The Seven Seas League welcomes all teams to the Trade Winds Tournament – at least until its slots are filled. Depending on the interest of teams and players, the Trade Winds can accommodate between eight and twelve teams. The teams below have already confirmed their participation, and are quite confident about claiming the Continents Cup this year.
We expect the Trade Winds Tournament to be a community event, as well as a popular spectacle in downtown Chicago. Come join us for a truly international magical tradition!
Betas Anonymous Punctuation Pixies - | - Chicago Area Mensa Fighting Owls - | - FictionAlley Cats - | - hp-ohio Crystal Balls - | - Knight 62442 Werewolves - | - Lakefront Fire Crabs - | - Navy Pier Ninja - | - Wizard Ties Trolls
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Owner: Betas Anonymous
History: During the Middle Ages – precisely when, no one has been able to determine – several surreptitious individuals formed an even more surreptitious society: the Zemai Kollons. The society dedicated itself to the exploration and celebration of proper grammar, and the society quite amused itself with its secret meetings and clever (and not-so-clever) puns. The history of the society is rather lengthy, and in truth, also tends to be dreadfully dull, but no one can doubt that it is punctuated impeccably. The Kollons' journey through centuries of surreptitious meetings disguising an obsessive love of grammar is a rather dreary slog – until the powerful sorceress Strima Conxiousnis, wondering what all the secrecy was hiding, infiltrated the Kollons. To her vast disappointment, the secrecy disguised no battle plans, no illegal love potions, no experimental magic, only a great many quotation marks. Her disappointment fueled her rage, and Strima cursed the Zemai Kollons: Never again would they be able to properly write quotation marks – and for all time, they would bear the curse of a Quidditch team, for what could a grammar society possibly want less?
Strima, of course, was right: The last thing the Kollons wanted was a Quidditch team. (They did discuss it for a rather extended period, though, and "writers who abuse commas" was a close second.) They screamed, they cried, they tore at their hair, but Strima would not undo the curse. A Quidditch team she had decreed, so a Quidditch team it was.
Luckily for the Kollons, however, Strima had not required that the society members play Quidditch themselves. The Kollons put their heads together and decided to recruit a Quidditch team at once, just to get the whole wretched curse out of the way. Luckily, players flocked from far and wide, eager to take on the wizarding world’s greatest sport, if not the weekly spelling tests that Kollons imposed on their players.
The Betas Anonymous Punctuation Pixies — for every secret society must have a secret name, and the Kollons' was Betas Anonymous — got off to a rough start, since most equipment suppliers are reluctant to take punctuation in trade. They improved, though, over the centuries, especially once the Kollons stopped expelling players from the team for poor grammar. At the very least, the players had greater success at Quidditch than the Kollons did as editors; several centuries of novels in the region are rife with quotation mark errors, the devastating result of Strima’s curse.
In more recent years, the Pixies' success has been somewhat capricious. Several years ago, Dynamia Wright, the former star of the team, decided to move on to the Russian Rabid Borzoi (who are paying her a scandalous amount of money), and disgusted fans are hoarding their pixie dust for the next great player. The team’s trademark "sting-and-bite" attack is still quite successful, and luckily, their rampant broom-stealing, though much maligned by opposing teams, has continued unchecked by either referees or league officials; however, the team has suffered a string of injuries, perhaps the karmic result of their rough play, and attempting to change their recent luck, the Pixies have changed their colors, stating firmly that “lilac is the new yellow.” In the last couple years, the Pixies have participated in both the Borders Riverside Quidditch Classic and the Mud and Blood World Quidditch Tour, and they're quite proud to say that, even if they haven't won the most matches, they've certainly been the dirtiest.
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Owner: Chicago Area Mensa
History: Chicago Area Mensa were the first Muggles to figure out that a great deal of unexplained phenomena was wizards’ doing. Sure, a Muggle here knew of wizards because she married one, but you can’t say that that required any deductive logic, and a Muggle there saw a wizard fly by on a broom late one night, but his mates blamed one too many pints of ale. When it comes down to it, Chicago Area Mensa were the first Muggles to figure out, through logic, deduction and perhaps a formula or two, that wizards existed and were causing a fair number of explosions.
