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The Shoe Review
News and Notes From Nfinity Shoes
June 2008 Vol 1 Issue 5
What’s New in the Nation
Ok for those of you who don’t know we have a new nation – Nfinity Nation - www.nfinitynation.com. The nation was born a few months ago and offers its member some outstanding benefits. We’ve got the best vendors in the industry to come together and offer outstanding discounts to Nation members. Members were granted access to all of the Nfinity Social Functions for the past 2 months at World’s and Final Destination.
And to make it even better – Nation members are now part of Working Advantage, one of the largest Employee Benefits suppliers in the country. For those of you who do not know what Working Advantage is check out some of the specials they are running for June…
• Omaha Steaks — Save up to 63% + FREE shipping (thru 6/4 only) or FREE gift
• AT&T Wireless — FREE Blackberry Curve Titanium plus $25 cash back
• DirecTV — Save over $280
• Overstock — Save up to an additional $46
• FTD® — Save 20% on Father's Day gifts
• Lenovo, Makers of ThinkPad — Save up to 36%
To join Working Advantage go to www.workingadvantage.com and use the Nfinity Nation ID#515182885 to create your own account and start saving today. And for those of you who are not yet Nation members go to www.nfinitynation.com and sign up today.
Myteam411
Has this ever happened to you? You are at a competition and the event producer comes up to you and says – “we had to move your competition time from 12:30 to 2:15”. Everyone has a system in place to handle that but it’s all manual and resembles a Chinese fire drill. Well does this sound better….you pull out your phone, you log on to myteam411 and you pull up the gym calendar and simple move the competition time from 12:30 to 2:15 and every cheerleader and both of their parents get a text message telling them of the change. Too good to be true? I think not.
Myteam411 is an on line communication system that makes everyone’s life easier to manage. It gives a gym owner or a coach a central on-line location to put team schedules, roster information, parent contact info and much more. By setting up user groups by team, when they log on they only see their team schedule. The owner can see them all – the kids only see their teams.
But the most important part of Myteam411 is the “one button” communication tool. If coaches need to let the team know practice has changed, departure time has been moved up, and competition time has been changed – all they do is make the change on line at myteam411 and everyone – cheerleaders and parents get a text message and an email. It just doesn’t get an easier. No more phone/email trees.
If you are interested in finding out more about Myteam411 Click Here
Coaches Closet
For those of you who don’t know about the Coaches Closet it’s a free on-line resource center for cheer coaches. It contains letters to parents, budget builder, forms – every type of document a cheer coach might need and all you do is download the document you want and drop in your contact information and off you go!! No need to write something from scratch when someone has already done the work for you. To enjoy the benefits of the Coaches Closet go to www.coachescloset.net and sign up!!
A Love Story Part II……
For new members reading this for the first time, Tate Chalk, the CEO of Nfinity and a long time bachelor, has finally decided to settle down and get married. And because everyone likes to hear a good story we’ve convinced his bride to be, Grace, to let us have the story of how they met. In the last issue of the newsletter we published part I – now here is the second installment….
He wasn’t so much a bad boyfriend, as an absentee one, but I fell in to the same trap that so many women do and continued to hold out for the good moments.
On October 11th of the same year, my entire life changed. I’d decided to dress up and wear makeup that day, which was unusual. It may have had something to do with it being Botox day! Botox day was scheduled for every Tuesday and involved the plastic surgeon my spa employed giving injections to our customers. Typically we were booked weeks in advance, and this Tuesday was no exception. A gentleman named Tate called asking to be added to the schedule, but we informed him that there were no longer any openings but we would call if there were any cancellations. Surprisingly, we did have a last minute cancellation and he came right over. I was working the desk, again unusual, so I greeted him when he walked in. He was fresh from the gym and still in his sweaty clothes, but I was immediately very attracted. I handed him his paperwork and while he filled it out we chatted easily about Orlando, what we did for fun, and that I spoke Chinese. I’m not afraid to admit that I flirted shamelessly, and he did too. We spoke only for few minutes before he went in to see the doctor, and I left.
For those of you who want to find out more about the love story check it out at www.tateandgrace.com.
Eat To Compete
Each month we publish a chapter from “Eat To Compete” – a book on the role that proper nutrition plays in the life of an athlete. When you add teenage girls in the mix as athletes the pressure on them to stay thin is much greater. So this month we are looking at the role of Carbohydrates in an athlete’s diet. Which ones are good – which ones aren’t. Click here to read the story. To get the entire Eat To Compete book go to www.eattocompete.com.
A Final Thought
As the editor of this newsletter I get the chance to decide what goes in and what doesn’t. The boss gives me free reign to decide what we write about. And even though we are a shoe company in the cheer market we try very hard not to make this a cheer shoe newsletter. I try and make it interesting – so you’ll read it and hopefully remember us when it’s time to buy shoes.
So what I thought I’d do, is put an editorial at the end of this, something that’s on my mind – not necessarily cheer related, but hopefully provoking enough that you’ll read it. This month I thought I’d start by staying the cheer world and talk about something that seems to be on everyone’s mind right now – safety in cheerleading.
I don’t know how many of you saw the E! Hollywood Story on safety in our industry. It has run several times on E! and I’m sure someone recorded it and you could get a copy of it. But in watching it something jumped out at me that was rather bothersome.
The report was two hours long and had interviews with many people. A lot of them you would recognize. They also interviewed parents who have tragically had their children die in a cheerleading accident. And overall, it was a rather partial report – it didn’t sway to far one way or the other.
But the problem I had with it, was a cheer Mom – whose daughter had been injured but had recovered – was the focal point of the report. And I’m not going to name names or give out web sites, but the question that came to mind was this. With all the smart people in this industry, how did we let a cheer Mom take the point on an issue that could impact all of us?
If you go to her web site – and I’m not going to mention it – and see all the paid Google ads on her site you have to ask yourself – does she really want to make the sport safer – or drive traffic to her web site?
Not to down play the role of Mom’s in our industry – they play a very important role – but it seems to me that we let ourselves down when we allow someone who does not own a business, gym, or coach take the point on a topic that is important to all of us. If you’d like to weigh in with your opinion email me at
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Cheers!
David Marler
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