Today I’m going to share a story.
A story of TWO Maher Ventriloquist Studios.
Today, Maher Studios doesn’t begin to resemble the old Maher Studios.
The old Maher Studios built figures and sold puppets.
The new Maher Studios does not.
That is just one difference.
Now let me share the story …
The other day I received two letters in the post office box.
One asked if I could send them two dialog books from the old Maher Catalog.
The second wanted to join the NAAV.
When Clinton closed Maher Studios, he sold the remaining dialog books and printed no more. He once lamented it cost more to ship them than they sold for on eBay.
When Maher Studios changed hands, none of the dialog books were with the business. The authors retained copyright.
Even if they had, we would not have printed them.
As a professional ventriloquist, I travel for shows. Physical products need to be shipped. I’m not always home to do that.
Back when Mark & Ken were in the business, Mark wanted to print books and sell puppets. I asked him if he or Ken wanted to store products and send them out. Both declined. I had made my point.
I can handle electronic sales anywhere I have an Internet connection. If they were going to rely on me for product fulfillment, online products were the new direction for Maher Studios.
It is doubtful the dialog books would have been offered electronically either.
Converting the Maher Ventriloquism Course from printed copy to electronic eBook took months.
Plus 90% or more of the dialog books were not that good.
The jokes were dated.
The routines were basic.
People used to say, if I get one good line out of the book it was worth $5.
We didn’t want to sell that type of product.
So I’m sorry …
If you do not see something on this website,
Maher no longer provides the product or service.
Which brings me to the NAAV.
That organization shut down years ago.
It was the result of a lack of support.
Ventriloquism is a small community.
Even today, if the IVS wasn’t online, there would be no way to sustain the organization.
As it is, with the current membership numbers, the organization couldn’t pay someone to cover the time involved in preparing the Spotlights and running it.
So once again, I had to respond there is no more NAAV.
Why not just make them IVS members instead?
There was no way to contact them other than mail. I can’t create a user account on the site or give them access to the Spotlights.
Sometimes it is very frustrating running Maher Studios.
I’m starting to see why Clinton closed the business.
A Note: Don’t worry, I’m not shutting down. I love the art too much to do that. But there may be some changes coming as I re-examine the business.