It was the Quidditch, you see. Or rather, the Quodpot, in the beginning.
Chicago, being a rather large city, possesses a rather large wizarding population, and a rather large wizarding population requires more than the usual number of Quidditch matches. Or rather, Quodpot matches. After all, Quidditch didn’t become the predominant wizarding sport in the United States until the last twenty years. Before that, it was Quodpot, Quodpot, and nothing but Quods, pots and explosions.
Which, of course, was how Chicago Area Mensa discovered wizards in the first place.
During the Quodpot season – which is April through June for most American schools and recreational leagues – explosions lit the sky over Chicago’s extensive parks near nightly, and the players, perhaps a bit too excited about Quodpot, sometimes forgot to properly ward the pitches against Muggles. Not that Chicago Area Mensa would have been taken in by such basic distraction techniques, not with logic and deduction on the line.
Chicago Area Mensa kept quiet about Quodpot, and indeed, all wizarding activity – for wizarding sports led to the discovery of wizarding transportation and even wizarding careers – for quite some time. The explosions, you see, were a bit much. When Quodpot gave way to Quidditch, however, it became another story. Chicago Area Mensa wanted in.
So they sent an owl. Not only had they figured out that the owl was the most popular form of wizarding communication, it was the long-standing, though unofficial, mascot of Chicago Area Mensa. The parallel seemed fortuitous, so Chicago Area Mensa sent a polite note inquiring about the participation of Muggles in Quidditch.
The wizards, however, for their part, found things somewhat less fortuitous. Indeed, less charitable individuals have called the wizards’ reaction “a downright panic, there’s no other way to describe it.” Rumor has it that those at the Chicago Office of Wizarding Sports ran around much like overexcited Billywigs that day. A team of Obliviators was dispatched at once.
And promptly and neatly avoided by Chicago Area Mensa. For it must be said that, while wizards certainly have more powers than Muggles, that does not necessarily make them any smarter. Chicago Area Mensa led the Obliviators – first the Chicago team, and later the national office’s best representatives – in a merry chase throughout Chicago for well nigh three years before the Obliviators gave up in disgust, asking, “Can’t you just let them play already?”
So the wizards did let them play, but only on the condition that each Chicago Area Mensa player come equipped with “a Muggle device that will approximate a broom,” knowing full well that no such Muggle device existed. That, however, did not deter Chicago Area Mensa, who spent a month developing an electrical hover-broom (and another year testing it so it would stop twirling at the worst possible moments, such as just when its Chaser was about to score). When the owl arrived declaring the hover-broom ready for play, the wizards threw their hands in the air and gave up.
The Chicago Area Mensa Fighting Owls was the first all-Muggle team in the American Quidditch League, as well as the only team featuring Muggles to have entered the Trade Winds Tournament. While their hover-brooms do still occasionally twirl, they are nonetheless fierce competitors and their strategies are unmatched, especially their Chasers’ attack formations.
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Owner: FictionAlley
History: It was scorching hot that summer day when an intrepid group of witches and wizards decided to found FictionAlley. The buzz of the cicadas was deafening as they built the Muggle website they would need to achieve their vision. Even late into that night – and the many nights that followed – as the moon’s soft glow replaced the desiccation of the sun and the breeze still failed to appear, the group worked on, staring intently at their computer screens and their lines of code.
And one morning, the sun again blazing brightly in the sky, the team proudly unveiled their vision: an archive of fanfiction and fanart, centered around the most popular wizarding story of the day, dedicated to providing a community in which authors and artists could display their work and receive feedback. A chorus of "hurrah" filled the air as the team waited for their first submission.
FictionAlley started out small, of course, but in time it grew to become the largest Harry Potter archive on the Internet, one that even achieved renowned status as a Muggle charitable organization. Over 85,000 works and chapters of fanfiction grace its collection and over 26,000 works of fanart color its pages. Never the sort to rest on their laurels, the FictionAlley team, now featuring members from around the world, expanded their website to include a discussion forum and Lumos Dissendium, an entire section devoted to assisting writers of all shapes and sizes, ages and achievements with their craft. To the delight of the team, the site was nominated for a WEBBY Award in 2004, and though the award does not grace the virtual halls of FictionAlley’s college of learning, the team couldn’t have been more proud.
