Klondike Big Inch Title

 We picked up these titles as part of a collection awhile back. The Klondike Big Inch Land Company deed gave the possessor "ownership" of one square inch of Klondike land. This was a promotion by Quaker Oats tied into its sponsorship of "Sargent Preston of the Yukon" in 1955. Anyone who sent in a box top from a Quaker Oats product would receive one of the above deeds. Unfortunately, the State Department determined that Quaker Oaks was engaging in the sale of foreign land without registering as an agent to do so. To avoid the registration process, the company started enclosing the deeds in packages of their products.

Since Quaker never registered the deeds, the recipients never took legal ownership of the inch of land and, when Quaker failed to keep up with property taxes on the land in the 1960s, the Canadian government repossessed the property in 1965 and the Big Inch Land Company dissolved in 1966. The land is now part of a Dawson City golf course. If you want to buy one of the ones we have in stock, here is the listing on eBay

Love Your Local Game Store

 Starting July 5, Buy 3 packs of Modern Horizons 3 Play Boosters (or 1 Collector booster) and get a full art textless Sakura-tribe Elder. Limit one per customer per day.

New Year's Day

 We will open regular hours New Year's Day. Come in and ask for either a Magic Welcome Pack or a Castle Perilous Cup Cosy for FREE. Get a free Sirius Die with each 3 stamps you earn on a Castle Card and a Magic Promo pack with each 5 stamps earned on Sealed Magic Product. Buy a booster box of Magic and get a free FOIL Magic Promo Pack.

Siuius Sundays

 While quantities last, with every 3 stamps earned on your Castle Card on Sunday, you will receive a dice from the Sirius Dice box . You select a number and we give you the corresponding dice. If you pull a gold die, you can redeem the code in the box for a $70 set from the Sirius website. If you pull a silver or copper die, you get one of the sets we have set aside in the store. If you pull a red d20, you get the free d20.

Buy 2 Get 1 Free

 Now through Oct 18, buy two of these Asmodee games and get a third from the list of equal or lesser value free

Catan

Splendor

Carcassonne

Dixit

Mysterium

Small World

Ticket to Ride

Mille Bornes

Arkham Horror 3rd Edition

Rory's Story Cubes (Box)

Pandemic

7 Wonders New Edition

Spot It! Classic (Box)

Dead of Winter

Cosmic Encounter

T-shirts

We are getting t-shirts made with the store logo and Warhammer Logo  emblazoned on them. Shirts will be Heather blue with the logos on them in white. We are looking at getting 40-60 of these made will make these available for free to Preferred Customers first, then to people who play Warhammer and Warhammer 40K here regularly, then to other customers. If you meet either of the first two criteria, let us know your size and we will get you a shirt

Using the Media to Promote

In case you missed it this past last fall, and if you did, I can understand why, NPR ran a 5 minute segment in which host Scott Simon discussed good (and good selling) boardgames with Kathleen Donohue of Labyrinth Games & Puzzles in Washington DC. Games mentioned include Secret Hitler,  Azul as a beautiful game to give, Codenames, cooperative games from Peaceable Kingdom and, as a game that all ages will enjoy, that ol’ stalwart Ticket to Ride (which, surprisingly, is offered pretty close to Asmodee’s MAP on Amazon,  unlike companies with no MAP, such as WOTC, which does not seem to care a whit how much Amazon devalues the D&D brand). Though some people might complain about the games selected, given that Secret Hitler is only available through Amazon (from where a lot of stores buy and resell it) and a couple of others are exclusive with particular distributors,  it is still a nice bit of publicity that reached some 4 million to 6 million listeners at no cost to Donohue (except for her time and whatever preparation she made) or to any of the publishers of the games she mentioned. Just how much is getting your game (or your store) in front of 4 million people? Now and for the next 8 months is the time for you to start cultivating media contacts and developing promotional plans that will bear fruit in the last quarter of 2019.  How to do this?

Reach out to the media or otherwise make yourself known to them.  Donohue gets mentioned on some NPR program at least once a year because many of the staff there are fans of her store. MSNBC’s Rachael Maddow used to shop at the now shuttered Modern Myths  and would post photos of her purchases there on occasion. The editor of one of our local papers is a customer and we don’t hesitate to pitch him a story when we have something we think is newsworthy. Making sure the media is aware of your existence is a major factor in getting your store mentioned in articles like this . Incidentally, one of the things I would like to see GAMA do over the next year is launch an public relations campaign to position the organization as the go-to source for information on the tabletop game industry. Similarly, in your community, your store should be the one the media contacts if they have a question about what Secret Hitler is or why Catan has maintained its popularity for so many years. The Growler, which published the article linked to earlier, focuses on craft brewing while Illinois Country Living, published by the Association of Illinois Electric Cooperatives, also published an article on boardgames last summer. You never can tell what publications what might want to do a story on your store or game. 

