Spread The Word: Store Involvement

This is part 3 of my interview with Jim Dyson (The Other Coast) and Jesse Ellis (Boring Conversation), check out their podcasts!

How do you go about getting a game store on board with hosting events and stocking product?

James: For context, in Michigan (around 2nd edition) there was a popular game store with a weekly game night and leagues, but we’ve had trouble getting going with a new store. We had one store that tolerated us but never stocked Wyrd product. 

Jim: It’s tough, and we’ve all struggled with it. If the store people are not interested in stocking product, are they ok with you playing? When you show up do you buy stuff? 

James: That’s something I have encouraged, to at least buy a pop or some paint or something. 

Jim: Showing up at a store, they’re businesses and need income. A lot of stores have concessions. Not shaming people who don’t, but try to make it a habit, that every time you show up, people in the group all get something. The store will eventually notice every week they get X amount of money from those people. Next step: we’re the malifaux people and we’re buying stuff, that shows the demand. Are they willing to special order? If they do, make a point that everyone in the community orders from the store. If someone is being asked to special order once its a one time thing, but if I’m an employee and someone is asking every week, eventually I’ll be tired of special ordering and doing extra work, so I’ll ask “every week you’re having me fill out this form, is there some baseline product we can stock so I don’t have to do that?” Be persistent and annoying with purchases to put pressure. Demonstrating we’re committed to not just the game, but committed to benefitting the store, and they’ll be more inclined to open up shelf space. Regarding actual tournaments or organized play days: depending on store, open play day is people coming in buying stuff. 

At tournaments, you can talk to store and set up store credit as prize, where everyone here will pay $10 to the store, give X amounts of gift cards for first second and third. It’s still money in the bank for them, so you’re driving sales to the store that way. If you have tournaments, people will often travel to the store, and NAFT (North American ‘Faux Tour) people want those points. And more than just the regulars: people will drive a few hours for it, drive more than usual weekly game numbers. People who show up might even buy a board game they were looking at. Showing that the Tournament Organizer is putting in effort to draw business to the store. If you do that, you can start asking them to stock product on the shelf. 

Building relationship with the store staff: at the end of the day, if you don’t know the staff, its not going any where. It’s their kingdom, and they decide what happens there. If you’re running things, you’ll see them consistently. The henchman program allocated 1 henchman per store: they would organize there, they would send them product. Our local store decided to have an employee be the henchman, that way they have control over timing of events, and have infrastructure for prize product. Positive interaction with store person, have them know what the game is, donating demo crews to the store for when people ask about the game. 

Once you’ve taught the store owners how to play, there’s always a subset of people who prefer to talk with the staff over random people, so they’ll ask about it and the store person can offer them help directly. If you have good rapport and you show them the game, now you have someone on the inside, and they might want to start getting product selfishly. For our store, that was a big thing. Pre-COVID, our shop owner was huge into batman minis; nobody at the store played, but they had a whole rack of batman minis there. Convince the store person to play, hopefully win them over. 

James: I agree with all that, one issue I’ve had is that often employees are very busy with running the shop. 

Jim: Start talking to them chatting, say “hey if you ever have free time for a demo, I’d love to give you one.” Throw it out there. While they’re working, they’ll naturally want to observe you because your customers in the store. If there’s a minis-dedicated employee who knows your going to demo on X day, say, “are you off Sunday afternoon? Lets setup a time and I’d be happy to run you through it, so that if I’m not there, you’ll have information.” Frame it as a service, and as a benefit to the person, that’s a good way to make people more open to it.

How can we inspire more people to organize events?

Jesse: Having officially recognized tournament organizer program is big. There were issues that made Wyrd discontinue the Henchman program, but when it was around, it made the game more popular. The number of organizers has gone down since then. Having a shop that’s a good partner is the most important thing. They don’t have to stock the full line, a selection of starter boxes and crew boxes that we organizers recommend as good places to start. If there's no product on the wall, it's hard to get players interested and engaged in playing the game. Finding a shop, telling them about our experience with the game and our community, that can be attractive for a shop to partner, with even on a small scale. See what kind of agreement can you work out ahead of time, say that we have some people interested. Maybe bring in that nephilim keyword, and leave Kirai until further down the road, and make sure they’re ok with special ordering as a start.

Jim: Locally, we benefitted when we had a store staffer as our Tournament Organizer (TO). Have an inside person with a say on product who is in touch with players, ensuring you have space to play and time, everyone who shows up sees that guy, and makes it clear that he’s always there. It takes some of the burden off volunteer TOs, since it’s that persons job to draw people to the store. Encourage community TOs: have regular frank discussions with players in the group, ask would anyone be interested in running something? For NOVA (large regional tournament), we didn’t have enough events in to qualify, so we said hey we’re Capital City and we don’t have representation. Nathan offered to run series of events in his basement to get them qualified, thats rare but it happens. As you play with people, get to know the people for more than just Malifaux, get a sense of who they are, and you’ll probably know somebody who has the chops, so just talk to them about running things.

Jesse: if you’re a player who wants to build, nobody is around and people are sporadic, finding that core of players who are interested in playing regularly and growing things is critical. Ask those people if they can take pictures and post them on the shops social media. Say I can’t make it tonight, can ya’ll get games organized and post about it? If it’s just one person blasting every week, saying hey it’s malifaux night on Friday! If it’s always the same person saying things, if people don’t see real community involvement, it’s clear it’s just the one guy and there isn’t a community. If it’s obvious, it’ll feed itself. If you’re alone, it’ll be a long road to get a consistent player base, and its frustrating hyping up demos and free models week after week and get maybe 1 demo a week and the interested players don’t buy in because the shop doesn’t have product and nothing picks up, you’ll get burnt out that way with no bites. If the community is involved, good chance something will stick.

What is the most effective media format to reach new people?

Jim: Social media is the direct one, depending on where you’re playing out of. If the shop has a Twitter or Facebook, having a regional Discord or Facebook group you know people will use. That’s the purpose of social media, to connect that way. Podcasting is a another great way to get your word heard through pod catchers, networking with podcasters to get word out, pods always have plugs. 

Jesse: If the shops open to it, they LOVE having events in their location being publicized. Say I want to run malifaux nights, a painting clinic, a tournament; even if its just some pictures or some raw audio, they’ll eat it up. When people see you doing that, it’ll pull people to the tables to ask questions, and boom boom demo. “Record an interview” on a phone. Do a demo, record quick 5 minute debrief and maybe some questions, and post that on discord channel.