In our on-going mission for transparency and hoping to stimulate new and exciting ideas, here's some data about how our booth did at this years Gen Con.

This is the third year of Design Matters, and it was our biggest year (in terms of bodies at the booth, as well as sales). Not only was this a big year for sales con-wide, we also feel like this was the first year that we had a significant amount of "destination" sale - people coming straight to our booth to buy specific titles. This was also the first year that we didn't have booth coupons available (and I dont think we needed them).

So, by the numbers! We sold:

- 280 discrete products (in 2009 we moved 184 products, in 2008 we moved 161)

- 53 Remember Tomorrow (and sold out on Sunday)
- 34 Happy Birthday, Robot! (and 1 PDF) (and sold out on Saturday, then found one copy which sold Sunday morning)
- 30 Dread House (and sold out on Sunday)
- 25 Kagematsu (and sold out either Saturday or Sunday)
- 26 Blowback (and would have sold out except for preorder stock that hadn't been picked up)
- 22 Mars Colony
- 21 Annalise Final Edition
- 17 Hell 4 Leather
- 14 Time & Temp
- 12 Mecha (9 Hardcover and 3 Softcover)
- 10 The Dance and the Dawn
- 6 It's Complicated, Revised
- 6 Labyrinths & Lycanthropes (and sold out on Sunday)
- 4 Pro-Wrasslin' Battle Royale

As per usual, the new releases were the big sellers, with the older products showing less well. I was surprised (and pleased) that Time & Temp and The Dance and the Dawn had solid showings, for second-year games (and, in the case of tD&tD, a less well-known title). Please note that we do not carry games that are more than two years old, and were happy to direct folks to other booths (mostly IPR) if they asked about an older title from one of our member publishers. Obviously, we had some "buzzy" titles (Happy Birthday, Robot!, Blowback) that did very well, but there was actually remarkable equity among each publishers offerings this year - no one publisher "carried" the booth, like Gregor did with 3:16 in 2008.

Moneywise, we had a third year of growth. In 2008 we saw a roughly 125% ROI, in 2009 ~150%, and this year was right around 200%. If you're not aware, Design Matters operates on a cost-share/profit-share model, where each publisher buys in for an equal "share" of an overall booth budget, and then booth income is split into that number of shares. This year we had 6 full partners, 1 non-profit partner (who just gets reimbursed for their buyin), and two half-share partners, in addition to hosting Kagematsu for direct payout based on sales.

We didn't have a great location (stuck between a kilt retailer and behind a big anima/hentai booth), but it's hard to tell whether we would have done better in a more visible spot. I did hear from a couple folks afterwards that they couldn't find us.

We tried to be more integrated with Games On Demand this year, and scheduled booth members to be there in 2-hour shifts. That went ok, but we really could have benefited from some signage and a more organized method of presenting the games that we had available to run. Definitely room for improvement on this score.

As always, Kevin and I will be re-evaluating the booth based on our observations of how we did this year - one pain point was that we ended up with a situation where we had more bodies involved than we really had work to spread out. While I love all of our comrades, and have no desire to change anything about how this year worked, this is certainly something we'll be examining with a critical eye - old hands from the Forge booth will remember the "wall of designers" problem, among others.

Another observation was that this was a down year for booth presences of folks in our community. We present our data and experiences with the hope that other folks will take a look and see that it is possible to put together a Gen Con booth that doesn't lose money, as long as there is a real reason for that booth to exist! So, obviously, the floor is open for any questions or comments. We particularly would be interested in hearing customer experiences with the booth this year!

Thanks again to everyone who came by and made this our best year to date - we really hope you all enjoy your games!

(cross-posted w/ Story Games, but this post integrates some of the answers to questions folks brought up over there)

Oh, and for reference:

How we did in 2008

I can't seem to find a thread for 2009. I may have been too burned out to post something last year.

Congratulations!

-Vincent