So, last time we met, we talked about samples and such. We talked about how a company can become a trusted distributor and how one would “bind” themselves to our beloved home of the roach. As you might have guessed, we also do a lot of other stuff and even come from the couch occasionally. Join us on our Exciting Woe’s of the Store Owner, part 2.
You can walk AND work?
At the moment, we do about 13 conventions a year, with fantasy conventions and wargames alike. Each attracts their own special cult following of said niche and all of them are awesome! Tiresome but totally worth seeing and talking to all of you! Not only meeting our customers is nice, but perhaps to your surprise, we are quite fond of our colleagues too. We can tell you all about these conventions in the next woe’s of the store owner, but this is not about one of these 13.
This is the story of the rather lonesome and dragging meetings at bigger conventions we aren’t on, but visiting to discuss nice new agreements for delivery and such. I would lie if a big part is not bringing home new goodies from these distributors. Most of the time I will talk about them here in a blog.
Spielwarenmesse Nuremberg, Germany
There are two different conventions in our lovely branch and I doubt this is different from other branches. Basically you have the retailer (business to business) conventions, where it’s 100% meetings, coffee and more meetings and coffee. Then there are the conventions that cater to customers too, showing off their products and selling them. These are called business to consumer conventions. The last ones are the most common.
The Spielwarenmesse is being held in Nuremberg Germany and is one of these B2B conventions. With the size of about 11 football fields, it takes almost 45 mins to go from hall 1 to 11. Everything that has to do with kids/ adults playing something is portrayed there, and everything you can think of that is safe for kids and adults to use is offered to retailers. We are talking about fireworks, Lego, dress up clothing, remote control cars, wooden blocks, make-up, gunpla/ collectables and a million more things. Just not the bedroom toys, because demoing in front of people is a bit… weird… you have other conventions for that.
Spiel, Essen, Germany
Spiel was last week from Thursday to Sunday. Everybody and their grandmas know Spiel as one of the biggest board game/ wargame -yes, wargames are growing, and we even had a complete hall this time- conventions in Europe. Literally everything and everyone that has something to do with games is there, and you can buy it all as a customer. The convention is about half of the Spielwarenmesse, but way more focused on delivering games to customers and a perfect way to meet the makers.
As much as I would love to visit this convention as a true visitor, I can’t. There was only one wargames hall and still they seemed to figure out to make me walk way too much to make my stay at the convention comfortable.
The only exemption to this rule was Steamforged games, who managed to get a booth just for meetings. No fancy showings of new goodies, because the new goodie is Warmachine and that was at the time of visiting not totally finished yet. Taking over a company seems to bring a lot of worries and troubles too before the actual production of models begins.
Tiresome days
Both conventions are visited only one day. No matter what is offered, these days suck up a year of your life and are tiresome as hell. As you might understand, we use a whole weekend to get to and from Nuremberg. Fancy hotels on day one, a visit to the convention on day 2 and a return journey on day 3. Luckily, my friend is one of these people in higher places, so we do drive there pretty comfortable. Sometimes it’s nice to take some time to get from a to b.
Essen, I drive there my self, but that is only an hour from us. Pretty much doable with travel to and from and a visit to the convention. Nuremberg takes up the latter of 5 hours. You are pretty dead (no matter the luxury) the moment you arrive. Knowing you can rest before a day’s walk to all the convention halls is nice.
Another positive thing about getting deeper into Germany is the food. Some things are just too good not to visit a restaurant for there. And you know what they say about sleeping in a biergarten. I just don’t drink beer… not even the German godly delight.
Ending this banter
So, why do I write all of this? Basically to show that the life of a webshop owner is way more than just buying in products, selling them and filling in some forms. Most of the time, when you get busy working on a couple of things like adding stuff to the site, it takes up the whole of the day. Stuff like travel to and from conventions is already a lot. These days add just more to the total experience of being a store owner.
In other words, heed the ones thinking the job is easy and simple. Well it is, but simple comes in many ways and organizing stuff to get by is dang tiresome. Rewarding, but tiresome.