Create Events and Pitch Them--The news media likes news and is always looking for stories to publish. In today’s 24 hour news cycle, the need for new content is unending and your events, especially if they are out of the norm, can provide that content, especially if you can tie it to some sort of national event such as Free Comic Book Day or Free RPG Day. We have actually had success contacting our city government and getting them to proclaim the 1^st Saturday in May as Free Comic Book Day in Carbondale and the 3^rd Saturday in June as Free RPG Day (Unfortunately, we still had to explain what an RPG is, but once we used the term “Dungeons and Dragons”, the proclamation went through fine).

The media is your friend or wants to be if you approach them. It is too late to work with them for this holiday season but you’ve nine months to prepare for the next one.

Facebook for the Holidays

Facebook has become the go-to advertising medium for most people in the hobby game (and comic) industry, much to the dismay of my local newspaper publisher. We were discussing advertising earlier this week, well, he wanted to convince me to buy advertising since he reaches 35,000 people daily but didn’t have a very good answer when I asked him if he could get my message out to just those that were My Little Pony fans or Ticket to Ride players.  Unfortunately, despite the growth in boardgaming,  the industry is still a niche market, only doing a fraction of the sales that video games or movies do, meaning that Facebook, and other social media, with their capabilities to target specific niche market segments more so than traditional print media, prove very valuable to stores operating in the industry. That is why I found this holiday advertising guide sent out by Facebook interesting, especially some of the statistics the company provides (All of the statistics quoted come from the guide).  Like many “ebooks” , it has about 1-2 sentences in large type per page so you can read it in just a few minutes.

Granted that Facebook conducted the research but the statistic saying that 49% of surveyed shoppers indicate that Facebook will prove influential in their holiday buying give a pretty good indication that, if you want to reach holiday shoppers, you need to plan on having some form of Facebook presence. Even if most of your holiday sales come in the form of gift cards or certificates, a store needs to have top of mind awareness in the mind of the customer and making sure your customers see you on Facebook is one was to achieve that.

I don’t know if it is a case of chicken and the egg but Facebook’s research says that 47% of  consumers start thinking about holiday shopping prior to Halloween. I am not certain if we do that because of the avalanche of Christmas merchandise  and décor we start seeing in September, or if retailers put out the holiday stuff in September because customers already start thinking about it, but seeing Christmas merchandise alongside black cats and Halloween candy is a fact of shopping today. Incidentally, Facebook also says that time spent by users on the website starts increasing in the early part of October, peaking at New Year’s Eve, then slowly decreasing over the first half of the year.

We have two huge shopping days coming up in November. All US retailers are familiar with Black Friday, which, while it does not generate quite the massive sales it did in the past, still moves a huge chunk of merchandise. However, few US retailers participate in Singles Day, the largest shopping day of the year bar none. Primarily “celebrated” in China, Chinese shoppers will spend about 5 times as much on Singles Day (Nov. 11) as US shoppers spend on Black Friday. Eventually, some US retailers will figure out how to get a chunk of that.

Moving on to December, 62% of your customers will make their purchases between Dec. 1 and 24 with 25% making their purchases between Dec. 11 and 20. As Dec. 25^th gets closer, more customers turn to brick and mortar stores to make sure they get the items they want on time. Incidentally 65% will continue with holiday shopping during the period between Dec. 26^th and Jan 1 especially as they start using those gift cards they received for Christmas and 46% will still be in the mood for holiday shopping through much of January. So you’ve still got time to get your holiday ducks (turkeys?) in a row.

How To Get Your Name Out There

All game (and comic) stores have to work to get their names out in front of potential customers and

WOTC has been doing a pretty good job of weekly disseminating both basic and novel ideas used by other stores to keep their customers coming back and making customers feel special. However,  even though it is far easier to generate additional sales from existing customers, at some point you need to get your name out in front of new potential customers and get them into the store. Without a flow of new customers, a store will eventually tap out its existing customer base and see flatlined sales. I wanted to suggest three ways to get your name in front of new customers. As a savvy store owner (or publisher) you are likely already but just in case you’re not:

1.       Social Media—the great thing about social media is that it is free, to start. Set up an account on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, maybe even Vine, Snapchap and Instagram.  Unfortunately, due to the ways in which the various social media sources have tweaked their software, you now really do have to spend money in order to get your name and posts out in front of potential customers. The great thing about social media it that you start out for as little as 5 bucks to boost a Facebook post and have a lot more control over who will see it than you would with advertising in traditional formats. Facebook, and other forms of social media, allow you to have friends and friends of friends see your boosted posts or you can keep them from seeing them and spend your money to reach a targeted market that’s not already familiar with your company. I know stores spending 4 figures just on monthly boosting of social media.

