Sorry about that Chuck. But it struck me as unusually odd that someone with such professionalism would actually defend those crooks.
One of my strong points, or perhaps drawbacks, depending on how you look at it, is that I always like people till they give me a reason not to. Kellie & Troy were exceptionally hospitable to me the time I was there. I saw lots of accusations being made about them, some predating the show, and I didn’t see any evidence backing the accusations. Now I see the evidence, so regardless of how I feel about them, I couldn’t make a case to defend them even if I wanted to.
Yeah, the food was good, but I don't think any of us would have eaten it if we'd known she actually stole it. She wrote bad checks to pay for everything.
Well, it seems it was worse then that. As I understand, they wrote checks from a closed account. What I SAW for myself, was a fantastic venue, excellent food, and a well done advertising campaign. It seemed to me that gave an admirable effort to take care of venders and keep the promises they made. What I learned later was they were not able to pay for what they had done. So from there, we have to draw our on conclusions. Did they willfully con everyone? Or was it a business plan gone south?
Unless Kel actually comes out and publicly addresses this, we will only be able to speculate. This my OPINION as to what happened. They had a plan for an expo. Instead of building a show up form the ground (IE Birmingham, AL) they wanted to jump in and pull a huge show from the beginning (IE Bristol, VA). They needed venders, so they embellished the amount of pre-sold tickets to attract the needed venders. Dishonest by all means, but I feel they thought they would pull 6000 or 7000 from a city with the population of Nashville. I think I paid $7 to get in. Lets use 6k as the expected number. Kel used this figure, so we will assume that she expected at least this amount. 6k @ $7 is $42,000. They rent the venue, get a caterer and pay out advertising. I think the venue was around $7000. Kel told me the catering was $4000 and we’ll estimate $5000 on advertising. They grose $42k, pay out $16k, go home with $26k from the door alone. Not a bad paycheck for the weekend. And of course, if 6000 people wonder thru, then vender sells would have been good. I think this was what they counted on, but of course, it did not materialize and they ended up with probably $20,000 or so in immediate debt and a gate of maybe $7 to $8k. And in that situation they paid off with bad checks and got out of dodge.
The other possibility was they new there would be no gate and they coned everyone from the start. If you look at that, it just wouldn’t add up. I only saw Friday and I heard they had a gate of like 350 people. As I am gathering from this site, hardly any venders paid off, so the gate was the only income. For the sake of math, we’ll say they did 350 on all 3 days. That is a total gate of $7350. Kellie did not strike me as stupid. She knows full well writing those checks on a closed account is theft by defraud and the amounts involved are felony charges. This will carry jail time for them if they can not settle it. Would she really want to go to jail for $7300???? I just can not see that.
I do see that they misrepresented things to venders, and if I was a vender, I would be upset as well. But to say it was intended to be a con does not add up. It was a business venture that went about as wrong as it could go. Everyone lost money and for all practically purposed, seems troy and Kellie will lose a lot more.
I have heard several people complain about the prices there. Some of the things you said just irked me. It wasn't meant as a personal attack.
There is certainly going to be some price deferential from the Midwest and the Southeast. This is the Mecca of herpetology and started here and this is still the stronghold. Our prices will certainly always be a little lower then yours by the laws of supply and demand. I can’t remember if we talked. One table from KC and a pair of ghost boas my neighbor was trying to trade for. He has some albinos het for snow that he offered, but you guys never came to terms on it. If that was you, Al was impressed by your snakes. And to be honest I am ignorant to the prices of high end boas, so your table may have been show price and even cheaper, I couldn’t really tell you. When I am looking for beginner balls, I want cheap priced fresh imports. If it fresh from the jungle, I can get it to feed. The ones that have been in captivity for months are the problem animals. And anyone that bought those $8 balls and thought they were feeding had no business getting a snake to begin with. =) They had obviously done no research.
