Gen Con Report: Dawn of the Final Day

For Immediate Release
August 20, 2017

ORLANDO, FL -

Time flies when you’re having fun, and here we are at the last day of Gen Con 2017. So much has been happening that it’s been hard to find time to sit down and talk to you about it all. For the second night in a row, I passed out at the computer trying to write this update because we are cramming so much awesome into this show. I can pretty unequivocally say that this has been the best show in IGA history – despite the fact that I seem to have lost my glasses and am blind as a bat and unable to play games.

Sales

We are presently about $400 from breaking our record for best sales volume at a con. We’re attributing some of that to the pretty new booth, some to the sellout crowd, and some to our sales team kicking butt this year. We’ll be doing our usual 10% off MSRP Sunday sale today, which should help even more.

We’ll be releasing a poll after the show asking you what you think about a couple of ideas we’ve had about pricing and so forth at cons, to try to help us sell even more.

Sales continue to be most brisk among members who have:

* Purchased demo time at the convention

* Taken the time to tweet that their game is available at booth #361

* Given us promo cards or similar that we can use as gifts with purchase

We will be focusing pretty heavily on making those three things easier for future shows, because we’ve statistically seen how well they work.

Partnerships

We’ve had a couple of fantastic meetings with some potential partners, including some household names. I don’t want to announce anything prematurely, but I will tell you we’ve had very positive conversations with 6 manufacturers and the most requested potential partner we’ve had. We’ve also partnered with a few content creators to help you get the word out about your games, and with a company that could do some pretty fantastic things for IGA member sales. I know that all of this is very vague; that’s deliberate until the ink is dry and people are finally set up. I promise, they’ll be worth it.

Publisher Speed Dating

We ran James Mathe’s publisher speed dating event at Gen Con this year, and it was a smash success! We had publishers outnumber designers both days despite being scheduled simultaneously with some can’t-miss events, and I personally witnessed at least five designers get appointments to discuss contracts. It was an opportunity for us to meet a few IGA designers in person that we’d previously only known online, and also to talk to a bunch of new designers and publishers about joining the IGA team.

We’re super proud that James asked us to get involved, and hope we can do so in future years! I’ll be posting pictures later today when all of the Minions who took them get them over to me.

The New Booth…

… is going fantastically well. We’ve had some minor issues with the banners, which we’ll get fixed after the show. I’m a little concerned that it limits the number of distinct items we can carry, but I’ve got some ideas to try to improve that for future shows. We’re getting tons of compliments, especially from people who saw us at Origins and can really see how significant the upgrade is.

Demos

Demos in the booth have been going wonderfully — there have often been people two and three deep around the Table of Ultimate Gaming where we’re running our demos. It’s resulting in quite a few sales as well, which is what we all want to hear. Again, my team has a ton of photos; I’ve personally been in meetings all con and not had much chance to get my shutterbug on. After the show, I’ll do a mass photo dump once everyone sends me their shots.

Scheduled events outside the vendor hall have been a little hit or miss. Some have been completely sold out, others sparsely attended. As with sales, we’re finding that the key difference-maker is whether or not the publishers have taken the time to drive traffic via their social media. If you have a demo on Sunday, take some time and tweet about it and let’s get these tables filled up! If you need to know when your event is scheduled, it should be on the schedule we posted a few days ago, or you can reach out to us (though we may be slow to respond because we’re in meetings.)

On Tap for Today

We’re doing our 10% off sale on everything in the booth, so expect a flurry of sales notifications. Victoria and I will not be in the booth most of the day, as we’re walking around the exhibit hall to recruit new members and have some more conversations. Come say hi to Jason Gough and Billy Salazar, our NY and CA convention leads respectively! Of course, we also have the breakdown tonight at 4, and then the long trek home; we’re trying to make it to Georgia by 2pm tomorrow so we can be in the path of totality for the solar eclipse.

Wish us luck!