2.       Join Civic Organizations—Become a member of organizations like your local Chamber of Commerce or Rotary Club or Kiwanis or Jaycees or Main Street. Not only do they work to better the community, and he better your community is doing , the better your business will do, but becoming a member allows you to take advantage of the services the organization offers. For example, as a member of our local Chamber of Commerce, I can send out promotions and notices to all other Chamber members , many of whom would have no idea what the store sells. Also,  if you have some sort of negative event take place, a position as a recognized member of the local community  helps mitigate the effects of bad publicity.

3.       Press Releases—The local media is always looking for local news and your store (or company) is newsworthy, whether you are hosting an event, are hiring new staff or even have a list of the top 5 games in your community for the year. This last one is one we sent out and we got a spot on local TV as well as mentions in two local papers, all for about half an hour’s work and another 5 minutes or so emailing them to the local media. Remember, you may not follow local news much but there are a lot of people that do, people who may not know you exist but have money to spend on what you are selling. Don’t know how to write a press release? Search for “sample press release” on the interwebs or hire a local journalism student to write one for you.

WOTC Promo Change

WOTC just made a major change to their promotional program, rather the way in which we handle promotional items. Prior to this, certain promotional items such as the Buy a Box Card and Game Day playmats, had to be destroyed after a certain amount of time if they were not used for the promotion for which they were designed. Now, after the promotional period has ended, stores can use them to enhance play in whatever manner deemed suitable. Stores, of course, still cannot sell promo items, they must be given to players.

Good Plan, Lousy Communication

AEG, publisher of Smash-up, Trains, Epic PvP and several varieties of Love Letter, announced their Pro Retailer program last March at the GAMA Trade Show. It was a pretty nice promotion, offering incentives and promotional items to retailers who agreed to purchase or pre-commit to orders of specific quantities of monthly upcoming items, such as Greedy Greedy Goblins or Archer. Like I said, great idea, one that we bought into for several of the promotions.

Unfortunately, the communication wound up lacking as AEG did not make clear how the ordering of their games was to be handled. Case in point, last June's release of Archer:  Once You Go Blackmail... The promotion was, buy 12 copies of the game and get additional promotional games and items. It sounded great and we agreed to participate. Unfortunately, the folks at AEG never discussed how the order was to be handled. I figured that either AEG would sell them to us direct and would send an invoice or would contact our distributor about the order. Instead, it turned out that the store had to take the initiative in the process and contact the distributor to put in the order. Due to this lack of clarity of communication,  we wound up not participating in 3 of AEG's Pro-Retailer promotions so far this year. Now that AEG has clarified the process, we will participate in future opportunities but 'tis a pity to have lost the previous chances due to poor communication

AEG: A Year of Promotion

This week's column on ICV2 looks at the promotional programs AEG has put into place for their product releases for the rest of the year.

Gaming Promo Items

I am seeing a lot more promotional items coming out for games recently, with the receipt of the promo card or figure tied to a certain number of copies of the game pre-ordered. Companies like Looney Labs have done this for awhile, offering a promo card with the rlease of each new Fluxx set but AEG and Iello are getting into it in a big way, with all of AEG's releases this year and a number of Iello's larger games releasing with promo items, the reciept of which is contingent on pre-ordering a certain number of the games. Not sure how much of this is due to Kickstarter's "rewards" and stretch goals and how much is due to trying to stand out from the ever growning flood of games.

The Best Social Media Platform

Facebook has proven the most useful social media platform in terms of growing our business, simply because of its ubiquity.We have found that all of our customers have Facebook accounts and check them regularly, unlike other media such as Twitter or Vine. Additionally, Facebook make it extremely easy for us to send out a quick promotion to our customers: create the promotion, post it and hit the "Boost Post" button and within a few minutes, we see engagement.

More on Selling Promo Items

Other promotional items are iffy. I have not seen any directives from Steve Jackson Games or Atlas Games regarding promos from them and stores were selling the promos from TableTop Day before the event even ended but the stores had paid for those promos and had not entered into any agreement with TableTop or Geek & Sundry.

In general, if the promos are part of an organized program and promoted by the supplier for the purpose of driving customers into the store, there are probably restrictions on selling them, otherwise likely not.

Selling Promotional Items

Every once in awhile we have someone ask us about buying promotional items or we see a store selling promotional items online. Just recently, we spotted someone selling Free RPG Day promotional items on eBay weeks ahead of the official day of the event.

First of all, if you are a customer and you received a promotional item, it is your's. You are free to sell it, keep it, give it away, jump up and down on it or whatever you choose to do. Once it leaves the retailer's possession, the agreement the store may have with the provider may end.

