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[ta0]

A few more photos and stories.

After Pepe's first confirmed regenerations, we celebrated in a kiosk in the park. Great setting in front of the lake, but according to him the worst Spanish Tortilla ever!  That was the only time in Spain when the food was not fantastic. For example, Javier invited me to traditional rabbit paella in Valencia, the birthplace of paella (big rice plantations over there).



During the spintop doldrums of the last couple of years in Spain, Javier has started several other business with the proceeds of the good times. But there might be a pickup of the spintop business soon (more on another post). Here I'm with Figaro in front of one of his two barber shops. As many of you know, Figaro was named after the barber pole pattern and the barber in the Barber of Seville's opera.



There is a video somewhere of Gerardo doing a freestyle on top of this Roman aqueduct. It's not very far from Domeño, the hometown of Trompos Space. If you follow the path to the right, you can actually walk inside other parts of the aqueduct. Javier with his wife and her two sisters took me there and it was well worth the visit.



Figaro taking a seat at the Trompo restaurant:



More later.

[the Earl of Whirl]

Trompo restaurant?!!!  Sounds cool.  And a fun logo for their eatery.  Looks like Figaro is quite happy.  Good picture.

The shot of you next to the aquaduct is a bit scary as it looks like you could very easily slide off into the canyon!!!

[MrYo]

Enjoy Spain, me and Silvia have left a piece of heart in Valencia. Javi and his family are fabulous hosts and better as friends.

Maurizio

[ta0]

Javi and his family are fabulous hosts and better as friends.

You are very right, Maurizio. Javi's family went well beyond anything I could have expected, not only in the fabulous accommodations they provided me (a vacation house with swimming pool and a car, just for me!), but in the time they dedicated to making me have a great time in Valencia.

Last year, Trompos Space did not campaign, neither this year, so far. That's why I could not meet Gerardo who did not travel to Spain these last two years. Neither are they fabricating tops, just selling from the stock they had when the market collapsed. But they are ready to ramp up as soon as there is demand, and there are signs that may be happening. Cometa has been campaigning in Barcelona and on my last day Trompos Space received a large order from there.  We were driving in Paterna to visit a group of underground houses (in the neighborhood where Javier grew up), when we saw a Cometa poster on the wall announcing that "spintop season" had started. It not yet had dates for contests.

[ta0]

This is the Cometa display inside the store, with the prices in euros:



This is the Trompos Space display, also with prices:

[Jeremy McCreary]

I'm reliving last summer's trip to Spain through your posts. Madrid, Seville, Granada, Valencia, Barcelona, and a beach near Estepona were our main stops, and we found much to like in each. I still dream of the many spectacular pastry shops in downtown Granada. (The rest of Europe has nothing on Spain when it comes to pastries.)

But Valencia was still my favorite. Spent most of my days there exploring on bicycle, using the 9 km-long central park, the Jardin del Turia, as a trunk line to reach all other parts of the city, including the beach. Stumbled onto this in the adjacent Jardins del Real...



Absent signage to the contrary, I'm calling it a top. (Suppose it could also be a knock-off of one of those ancient spheroconical vessels we've discussed before.)

[paxl13]

Wow, real tops in a real retail store... Well this isn't canada

[ta0]

Absent signage to the contrary, I'm calling it a top. (Suppose it could also be a knock-off of one of those ancient spheroconical vessels we've discussed before.)

I would also call it a top and if I had know about it I would had tried to get a photo with it.

At the Trompos Space offices I saw this very large poster:



It's from a campaign they did in Italy, I think 3 years ago. They even opened an office over there. The interesting thing about the poster is that it has a place on the lower right side (the bluish square) where they taped a real top that was meant to be picked up for free by any kid. They put these around town and replenished the tops from time to time until they had given out a couple thousand tops to jump start the contests and the fad. The promotion was quite successful at the beginning, but in the end Italian taxes and red tape made the campaign financially unsuccessful. Cometa tried the Italian market the following year but they failed.

[ta0]

Javier told me lots of fascinating stories about the origins of Trompos Space. I'll try to give an outline of the company history as I remember it.

Javier and his father Francisco had a small carpentry shop, making furniture, when the big economic crisis was about to arrive (2007) and all orders stopped. They had to let go the employees and sell the machines. But a couple of years before, in 2005, Javier had bought a lathe as a hobby project and after giving a wooden top to his son he found that all his friends wanted one. So they decided to try their luck selling wooden tops to at least make a little money. He loaded his car with wooden tops and drove to another little town close by. At the beginning he doesn't see anybody in the streets, but after he can finally give a top to a kid, he brings other kids from nowhere and Javier sells all his stock. After this success, he keeps going to other small towns in the region. Javier had to teach the kids how to play with the tops. He created some targets and games that were popular.This becomes a small but steady income at a time of a huge recession with high unemployment: parents were still willing to spend a few euros to keep their children happy.  Eventually, he contacts Cancel, a big manufacturer of wooden tops (baldufas) in Barcelona to start also reselling their tops.

Then, one day, the wooden tops stop selling: the plastic "acrobatic" tops had arrived in Spain thanks to the campaigns of Trompos Cometa. His first instinct was to try to resell those tops. After all he was already successful selling tops so he couldn't see why they wouldn't agree. But Cometa didn't want to hear anything about that. Of course, they were promoting tops in a very specific way. They probably were also scared of creating a local competitor. So, after consulting with his family, he decided to invest all the little money they had in making their own tops. They found about Pulpowsky through the internet and asked him to help design an acrobatic top. By the way, Pulp was going to own half of the mold, but then he had to bail out when his wife got sick. Everybody told Javier he was crazy with this idea of manufacturing plastic tops in Spain. Afterwards they would tell him that his price point was unreasonable, that nobody was going to pay 10 euros for a top. He proved them wrong.

Two related articles that Javier shared with me:
https://www.emprendedores.es/casos-de-exito/a61204/trompos-space-exito-peonzas/
https://inspiracionemprendedor.com/la-revolucion-lo-vintage-exito-las-peonzas-modernas/

[jim in paris]

waowh! great story ! Javier has been very helpful with us at Marines: he regularly sent us some tops for awards and give-aways... I hope the expected new craze will happen soon :-)

jim