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I was chatting with the proprietor of my FLGS recently and was told that they "aren't convinced" that running events increases or supports thier sales,

Does this sound right to you? I think it's nuts personnaly. I've been traveling about 10 times farther to a store that does events for some of the games I like to play just so I can play.

Care to guess where I spend my money?

Maybe he is comparing his sales numbers from the time he did events to when he stopped and they actually aren't any different. Unless he never ran an event in the history of the store.

I think it really depends on the area and the crowd that you draw.   Our local stores don't run many events (lack of playing space, mostly, but this is changing) so I can't accurately judge.  When I do travel to other stores, I always buy SOMEthing, even if it's just a few blisters or small box set.

It also depends on the setup of the store. If the events are run in a side or back room that has no easy access to the shopping area (i.e. you can get to the gaming without going past the stuff), that can be a disincentive. There was a store in this area that had a HUGE gaming/events area, but you could walk right to it without ever getting near the games, minis, paints etc. That hurt.

You're right, they're crazy.

Maybe what your FLGS means is that they don't see a jump in sales the day of the event - which I can say from experience can be quite true. That is, they don't see a direct result in running the event and bringing in so many bodies that one day.

But there are huge indirect benefits to running an event. Let's take a tournament: - if promoted properly, customers get excited, they play practice games which also get them more excited, they buy any last second units to optimize their army (heck, shop owners should make suggestions, as long as they are honest ones,) they get the last bit of glue, brushes, paint, primer etc to complete said models...etc. Then they actually play in the tournament and maybe somebody brings a kick ass army (either visually or on the battlefield, or both,) and they get inspired to start a new army...which can lead to more sales in the future.

You could apply the same thinking to a league/campaign, and borrow elements when it comes to painting competitions.

Most importantly, running events gives customers a constructive way to use the product they bought, which adds value to their product and thus justifies the purchase. This makes customers more willing to buy more products in the future.

Zoned

It depends on the store's regular Saturday volume. If the place is packed every Sat with regular gamers then why run events? You don't need to attract any more players. The events will drive away the regulars as the space is all claimed by the tourney, etc.

I am sure Mikhaila will jump in on this at some point with his 15+ years experience running a sucessful game store.

I drive every Friday to my Warmachine league which depending on traffic is 30-45 away. I usally buy something every time. Events usually equals purchases.

Running events, even if they are open gaming nights, is key to maintaining interest in the product you are selling. 

I'm not sure about you, but I do most of my gaming with friends in the local shop where they have a variety of tables and scenery to choose from.  It's all I can do to collect armies.  I simply don't have the space or income to add tables and terrain and all that junk to my collection. 

I can pretty much state solidly that if my local gaming store stopped having little tournaments and leagues and stopped allowing open gaming at their location, I and several other people that currently play there would loose interest and eventually stop playing (and purchasing product for) the game altogether.

He is not crazy. He is an idiot.

With CMGs and minis, events are a primary sales driver. Things like FNM and tournaments will drive sales through the roof. With minis, it isn't as pronounced (higher barriers to entry, longer lifespans) but it still dramatically increases interest and sales. Players want to play something they know they can play. It's a big reason why GW games are successful- they are ubiquitous.

Events do require significant time investment, however. But that is how business works. Nobody said it was easy. Unfortunately, many GS operators are nitwits when it comes to business management and financial planning.

Posted By Zubbiefish on 03/29/2007 11:24 AM

I was chatting with the proprietor of my FLGS recently and was told that they "aren't convinced" that running events increases or supports thier sales,

Does this sound right to you? I think it's nuts personnaly. I've been traveling about 10 times farther to a store that does events for some of the games I like to play just so I can play.

Care to guess where I spend my money?

When I ran GW events at a FLGS, I'd actually get people to buy product and join in. When I did tournaments and campaigns, I'd throw in rules like, if you have fully painted Heavy Support choices, you would get to use them as an additional spot on the FO. When I had events going, we'd have more people come in. With the right events we could get new people to try the game out without having to do a demo game.

When I stopped working at that FLGS their GW sales and attendance tanked. I'd like to think its cause I am a fun guy, but I think it was mostly due to having someone there to run something. From what I understand, sales are so bad that GW has even suggested the store not to carry their product anymore.

 

I do think having good staff who are fun to talk to and who make the store exciting is the key to success ( along with sound business judgement). Someone mentioned Mikhaila chiming in with his opinion....I've heard that on a Saturday if you goto one of his stores you'll find 30 kids painting....thats a phenomenal turnout, so that shows you whatever he is doing, he's doing it right.

 

 

 

To stecal:

If a store has great regular gaming nights, that's great news. But even loyal regulars get bored of just pick-up games week after week. Spicing it up once a month or so with a campaign/league/tournament/painting competition will keep veterans interested. And no one said anthing about excluding regulars - regulars should make up the bulk of such events, with the odd new face to add new blood to the community.

Zoned

Yeah, I'll disagree somewhat with that. Events drive sales. Events can have a huge effect on a stores number of gamers, number of games they play, and how much they spend each month in the store.

Years ago I studied a lot of different comic and game store operations. GW stores frankly drove me nuts. They did so may times my volume in games, yet I was on top of the heap as far as independents go.

