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The SHELBY AMERICAN
Summer 2016 103
As we were planning SAAC-25 we
happened to see an ad for promotional cof-
fee mugs. They were cheap enough that we
decided to order a bunch and give one to
everyone who brought a Cobra, Shelby or
GT40 to the convention. We asked SAAC
member and artist Ed Gullett to come up
with a black-and-white illustration for
each year Shelby, a small and big block
Cobra, a Daytona Coupe and a GT40. Ob-
viously we ordered quantities that
matched the number of cars of each type
that we expected. We didn’t get 144 Day-
tona Coupe mugs, or a dozen ‘68 Shelby
mugs.
When all of the cars were lined up on
Sunday for the popular vote car show, a
handful of volunteers on golf carts went
around and put an appropriate mug on the
seat of each car. We ordered more than we
thought we would need because with
something like this, you never want to run
short. “
Sorry, we ran out
” doesn’t cut it.
As with other projects like this, we
thought that if we sold the leftover mugs
after the event, that would help offset the
cost of the ones we gave away. That
sounded like a good idea, but like so many
good ideas, the devil was in the details. We
priced the mugs reasonably, at $8 a piece
plus $2 postage. Then we discovered that
we needed boxes to mail them, and bubble-
wrap and styrofoam peanuts so they would
not be damaged in transit. A lot of people
ordered more than one and it seemed like
no matter how well we packed them, we
began receiving complaints that some
mugs arrived with handles broken off. Nat-
urally, we replaced them but packaging
and shipping replacements wasn’t doing
much to help us to pay for the ones we orig-
inally gave away at the convention. And
the whole thing was very labor-intensive.
We chalked it all up to, “
No good deed goes
unpunished
.” Needless to say, we learned
our lesson and never tried anything like
this again.