Christopher Weeks wrote: I wonder what the cost/benefit looks like by dramatically reducing the cost of being a "dealer" (perhaps to nothing) at one of these cons. If you could get more dealers, wouldn't it be more valuable to more participants, increasing the take for participants? And could you just restrict sales (by anyone) to the bazar room as I described above? You could even still sell the more desirable locations, for the more proffesional vendors, while allowing others to do their thing.

Chris

Hey Chris-

You seem to be making the assumption that an increased number of dealers is an inherently good thing. It's not, past a certain point. The more professional vendors want to know what your attendance is, and how many exhibitors you have, so that they can determine if attending is worth their while.

If you bring your cost to zero, and increase your exhibitor hall to huge, you'll rapidly find that the more "professional" vendors will not attend your convention.

In addition - the cost, while irritating to legitimate small-press vendors (such as indie RPG producers), helps to keep the schlock out of your dealers room.

Your dealers room is a reflection of your convention, and like everything else at your convention it's a careful mix of quantity vs diversity vs quality. You try to keep your prices low enough that you can attract a good mix of large and small vendors, and support all aspects of the market, while still trying to remain in the black yourself and have the best quality products available that you can.

-Trey

WGPTrey wrote: You seem to be making the assumption that an increased number of dealers is an inherently good thing.

Hi Trey,

Yeah, I see that quality management would be important. As one of your consumers, I'd be interested in seeing more quantity and diversity in your dealer area. Particularly in the form of primary producers and specialty retail booths. But I also don't want my time wasted with every silly org that would have a booth if they were free and completely open. Do you consider pricing to be your only tool for manipulating which vendors come?

I've been in conversations with the folks who run Shore/Mon-Con (I'm recalling a specific conversation with Rob Placer from a couple years ago) and it seemed that they specifically invited certain members of certain niches (e.g. weapon dealers) to the exclusion of others who wanted to come. Is that how y'all do it?

And more to the point, What is the prospect of a reduced rate demo/sales area for small-press publishers at WG events?

Chris

Christopher Weeks wrote:
And more to the point, What is the prospect of a reduced rate demo/sales area for small-press publishers at WG events?

Hi, Chris. Trey already answered this in Indie gaming at A Gazebo of Games. While you're over there, please send me the e-mail I requested about the Uni games you'd like to run. Thanks a bunch.

Christopher Weeks wrote: Do you consider pricing to be your only tool for manipulating which vendors come?

Not at all!

Due to the limit of the size of our Exhibit Hall, we have a senority system in place - those who have exhibited with us before get the first shot at the exhibit space that we have available.

After that, it's up to the discretion of the Exhibitor Liaison to decide what's appropriate, and know when and how to avoid over-duplication. If we already have a weapons dealer (for example), we're unlikely to add another one, since the size of our Hall means that both of those Exhibitors will have a direct compete, and our conventions aren't large enough to support that (yet).

Pricing was the topic of discussion, however, so that was the only aspect I addressed in my first post.

-Trey