

Our Webkinz Extravaganza Weekend, for example, has a lot of planning behind it. We have to order the right number of freebies and goodies (too many and we have mountains left over; too few and we run out too soon!), decide on how everything will run in the stores, work with our different store teams to make sure that they schedule enough staff to have the event run smoothly (and work around any early summer vacations/midterm exams/family gatherings that staff may have!), get all the products to the stores in time, make our signs, eUpdates, digital animations (some of our stores have cool TV screen signs!) and everything else that we do to let customers know about the event… and all of this while running the day-to-day of a bustling toy chain.

Phew. This reminds me; I need to see how the minion project is coming along…

If you’re in Toronto this weekend, we hope you’ll stop by for our Webkinz Extravaganza Weekend on Friday and Saturday! For a full rundown of the promotion, click here.