What was the frigging secret? Yes, they had advertising in WD, large stock of games, nice figure cases, all kinds of things. But still, for a store in the US to do 6x my sales in GW, and the US stores to be way behind British GW stores, not to mention that frigging unholy mutant of a store in Paris that sets all the sales records. How?

Events. They run events all the time. Demos and how to paint lessons for new kids. Mega battles and leagues. Veteran nights.

So now I run events. My sales are going up. I run 3 hour painting classes each week with free paints. We do how to play classes for new people. We do scenery classes, megabattles, leagues, and veteran nights.

When I get lazy, (or my wife has twins, like happened 9 months ago), and don't run as many events, then sales go down. Events up, Sales up. Events down, Sales down. I see a pattern.

Our GW sales are about half what a GW store does, way up from before. I want to get them up to the level of a GW store. Need more events.

And, it's not just GW that it works for. Apply the same thing to Heroclix, magic, yugioh, FOW, MW, WM , Hoardes. Hell, we ran a bunch of one shot Dungeons and Dragons last year and sold a dozen Player handbooks. Events sell games.

and it's 19+ years Steve. 20 on Jan. 3, 2009. Big Sale.

Aren't events like advertising? You're not just selling the product to new
buyers. You're also selling confidence in the brand to those who already
have the product.

Posted By malfred on 03/29/2007 9:00 PM
Aren't events like advertising? You're not just selling the product to new
buyers. You're also selling confidence in the brand to those who already
have the product.

Quoted for truthery.

Events of any kind drive sales. Its so painfully obvious, its really not even funny.

You have to be smart in what events you run and how you run them however.

---

Case in point.

Hobbytown USA in Helena, MT. Opened in 2001 closed in 2006.

From the beginning, I told the owner in order to sell the games, he was going to have to run some type of events. Anything. He wanted his shop to be the fast foods of the hobby world though. He had some success with MtG for awhile, but through constant badgering instead of his own volition.

I worked there last summer part time for a bit, by this time the store was about dead. I was pretty into Pirates! at the time so I ran demo games for it (being an privateer envoy for wizkids) and saw alot of interest. So much so in fact that sales for pirates was the one item the store restocked thatcarried that store until he went under after I left.

I ran demo games daily, ran tournaments every weekend and the interest just continued to snowball. Once I left, the interest stopped, because....there wrere no events, sales stopped and Pirates! no longer carried the store (as in the only item he carried that brought any customers to buy). He went under within weeks. (Though admittedly, he was on the path long before I was employed there, it was just a stop-gap delaying the inevitable)

---

But that showed me beyond a reasonable doubt, that running events equals increased sales because of increased interest.

Now there are caveats to this. Which are Venue supported events as well as company supported events.

Its easier to run events when companies such as Wizkids sends venues prize support for various events. When it is venue supported, its a bit tougher on the venue, but all said and done, either way, events do equal income.

Hey, if you don't mind an off-the-wall example of how events do up sales.

Being over here in the sandbox, there are often times where we'd have little to do other than sit around and wonder what to do. (Mission Tempo is rarely consistent over here.) During some of those times, I'd bring up how awesome Guitar Hero was, and how much of a blast Guitar Hero II is to play.

Most of the guys would just roll their eyes.

So, anyway, I get Guitar Hero II, and bring the old game system over to the big screen we have at our company area. And... low and behold, within about 10 days, we have some 8 Guitar Hero IIs in the platoon, along with people trying to figure out how to get the Flying-V Controler with Amp for GHII. And most of these sales were from people thinking that "pretending to play air guitar is stupid." Criminy, one of the best Base / Rhythm players is one of the ones that thought the whole idea of GHII was dumb.

Anyway, point being, if you show the game off, people are much more willing to try and play, then if you just have it stored on shelves.

I would have to say, while a lot of my slow-down for buying figs is due to the cost, a goodly chunk of the reason is that I don't have any gaming areas near where I live in Cleveland.

As was said earlier, having events helps justify sales. Another off-the-wall sort of parrallel, look at NASCAR. Depending on which big car company wins (Ford, Chevy, or Dodge), you can actually see a spike in sales of that car brand the next day.

Anyway, just some quick thoughts.

I agree. With GW models my reaction seeing them in a store (this is about a decade ago now) was that they were way too expensive for me to ever buy.

When I actually saw a game though, I had to go out and get a starter box.

Minis games are very visually in their appeal.

I didn't think I was crazy (the crazy ones never do).
I do think that some of thier thinking is related to the fact that they're store isn't too big. It's tidy, organizied, and the staff (and owners) are pretty friendly and helpful.
It's not a place that I want to see go away. I heard a rumor that they may be moving to a larger space but who knows. The last time a store "moved" in my area they shut thier doors for good.

This is anecdotal, but the owner of the FLGS I drop in on from time to time said that one of his employees running regular games of Infinity in the store is generating a substantial amount of interest in the game.  I'm like a lot of people: hearing about people enjoying a game is a lot more compelling than actual advertising.  It's why I got interested in a lot of games no longer actively supported, much less advertised (like StrikeForce).