[img width=700 height=206]https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8808/18226401432_7817d9640b_k.jpg[/img]With the Northern Fan Convention setup all behind us, it was nearly time to kick open the doors and let the public in. A public that was still largely unaware that we existed. Even the ones that knew about us didn't know that we were getting into tabletop games. This was our chance to get people excited about us all over again and at the same time, get some feedback about our new merchandise before rolling it out in our store.
As the doors opened, we waited patiently for people to make their way to us. A delay was to be expected as people frantically looked for their favorite attending celebrity to be first in line for an autograph or dig through boxes of comics looking for that hidden gem before anyone else saw it. After about 30 minutes, people started to trickle into our area to see what we had to offer.
[img width=700 height=525]https://farm1.staticflickr.com/303/19400434714_0733a9a385_k.jpg[/img]
Game Quest: More Powerful than 20 normal vendors!!Most people seemed delighted to see all of the arcade stuff at first. As they started to play, it became busier and busier as more people arrived than were leaving. Within the first hour, we were swarmed with people playing arcade games, borrowing board games to play, and people asking questions about our store and products. It didn't let up at all and after the first of the three days was over, we were exhausted and couldn't wait for Saturday.
After a long day, we went straight home to sleep. We woke up early on Saturday in order to stop by the store to reload on product, since we had vastly underestimated the demand for purchases. We originally brought some stuff to sell, but we thought that people were going to use us mainly to kill time in between panels. We were almost immediately wiped out of tabletop games on Friday, our video game selection was decimated, and we were out of T-Shirts after only one day. We couldn't do anything about the t-shirts, but we restocked what we could on tabletop games and brought a much wider selection of video games with us.
[img width=700 height=525]https://farm1.staticflickr.com/364/19996784426_31114c504d_b.jpg[/img]
After commenting on how serious he looked in the first photo Micheal Hogan requested we do another because "I can be goofy too!!!"Saturday was even better as we immediately filled up with people as they were eager to relive old arcade memories and see what new product we had brought with us. Lots of the cosplay entrants that were competing took advantage of our tabletop area and played games while they waited for panels and their contests to start. This worked great for us, since the incredibly colorful and diverse group of people sitting in our area attracted a lot of attention and brought even more people to us.
With some extra help on site, we had a little bit of time to explore the convention ourselves too. The nice thing about our city being on the smaller side is that the lines weren't too bad. My wife and I took in all the vendor booths and checked out all of the amazing artwork, books, memorabilia, and food. We were kind of scoping out things that we were interested in so that we could come back on Sunday and buy ourselves a souvenir. Finally, we snuck into a couple of lines to get some things signed and headed back up to our bustling gaming area.
[img width=700 height=525]https://farm1.staticflickr.com/309/19836328219_1d4dd050f7_b.jpg[/img]
Schwing!On the final day, we had to run by the store before the convention to restock again. We expected the day to be a bit slower than the first two, but we were wrong; it seemed like a lot of people just bought single day tickets for Sunday, so we had a whole new flood of nerds upon us. This time, I snuck off solo to get myself a few mementos from the weekend. I was able to sneak into Tia Carrera's autograph line to get my
Wayne's World NES cart signed, had a friend meet Michael Hogan for me to get him to sign my
Mass Effect Trilogy, and I scored some awesome comics and cards from various vendors. My wife was eyeing up a large painting the day before, so I went to speak with the artist. The painting was a bit out of my budget, but he had some prints of it, so I settled with grabbing one to surprise her. After I got back, she went out on her own and found a sweater for herself.
The organizer of the event was pretty happy that we had a
Star Trek pinball machine on the floor and we ran a high score contest on it, since the big headliner of the convention was William Shatner. The organizer was kind enough to sneak me backstage to meet him and get his autograph on the backglass of the machine
[img width=700 height=525]https://farm1.staticflickr.com/401/19834975838_2f26ee6779_k.jpg[/img]
Crabby and Cabbier?As the weekend came to a close, we were extremely satisfied with it and ourselves. It had been an absolute success in every way. We had fun, got our name out in the community in a very positive way, and made a good amount of money over the weekend. The best was that my wife did a great job at our booth and even enjoyed doing it. She has never really identified as a nerd, but she really thrived in this culture and was a big asset to our booth. She has been working jobs that she hasn't been thrilled with for the last few years, so it was great that she found something that she had fun doing. In fact, with us hunting for a new location and needing a little extra help as we expanded, we started talking about adding her to our Game Quest roster, but that is a story for another blog