In time, though, as the processes for receiving and archiving became more automated and the team became more adept at cleaning out the Riddikulus queue each day, the FictionAlley team grew listless. Turnover plagued the staff as more and more people left for greener pastures, purpler prose, and exotic adventures. It seemed like morale was going to dissolve like a bath bombe in a Scottish lake, but the team soothsayers considered new adventures, from podcasting to a scholarship fund to fan vidding, and while FictionAlley has adopted those in the time since the "Great Exodus of Wizarding Creativity", the Board of Directors had a better idea.
The FictionAlley Tigers, the fiercest Quidditch team in the land, first took the pitch in a downpour over Miami Beach, Florida, on April 1, 2004. Due to FictionAlley’s reputation for spectacular April Fool’s Day pranks, many thought the team was a joke, especially when the team’s desperate manager glued a player to her broom, causing her to exclaim, “My broom is pasted on. Yay!” This team was no joke, however, and the Tigers snarled their way to a lopsided victory over the local Quidditch club.
As 2004 moved on, through the humid tang of summer into the muddy disorder of fall, the FictionAlley Tigers stalked on, proving themselves against much stiffer competition than the local clubs. The team went pro at the end of 2004, and indeed, morale among the FictionAlley team was greatly improved, if only after seeing the team douse President Tandy with HippocampusAde upon the arrival of their professional uniforms, a collage of purple and gold.
Fans of other professional Quidditch associations, however, were not so impressed. A cottage industry sprung up that dedicated itself to mocking the FictionAlley Tigers, and providing a great variety of insulting posters to fans of opposing teams. The Tigers began arriving to games to first a smattering, and then a practical downpour of signs featuring the cutest of kittens with the most vicious of slogans mocking the Tigers, including “Stripez went out in 2003", "I have hairballz better than u”, and “Mai Quidich skilz: let me show u them!11"
Rather than bow to the pressure, however, FictionAlley embraced it. In 2007, they changed their mascot to the FictionAlley Cats, and their new artwork, to be introduced at the Trade Winds Tournament, features the nastiest of alley cats stalking its prey. The team also adopted an official team slogan, I can has victory now!, and the Cats’ fans proudly proclaim their support by including the victory slogan on t-shirts, banners and other merchandise items. As the Cats’ success has continued unabated, the answer is clear: The Cats can has victory now.
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Owner: hp-ohio
History: The night the seer made her prediction, the sliver moon shone weakly in a sky of storm clouds and even the owls were silent. She gazed into her crystal ball and saw the image clearly enough, but she could not ken why the ball would bother to predict a band of hooligans dressed in blue and white, faces painted, carrying a banner that read: Ohio Balls for the win! What was this mysterious ohio? And who were the hooligans?
Several hundred years later, in a wholly different area of the world, the seer’s question was answered – though since the seer knew naught of this, and the hooligans in question knew naught of the seer, the import is dubious at best. The prediction, however, was not dubious in the least.
The State of Ohio, land of buckeyes, home to white-tailed deer and carnations, joined the Union in 1803 and sometime thereafter, for reasons undetermined, chose tomato juice as the state drink. While this is largely unimportant to the seer’s prediction on that night of the sliver moon, it does explain the buckeye loyalty, and if tomato juice ever turns up as a pre-game drink, spectators will know why.
Long before 1803, however, and a very long time before the tomato juice decision, wizards settled in the land of Ohio. They settled in its towns and cities, fished Lake Erie, ate Smuckers jam with the best of them, and early in the last century, spent a good amount of time snickering about the Wright Brothers’ broom-less flying follies. They enjoyed their proximity to the makers of a particularly American brand of firewhisky and, like all Yankee wizards, rabidly followed the local Quodpot teams, often arguing late into the night about whether the Toldeo Kraken or the Akron Minotaurs would take the Buckeye Cup.
That is, until one night – a night of a sliver moon and a sky of storm clouds – while playing the championship match of the Buckeye Cup, Joe Heston lost an eardrum to a particularly loud Quodpot blast. He thought it was quite funny (and spent the rest of his life saying, “Eh, I can’t hear you!” whenever asked an annoying question), but his mother thought it was less so, and the Association of Concerned Mothers of Stupidly Reckless Quodpot Players was formed a month later, and Quodpot officially banned in the state the month after that.
