So this year, Yomega opted not to sponsor the World Yo-Yo Contest.

This, in and of itself, is fine. As a company you have to spend money in accordance with your priorities. And Worlds was simply not a priority for Yomega this year.

Except that it was....they just didn't want to support the event. So instead, John Marcantonio and Chris Whateverthehellhisnameis decided that it would be totally ok for them to fly out a bunch of team members and parents, rent out one of the Salon rooms, and set up a mini-shop to sell yo-yos. Then they distributed flyers around the contest floor, telling people to come to the room to "Meet the Yomega Team!"...which was really just a bunch of stuff for sale in a meeting room.

Reasons why Yomega are total scumbags for this:

1. They knew they weren't supposed to do this, and actually made it a point to purchase 1-Day Floor Passes so that their names wouldn't be registered as attendees.

2. They tried to take advantage of the event and make money there without trying to support the event in any way.

3. To my knowledge, most of their team didn't even know this was going to happen.

4. Bottom-feeder behavior like this undermines the commitment of the companies who actually DID sponsor the event, and takes sales away from them.

Now before I launch into great detail about what I would like to do to John Marcantonio with a curling iron and some rusty bicycle spokes, I would like to give Yomega an opportunity to explain themselves.

John, Chris, Alan, Cheryl, or whoever else still actually works there...this is your opportunity to give the yo-yo community a satisfactory explanation as to why you chose to act like a bunch of crackheads selling stolen TVs out of the back of a station wagon at Worlds this year instead of paying your money to set up like everyone else or simply skipping the event.

Please speak up quickly on this matter. I'm sure I'm not the only person who'd like to hear this story.

S