Well I am just about recovered from Conception, which was ACE!!!!!!, and thought the first thing I should do was post up the sales breakdown.
So the total for the con was £337 over 3 and a half days.
Thursday : £156
Friday : £10
Saturday : £91
Sunday : £80
Games breakdown
a|state core: 1
Best Friends: 1
Cold City bundle: 6
Contenders: 3
Dead of Night: 5
Mob Justice: 3
Piledrivers: 1
Questers: 1
Swansong: 1
Umlaut: 5
So there you go. No surprise who the bestseller was, damn you Craig, but a few other interesting things here:
We sold one of everything we had with us, which was excellent.
I ran Contenders Sat, and most of the sales were after that point.
We sold most of Cold City on Monday before most games had really run.
Best Friends only selling 1 was much discussed as we usually sell at least 5. Market saturation? Just the wrong crowd? Comments welcome.
We has a really good setup with the stall the first thing you came to in the trade hall. Our gaming table was opposite and we had games running in every slot bar 1, where we screwed up a little and forgot to compensate for Graham not being able to make it. Sometimes there was someone on the stall the rest of the time whoever was running a game was keeping an eye on it and we put up a little sign to that effect.
From what I saw of it I would say the prime selling times were first thing as people arrived and lunchtime. After about 4 or so there was very little traffic and the hall shutdown sales wise about 6.
On refleciton it would have been better to have the stall manned all the time, Claire has kindly volunteered to help out for next year, but other than that I think we did pretty well. The banner couldn't go up so the posters idea being floated around would be good.
The only other thing I would say is that as the Con is very play orientated that any arrangements for next year should take that into account.
That is all for now. My APs, playtest reports and design rethinks will follow shortly.
Cheers
Iain
Wow
Submitted by Matt on Tue, 05/02/2008 - 22:34.
Considering I've heard Conception touted as a playing not a purchasing con, those are good numbers.
Comparable to Furnace, if I remember rightly.
-Matt
Realms Publishing
Sales seem ok for a free
Submitted by Mick Red on Wed, 06/02/2008 - 00:15.
Sales seem ok for a free trade stand, i think you will find sales are linked to demos
There was far more cold city and dead of night than any of the others
We were sesperate to play MJ but only looked like one game which we missed out:(
More games run = more games sold its that simple
Best Friends
Submitted by Gregor Hutton on Wed, 06/02/2008 - 10:12.
I'm not surprised at all about Best Friends selling 1 (well, I'm surprised it sold one actually). I think anyone at Conception who would have wanted a copy would probably already have it.
"Dunnigan had the industry dead to rights when he said that games that sold were always about NATO, Nukes, or Nazis." (Costikyan 1999)
Edit: Corrected year to 1999, which is when Violence was published.More play = more sales
Submitted by Andrew Kenrick on Wed, 06/02/2008 - 11:13.
The one copy that was sold was to one of my BF players, going someway to proving Mick's point that the more games of stuff we ran, the more we sold!
I was very pleased with the amount we sold - take a look at the sales last year for comparison. Our premium location, our full schedule of games as well as the support and games run by many other people (thanks to all!) really helped us in that respect.
In fact, far more gratifying than the sales were the amount of games ran by people that weren't us. It was great to see games of Dogs, Inspectres, Cold City, Spirit of the Century and Dead of Night up on the board throughout the convention, and being enjoyed by a lot of people. Stephen, one of the player's in Scott's DoN game, said that he'd been mostly playing DoN the whole con, and at that point I hadn't run it!
So, how would we do it again next year? I think the structure is sound, with a solid base provided by running lots of good games (and encouraging others to do so too). We went the opposite way to last year, with the stall only manned a little bit, and mostly just watched over by the people running the games. I'm sure that's why friday was quite slow in terms of sales. Next year maybe we want a bit of a rota so someone is on the stall a bit more often?
Mick, next time we are at a
Submitted by Iain McAllister on Wed, 06/02/2008 - 14:00.
Mick, next time we are at a Con together grab me and I will run Mob Justice for you. Even better get Rich Stokes to do it for you as I think he comes to your club. Maybe I am getting my Micks mixed up. I really should have run it twice over the con but there you go.
I didn't realise we got the stall for free! That makes the result even better. I think we can definitely get more from the con promotion and money wise. A solid stall rota and more games will help us out there.
Cheers
Iain
Mob Justice now available!
'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.
Hurrah
Submitted by JoE PrincE on Wed, 06/02/2008 - 18:38.
Well done guys, good work!
+++
JoE
+++
Prince of Darkness Games
Rock N' Role-Play....
Splitting the spoils
Submitted by Iain McAllister on Wed, 06/02/2008 - 19:58.
I will get in touch with everyone off forum about sending them cheques for the appropriate amount.
Cheers
Iain
Mob Justice now available!
'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.
Good stuff.
Submitted by Tim Gray on Thu, 07/02/2008 - 08:09.
Sounds like a fun and rewarding con.
Any chance the remaining 4 copies of Questers could find their way to the next con? Is that the Edinburgh one end of March? (BTW, someone should put that in the events list.)
Tim Gray
Silver Branch Games
www.silverbranch.co.uk
Thanks
Submitted by Malcolm Craig on Thu, 07/02/2008 - 20:30.
Thanks for manning the booth, running games and giving a really good image of the Collective chaps.
It certainly seems that CC benefited from the number of games being run, which is to be expected. However, I'm delighted to see a copy of a|state getting sold. Nice to see that it can still attract people. And selling at least one of every item on the booth is great!
Just a quick question: were any 15 - 30 minute demos done? I realise that Conception probably isn't the venue for such things, due to the amount of play going on, but still curious.
"Dunnigan had the industry dead to rights when he said that games that sold were always about NATO, Nukes, or Nazis." (Costikyan 1999)
And I have all three! Result! (That's a wargames reference, isn't it? I'm going to use it in the future though!)
Cheers
Malcolm
Contested Ground Studios
We didn't run a single 15
Submitted by Andrew Kenrick on Fri, 08/02/2008 - 09:03.
We didn't run a single 15 minute demo. Not one. The venue just isn't right for it - there aren't very many people wandering about when not in games, as we discovered last year when we tried. So instead we pitched for running a full schedule of 4 hour games, which seemed to work.
I think for high traffic cons where people come to buy stuff as well as play stuff, they work (think Gencon or Dragonmeet). At more game-centric cons (Conception and Conpulsion) a more robust games track works better. I guess this might be something for the booth strategy thread...
No way
Submitted by Mick Red on Fri, 08/02/2008 - 18:36.
Demo's be it 15, 30, 45 or even an hour would so not work at conception
Keep with the 4 hour slots, the simple ansewer to increase sales is increase games
There needs to be more of you its that simple, CC and DoN sold because thats
what was being played (these were run by people outside the CE aswell)
maybe some small incentive to get the masses to run for you would help
(and i dont mean anything big maybe 10% off purchaces over £30 or something)
Had i got to play MJ or the fantasy looking one i may well have bought them
as it happens i didnt so spent my money elsewhere
Cold City, dead of night,
Submitted by Mick Red on Tue, 11/03/2008 - 18:23.
Cold City, dead of night, Umlaut and Mob Justice sold because games were on offer
I didnt see a single game of A/State, Swansong or Questors.
Malcolm are you intending to be at Conception X next year? maybe get there and run a laod of A/State