Ohio’s wizarding population mourned, for no matter how much Ohio’s Muggles love their sports – and they do, as anyone who knows NCAA football will attest – Ohio’s wizarding population loves their sports more, with greater passion, greater knowledge and better tailgating parties (Filibusters’ Famous Hot Dogs with the miniature fireworks that explode when you cook them are especially popular). Luckily for the Ohio wizarding contingent, however, the month after the banning of Quodpot – unsurprisingly, on a stormy night with a sliver moon – a bunch of, yes, hooligans organized the state’s first Quidditch match. While it didn’t have the volume of Quodpot, the Ohio wizards were pleased to see that it had high-speed crashes and teams formed at once.
Today, the Ohio Quidditch League is one of the premier Quidditch leagues in the New World, featuring teams such as the AstraMaxima, Columbus Cruciatus, Daytonnati Dementors and Ohio Northern United. When the teams aren’t bashing each other, they’re bashing players from other states, as the team fields an all-star team that takes the pitch to tossed buckeyes and a chant of “Bash their heads, Ohio!” Particularly pleasing to the state is the all-stars’ continued dominance of the Michigan team, who can never seem to remember which hoops are theirs.
The name of the all-star Ohio team is, as fortune would have it, the hp-ohio Crystal Balls, for each year around the holidays, the Ohio wizarding community, named hp-ohio, gathers for the Crystal Ball, an evening of dancing that always seems to devolve into a not-so-secret Quidditch match in the gardens. Of course, for reasons hp-ohio cannot discern, the night of each Crystal Ball is stormy, with only a sliver moon showing and the owls quiet in the trees.
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Owner: Knight Family
History: The summer of 1942 was meant to be a summer of enjoyment, exhilaration and glory for young Justin Knight, who was just finishing his second year at L’Université des Arts Magiques and heading off to Ireland to hone his skills at an elite Quidditch camp. Promising young players from around the world traveled to the green fields outside Dublin for two weeks of sport, flirting with the fey folk, and leprechaun hunting. Justin, the pride of Zodico House’s team, represented La Louisiane admirably, and Niamh O’Donnelly, the coach of the Irish National Team, was heard to lament Justin’s American heritage.
Unhappily, the infamous werewolf Liam Kavanagh also discerned Justin’s skill with the Quaffle. One dark night, as Justin made his way to a team celebration on the River Liffey, Kavanagh attacked from the shadows. The next few moments were unbearably gory, but luckily, Justin’s quick wits remembered the Tooth-Melting Hex he’d honed on Lumién students. He escaped with his life, but not his humanity. It was the 24th of June, 1942: 62442.
Upon Justin’s return home, his family struggled mightily with their werewolf. While some habits, like the nighttime howling, were borne out of love with only the gritting of teeth, the more problematic tendencies caused the family no end of frustration. Determined to save the family’s cherry dinette set – not to mention Justin’s quality of life – the family, scientists at heart, began researching in earnest. Decades of trials, experiments and potions followed, and Justin suffered one indignity after another as the family’s less successful tests attempted to alter his elements. The magenta hair, in particular, is remembered with glee by the less proper members of the Knight family. Eventually, the family developed a formula that, while it didn’t allay Justin’s difficulty entirely, mitigated the monthly change. With the appropriate potions, a healthy diet, and a trip to the planetarium, Justin learned that the moon was nothing to fear after all.
Sadly, however, Justin’s ordeal was not over. L’Université des Arts Magiques strictly forbade the enrollment of centaurs, ghosts, faeries, ghouls, merpeople, werewolves and other non-human people from entering its hallowed walls, as the tactless Headmaster of the time put it, “due to the unmanageable risk.” Justin appealed to the Executive Council of Educators, and his aunt, Jennifer (herself a former standout Keeper for Zodico), gathered signatures and support – to no avail. The Council, citing safety reasons, forbade Justin from attending the world’s premier wizarding university of the arts.
