GenCon 2004

[ethan_greer]

Okay, lots of folks are talking about how cool GenCon 2003 was, but I haven't seen a reaction from Ron, unless he put it somewhere I missed (entirely possible).  So I'm forcing the issue.  Or at least making a thread to bring it up...

Ron, did GenCon meet with your expectations?  Are you planning to do a similar Forge Booth setup next year?

If you are, I want to start planning for it right now because I am sooo going to be there with a product (or two) to sell.  :)

[Jake Norwood]

Here's my deal:

Ron and I run small companies. I loved sposoring the booth, but even though we both did well at the con, selling lots of books and all, I lost money and Ron (if I'm not mistaken) probably lost his shirt. Booth space and furniture is very, very expensive. So I think the Forge booth needs to be a permanant addition to Gen Con, and I want to be a primary sponsor for as long as I can, but the money issue has to be handled differently.

Jake

[Jason L Blair]

THE FOLLOWING IS DRIFT:
As part-sponsor of the 2002 Forge booth, I lost some cash as well (but too much). Supporting the community was the real benefit. Key 20 is willing to sponsor part of the 2004 Forge booth, or at least attach our booth to it to give it that much more space.

[Mike Holmes]

That's great, Jason.

The problem is that, the more "sponsor" level entrants dividing up the major costs, the bigger booth we need. Heck, we were really tight again this year as it was. I don't suppose that there's any chance that larger booths actually cost proportionally less? More proportionally, right?

Seems like a very tough problem to overcome. Anybody have any thoughts on that?

Mike

[Matt Gwinn]

Well, increasing the cost to sell your game to $150 to $200 might help.  I'm pretty sure everyone at the booth made at least that much this year.

Maybe Upper Deck will slip us some cash if we give out BreaKeys with every sale :-)

,Matt Gwinn

[Jake Norwood]

Well, I think that raising the entry fee for non-sponsors is a start. The year that I went with TROS as a sideline product I did very well. I sold even more this time, but the costs were 5 times greater or more. I'm just trying to see how we can continue to put together this fantastic booth without damaging its sponsers by default.

jake

[C. Edwards]

There's already an open call for donations that go to the Forge website, why not have something similar for the Forge booth? The results may not end up being overly impressive but every little bit helps.

Also, I noticed in the exhibitor packet for GenCon SoCal that there are a limited number of discounted booths for first time exhibitors with only one major game/product. How difficult would it be to try and get one or two of those next to the Forge booth and kind of 'adopt' them as Forge space?

Just some ideas.

-Chris

[Mike Holmes]

That's an excellent idea, Chris. I'm not sure how keen the staff would be on it, but it certainly makes sense.

Mike

[jdagna]

Chris, the entrepreneurial discount you're talking about comes with some strict limitations - including one that prohibits you from selling products other than your own or sharing the booth with anyone else.  If you tried to include them in the Forge space, you would risk being charged more or kicked out of the convention altogether (just like you can get charged more if you combine booths so that they form something normally more expensive, like an endcap).

I don't know how closely these things are enforced, but the last thing you want are GenCon employees thinking "We'd better see what rules those Forge guys are breaking this year."

For what it's worth, I think raising the entry cost to people is probably fair.  The booth cost is nothing compared with airfare, lodging and food anyway.

[C. Edwards]

Bah, I knew there was a catch.

I do think that a "Send the Forge to GenCon!" donation button isn't too bad of an idea. Maybe a yearly raffle, but a ticket and a chance to win some swag, kind of deal.

Increasing entry costs is certainly the easiest solution though.

-Chris

[Mike Holmes]

I keep getting this vision of building some sort of deck that would make the booth into two stories so that we can vend on one level, and demo on the second floor....

Mike

[Jeffrey Miller]

I keep getting this vision of building some sort of deck that would make the booth into two stories so that we can vend on one level, and demo on the second floor....

You obviously heard about my idea to do a velvet roped-off section with a big sign called "Game With The Designer", where we would mic and top-down video capture the session, and rebroadcast it on a giant plasma screen. Exclusivity sells ^_^

or better yet, we could hold a TROS Steel Cage Death Match..

-jeffrey "ex-theatrical designer" miller-

[Matt Gwinn]

That would Rock Mike!!  We could have a Booth Tower.
They'd probably pull out some fire hazard rule or something though.  Grr.

One thing we need is booth babes or costumnes or something.  I checked out the 1300+ pics at the gencon web site and there wasn't a single picture of our booth and with the execption of Mike Holmes playing guitar (again) there were no Forge people in photos.  There were lots of chicks in costume though, including the chick with the duct tape bikini.

They did take a picture FROM our booth though, so at least we were useful to them :-(

,Matt Gwinn

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Here's the costs, approximately, for the booth this year:

$2400 for the booth itself
$850+ for the furniture.
$700+ for the extra badges
$1600 for the two hotel rooms
plus a bunch more for shipping books to and from the con

All of this was shouldered by Adept Press, which is not built for such stresses. I have to do kind of a do-si-do between the cash and checks I brought back, my business checking account, and the credit card payments. Fortunately I'm not kiting anything because I started with a solid capital basis, even after all printing two books in the last few months.

Now, a fair amount of that does come right back to me from others. People have been great about hotel room reimbursement, the $100 and badge fees were all met, and one co-sponsor has paid right up. Managing this is tricky, but a fair portion of the above isn't going to be shouldered by me permanently.

I haven't done an across-the-board cost-benefit analysis based on booth-use and badge repayments from the other sponsor, Forge members, and my own sales. Frankly, given the piecemeal nature of the costs and reimbursements, it's an accounting nightmare.

However ... I can see very easily, at the end of the day, that GenCon loses me money, even with mad game sales. I can also estimate that if I'd done, instead of a Forge booth, a Sorcerer booth (like 2001) with all the help I could pull in for it for both 2002 and 2003 ... well, let's just say Adept would be an awfully rich little company at this point instead of its break-even-but-solid status.

What I'm sayin', guys, is that two years of altruism is enough. The Forge booth is a great thing, and I plan to organize it again for next year. But I'm going to have to put the sly Adept tactics-hat on and figure out a better way to do it, financially.

Oh, and the main reason I didn't post all sorts of post-GenCon stuff this week is that I got pretty sick upon arriving home, and real-life has been demanding too.

Best,
Ron

[Jake Norwood]

I was keeper of the cash box last year and I kept an eye on things this year. We did a lot more business this year, and I think that means we can build on this fact for future years.

We need more shelf space arranged in a more store-like way. Paul's excellent stand was just a start. The more we make the booth like a store the more people will buy. I'm not saying that we should ditch the whole cafe table thing, but we need even more wiles to get people to stay and to buy.

Some kind of unified forge T-shirt for everyone that isn't a sponsor could be a good thing...or not...mostly just thinking out loud here...

Also, the payment needs to be differnt. Just paying for some badges and a little more won't do. OTOH some books don't really make enough to cover more, so perhaps a percentage of some sort...something that wouldn't bleed the smaller guys and that wouldn't let others make a large profit on the con when the sponsors eat it.

Lastly, I think that the booth needs to be larger, but that raises prices, so...

Jake