If you've been following this blog you're likely familiar with this image, which I often use at the start of the article. We felt it did a nice job of getting across what our business does at a quick glace. But what if we wanted to add other products or services to our offerings? How would be communicate that to customers in a simple and straightforward way?

[img width=700 height=432]https://c4.staticflickr.com/4/3887/15272550855_e77fbfaea1_b.jpg[/img]




When we first opened, we intended to strictly be a video game store. I didn't have much desire or opportunity to jump into anything else. We opened down the street from a small little tabletop gaming store, which was very complimentary for both of us. The owner of the tabletop store turned out to be very friendly and encouraging for us and during our early days, while we were still trying to find our audience, he was one of our biggest supporters. He sent us a staggering amount of referrals and also let us host events in his store after hours, since he had significantly more space than we did. On July 2014, this store announced it was permanently closing its doors. There were several complicated reasons for the closure, most of them personal to the owner that I wont get into on this forum. Regardless, there has a been a table top gaming void in my city since then.

With the closure of this store and our store already being crammed for space, we have been looking to relocate to a much bigger area so that we have the space to host the events we want. It seemed obvious that we need to delve into the tabletop realm as well and try to fill the emptiness left by our previous tabletop allies. We just needed to figure out how to communicate this to customers.

I like making big gestures as I feel it gets peoples attention and when people get excited about something, they tend to share it with others. So instead of just casually carrying tabletop products or making a Facebook post about it, I wanted to hold off and do something big. I quietly signed up with distributor's in my country and started doing orders as often as I could afford it, in order to get the stock I needed and spread that cost out over several months instead of trying to do it all in one lump sum. I was still looking for the right avenue to get the word out to customers. Enter Northern FanCon!

Just a few short weeks ago, my city hosted it's first ever Fan Convention. That's a blog in itself (foreshadowing!), but it did allow me a cool platform to make my announcement. In the days leading up to the event, we worked on retooling our logo, acquiring a good selection of stock to get us started, and had t-shirts made up for the staff so that we looked professional and had the logo out in people's faces. All people knew was that we were going to have a gaming area at the convention and nothing more as they arrived.

Just as the doors opened, we made our Facebook announcement for those that could not attend and unveiled our new logo and the news that Game Quest would be stocking tabletop games in the very near future. Once the unsuspecting convention goers started flooding into our area, they were greeted with a big display of board games and Magic cards, as well as our new logo strung across a large banner. The intent was to surprise and delight people, and I think it worked on both fronts. We got unanimously positive responses and lots of great feedback. The word started spreading and even though we have yet to move, we have been selling Magic and board games at a great pace through our current, tiny location. We are currently eager to move our store to a bigger location so that we can make the jump full force into the tabletop arena and give this city what it has been missing since last July.

[img width=700 height=206]https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8808/18226401432_7817d9640b_k.jpg[/img]

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