The Knight family – already home-schooling Justin “because we’re smarter than that bunch of faculty crackpots anyway” and urged on by Jennifer – decided to form a professional Quidditch team specifically for werewolves. As the word got out, men and women, professionals and amateurs, werewolves all, approached the Knight family about their team. The family supplied them with Justin’s Moon Magic potion (and Justin may have slipped Hair Pinkening Formula into their HippocampusAde), and welcomed them all to the team, their patented Werewolf Quidditch Training Program (Stop Biting the Quaffles!), and New Orleans. Exultant, the players trained their hardest and formed a quite legitimate Quidditch team.
In fact, the Knight 62442 Werewolves’ success has been so prodigious that they took the Delta Cup at the 2007 Borders Riverside Quidditch Classic, playing against talented competitors on the banks of the Mississippi River in New Orleans. The trademark “Awooooo” howl of the Werewolves struck fear into the stout hearts of teams such as the fierce Fighting Owls, the Shrieking Shack Marauders, and even the dragon ladies of the Pontchartrain Pirates. Seven Seas Quidditch League officials expect them to be a strong contender in the Trade Winds Quidditch Tournament as well.
In the time since, the Werewolves, led by fantastically talented Seeker Lupin, have found enormous success in the Quidditch world and acceptance in the wizarding world. Due to the Knight family’s increasing success with their Moon Magic potion, L’Université des Arts Magiques has welcomed werewolves to its halls and its sports teams, and in the equipment room far below the school a plaque shines brightly on the wall, proclaiming Justin and Jennifer’s tireless work for change.
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Owner: Wizarding City of Chicago
History: The fire crab, a water-loving creature native to Fiji, has long been a source of fascination to the wizarding world due to its vividly colored, bejeweled shell. Looking much like any other crab (or in some lines of the breed, somewhat like a turtle) except for its sparkling carapace, the fire crab is one of nature’s rarest curiosities. Historically, it was also one of the beast-world’s natural victims; the vibrant shell attracts predators – most notably, affluent wizards – and the crab’s almost comically short legs provide it with an escape mechanism that is ineffective at best. Even the crab’s front claws offer little in the way of defense against the predators that hunt the crab.
All this changed, however, in the 1500s, when Fijian accounts report the first instance of the fire from which the crab took its current name. Inexplicably, when confronted one day with a young girl seeking to increase her dowry with a cauldron made from a rather large crab’s beautiful shell, the crab turned tail and projected a stream of fire straight at the girl. Upon further investigation, the local populace discovered that the fire was produced in the bowels of the crab and was then ejected from its nether regions.
The hunting of fire crabs by dowry-seeking girls dwindled at that point, but daredevils, adventurers and mercenaries promised a fat purse of gold continued to seek the fire crabs for their shells. In the early 1900s, the fire crab population had dwindled to a few hundred, causing the price to skyrocket and other interests to pay more attention to the jeweled crab of the Pacific. Zoos in particular began to harvest fire crabs from their natural habitat and featured them in exhibits, with the official purpose of protecting the species and the more obvious purpose of increasing admissions.
The Lincoln Zoo in Chicago had an especially nice fire crab exhibit – that is, until the fire crabs escaped. Zoo officials claim that the perpetrator was a rather rash teenage wizard, who entered the fire crab habitat to fetch a jeweled shell for a girl, and in his haste to escape the fire, left the door open – and the fire crabs, nature’s victims but never nature’s fools, walked through to disappear into the city.
The city was content enough to ignore the fire crabs for a year or two. While the residents of the city, wizard and Muggle alike, could catch a glimpse of a fire crab more often than not – in a park, in the Chicago River, occasionally coming up from the sewers – the crabs rarely bothered people. In 1871, though, when a fire crab’s blast started the fire that burned half the city to the ground (though to this day, Muggles blame a cow and a lantern), the city declared war on the fire crab population.
The war, however, was a dismal failure. The fire crab population was too entrenched, too stubborn and indeed, too fiery to be dislodged. When the city would finally clear one portion of Grant Park, the Sears Tower would call about an infestation in the basement. When the nests in Chinatown were burned, the crabs would overrun Navy Pier, terrifying the tourists and scorching the Ferris wheel. To make matters worse, the city’s wizarding population loved the fire crabs, both for their tenacity and the possibility that a jeweled shell just right for a lovely cauldron might show up on their doorstep or under the kitchen sink. When the City of Chicago formed its official Quidditch team in 1982, the players insisted, upon threats of refusing to mount their brooms, on being called the Lakefront Fire Crabs.