What the retailer can do with promotional items may or may not be restricted based on the agreement with the provider of the item.  For example, stores have an agreement with WOTC that we will not sell the promotional cards provided for Friday Night Magic. WOTC provides the cards to us to use as prizes during the event and in return, we agree not to sell them. In fact, that is why you will find stores that will not take FNM promos in trade until they are no longer Standard legal, so that there is no chance of WOTC finding them offering a FNM promo for sale.

A similar agreement exists between stores and Wizkids for their HeroClix OP items. Here' it is a bit more of a gray area, as unlike promos from WOTC, stores do have to pay for the OP promos from WizKids. Still, the agreement stores enter into is pretty straightforward, in return for being able to buy OP materials, stores agree not to sell them until given the OK  by Wizkids. When this happens, it is usually months after the end, as in the case of the Fear Itself OP campaign, which ran throughout 2013 but which stores could not sell any remaining boosters for until mid-2014.

Gamblin' Goblins Kickstarter

As regular readers of the blog will know, I am not a big fan of Kickstarter campaigns but this one is actually reaching out to retailers so wanted to point it out. If you back it and write "I am a Knight of Castle Perilous Games & Books" in the pledge notes, you will receive extra rewards for doing so.

AsmoPlay

Another promotional program rolling out this week is the AsmoPlay program, which I discussed a few weeks ago. Very nice idea but stores are committed to buying all three of the kits which contain two of each of the games in the program:  Splendor, Cash ‘n  Guns and 7 Wonders, along with assorted promo items. The problem is, and why we decided to pass on it, most stores don’t need two copies of a game in their game demo library. Multiple copies are useful if you want to run a tournament, which Asmodee encourages stores to do with the kits, but honestly, more stores would make use of a single copy for demos rather than finding storage space for 6 games that we cannot sell.

Bounceback Experiment

Following up our bouceback coupon promotional strategy from International TableTop Day, wherin we gave players in various games over the day a coupon good for $1 off a game featured on the TableTop series on the following weekend, the idea being that customers will return the following weekend or “bounceback” to use the coupon. Given the number of coupons we gave out, I would have considered 5-10 of them turned in a successful application of the strategy. Unfortunately, we received a grand total of 1 (one).  Ah, well, there is always Free RPG Day (You do know about Free RPG Day, right?).

Flooping the Pig

The Adventure Time Card Game hit the shelves nationwide on Friday and, at least at our stock, sold out by mid-afternoon. We received our full order but I heard tales of stores getting allocated significantly. We did not order too heavily on it because, as is typical unfortunately, none of our customers asked about the game until the Tuesday before release.  After the first flurry of interest, sales in the Adventure Time comic had dropped to almost zero and, while the Adventure Time trade paperbacks sold, they didn’t turn at Walking Dead levels, but closer to that of Empowered, decent sales but nothing out of the ordinary.  Ergo, our pre-orders reflected the comparative lack of interest our customer base had shown in all things Adventure Time.  I figured six of each deck would last us for quite some time.  Boy, was I wrong.

So, we sent our order off to alliance and posted on Facebook and Twitter that the decks had released and would hit the shelves Friday.  Wham.  Within 2 hours we had a dozen posts asking about it and half a dozen or more calls.  On Friday, as mentioned above, our entire stock had sold out by mid-afternoon with one customer driving over an hour to pick up a copy. Happily for him, he called in advance and we set one back for him. Those who did not wound up out of luck until our restock comes in.

Imagine how we could have sold this given better communication and tools.  Maybe we received  emails mentioning it but none by themselves to make the product stand out.  Why not a promotional poster sent out weeks ahead of the release date?  Maybe a sign-up sheet sent as a PDF? Though I am not a huge fan of Games Workshop’s promotional strategies, they do send out sign up forms for what they consider major new releases. As long as I am dreaming, how about a demo copy of the game sent out a week or two or even three before the release to gauge interest? Having this sort of information helps drive pre-orders.  Pre-orders help the store, help the distributor, help the publisher, heck, they even help the customer by giving us an indication of how much interest there is in the product.  More interest means more pre-orders which means must less likelihood of an out of stock which means the customer is more likely to find the game on the store shelf.

Last year, Cryptozoic discussed some really impressive plans they had for promoting their product lines, with launch events for new releases and game days to continue to generate interest in their catalog titles, something Fantasy Flight Games already does to great effect for their LCG lines.  However, aside from making demo copies of their games available through Alliance Distribution at reduced cost and a long delayed game day promotion for the DC Heroes Deck Building Game, the cards for which just showed up a week or so ago, we haven’t seen anything in store. 

Cryptozoic has some great licenses, and some great games using those licenses.  Here’s hoping they get the promotional campaigns up and running to match those licenses as I really want to floop the pig with their games for a long time to come.