The Lakefront Fire Crabs are, perhaps, not the most successful Quidditch team around. Support from the city has been sporadic at best, and financing depends on the current mayor’s feelings about the fire crab population. Additionally, the team often arrives at games a bit scorched after feeding and cleaning their mascot, Inferno. No one ever claims, however, that they aren’t the best dressed. After all, the Lakefront Fire Crabs, like their namesakes, sport vividly colored jewels on their uniforms, to the delight of their fans.
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Owner: World Confederation of Pirates and Ninja
History: In the early fifteenth century, to the west of Iga and not far from where sea and earth converge, a great tradition of ninjitsu arose. Through time, the legends stole into the darkest corners of the world, morphing, whirling and disappearing, mist passing the mountains. Over the vast expanses of the earth the tales crept, whispering of a great clan of ninja, furtive, ruthless, lethal… and female.
The myths start with not the great daimyo, Fujiwara Hideo, but his wife, whom the history books do not name and tradition calls Miyako. Faced with ever more bloody conflict and the flagging strength of her husband’s samurai, Miyako turned to a less accepted manner of warfare. The province’s male children having been taken by battle, she passed unseen through the shadows to enlist an elderly fighter, learned in ninjitsu, to teach the female children. She established him in the local schoolhouse, and began – under the guise of lessons in reading, writing and kimono-folding – instruction in stealth, reconnaissance, and assassination.
Through the centuries, the tales swelled, encompassing first the surrounding provinces, then all of Japan, then the far-flung reaches of steppe and jungle. As Iga’s line of powerful daimyo held fast, the samurai swords luminous in the sun, the ninja slipping past the glint of the moon, Miyako’s ruse ran truer than even she had foretold. Iga’s authority no longer required the sacrifice of the girls of the province, but Miyako’s command held and the province continued to train female, and only female, ninja. As the more traditional girls returned to their kitchens and tea rooms, the warriors, the leaders and the witches stayed in the classroom of the ninjitsu, adding sword work, strategy and the magical arts to the coursework.
As the portents told, even during the reign of the feudal lords a mere province could not leash the power of that clan of ninja. Craving mystery, adventure and trouble, the clan left Iga, then the islands. As they traversed the mountains, the valleys, the battles and the politics of the world, they drew girls in their wake, and they selected only the fiercest to train in their art of stealth and strength.
As with all great tales, the whispers of the lady ninja of Iga grew, but upon the eddies of the sea, the tales suddenly veered. In the winter of 1775, the ninja, hunting the secret of true invisibility and seeking the knowledge of the Caribe spellcasters, discovered instead, on the beaches of Bermuda, the Quidditch World Cup. After much reconnaissance, the ninja determined the teams to be a rather weak selection, and resolved to enter.
Ninja Quidditch dominance, however, is not part of this tale. The ninja were incensed to find that they were specifically excluded from entry in the tournament, being neither a country nor “upstanding citizens of the Wizarding Worlde.” They decided to set the entire tournament into an advanced state of disorder, but had only progressed to pushing the referees out of the officials’ box in the sand when they discovered that they were not the only team excluded from the tournament. Pirates, too, were in Bermuda – and here the tales become legend.
The ninja, cloaked in night, met the pirates, who smelled strongly of rum, on the beach of Bermuda in the winter of 1775. And after much clanging of swords, and a steady round of cursing from the pirates, to the incredulity of the throngs, the ninja of Iga and the lady pirates of the infamous Dragon’s Flight – both fearsome, both violent, both formidable, the most powerful women of the world – laid down their swords, their pistols, their shuriken, their garrotes, their wands, and declared sisterhood: The World Confederation of Pirates and Ninja.
In the years that followed, the confederation has held, much like Miyako’s command to the province of Iga. The pirates and the ninja support each other in assaulting the world’s governments, corporations and passenger ships. Both field Quidditch teams, though neither team is invited regularly to tournaments – and the ninja haven’t even disclosed the secret of their Sudden Strike of the Three Sparrows on the Wind to the pirates (no one knows exactly what it looks like, but it’s always followed immediately by a ninja score). Though the ninja are wanderers, they have, being tremendous Ferris wheel aficionados, adopted Navy Pier as their base for the Trade Winds Tournament. The fans of the Great Lakes area can’t wait to see them – or not see them – on the pitch.
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Owner: Wizard Ties
History: As every wizard knows, the world is becoming more commercial every day. Every tiny witch wants the new Bessie Metamorphmagus Auror Doll (Change Her Hair DailyTM). Every teenaged wizard wants a Speed-of-Sound Boom Broom. And what household doesn’t have the Reconstruction Dishwasher, that amazing development in demolishing and recreating dishes, rather than endless scouring?
But some businesses stick to the basics, and one of those businesses is the famed Wizard Ties, purveyor of a staggering 83% of the market for school ties, school ties, and nothing but school ties. Supersoft, 100% silk school ties with hand-stitched seams, full lining at both tips and coordinating back loop to keep that narrow tail in check. An astounding 83% of that market world-wide, simply through producing high-quality basics, all delivered wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string.
Wizard Ties’ success is even more astonishing than its near-monopoly would suggest. Its proprietors, a mother-daughter team named Jan and Lauren Kent, only entered the school uniform market in March of 2004. Their meteoric rise to business fame – after all, what child doesn’t receive a Wizard Ties’ tie at the foot of the bed on Christmas morning – has all occurred in the last few years, and is due entirely to their impeccable products and service. Silk ties. Prompt delivery. Friendly customer service. In a world of Boom Brooms (which everyone knows are recalled for defects twice a year like clockwork), Wizard Ties’ commitment to quality and service is a refreshing change, as evidenced by their remarkable accomplishment.
In the fall of 2006, however, Wizard Ties’ faced a corporate challenge unlike any other. As the business gained market share, operating in a somewhat cramped fashion out of a guest room in upstate New York, another business’s market share diminished. Umberto’s Uniforms’ (Uniform, Unworn and Appropriately UglyTM) sales of wizarding institutions’ ties was shrinking by the day, as quickly noticed by Umberto’s chief financial officer, Philomen Stone. And Umberto’s decided rather quickly that something must be done. Umberto’s had not historically shared the market and had no interest in doing so with a couple of upstart witches who had the gall to custom-wrap each tie before owling it out to its purchaser.
Umberto’s sent Stone out on a bit of corporate espionage. He darkened doors of businesses, later burning his suits to rid them of vermin. He spoke with characters and creatures he’d never before known. He tiptoed around unidentified objects and into flickering back rooms, intent on doing his duty: protecting the financial standing of Umberto’s.
In early 2007, while Jan was working late tying packages up with string and Lauren toiled many miles away on a Muggle computer, both were surprised at their tasks by a terrible stench. Quickly looking up, both women discovered an intruder into her work – or many intruders. Trolls. Troupes of trolls, brandishing awful clubs. The stench nearly felled both women before the trolls even approached.
The Kents, however, didn’t attain their market share lightly, and neither woman was a fool. Wands flashing, each felled the trolls (though Lauren did break her arm in the process), bound them tightly and cleared the air with a timely Bountiful Breeze charm.
The aftermath of Umberto’s dastardly plan was not unexpected. Jan and Lauren Kent, obviously shrewd businesswomen, sued the pants off Umberto’s – quite literally, as they took Stone’s fancy pants in the judgment. They proceeded to demolish not only Umberto’s tie business, but its entire market share.
But, in a move that flabbergasted the wizarding community with both its cheek and its business acumen, the Kents kept the trolls, dressed them up in fashionable school ties, trained them into a quite passable team of Quidditch players, and began entering the Wizard Ties’ Trolls into Quidditch tournaments, a rather visible reminder of what happens to those who test the nerve of two witches from New York.
Betas Anonymous Punctuation Pixies - | - Chicago Area Mensa Fighting Owls - | - FictionAlley Cats - | - hp-ohio Crystal Balls - | - Knight 62442 Werewolves - | - Lakefront Fire Crabs - | - Navy Pier Ninja - | - Wizard Ties Trolls