The first day of GenCon is like Black Friday. It's the kickoff to a big weekend. As a local store we can make some minor adjustments as we go...but in general...the booth and the strategy "is what it is."
I'm proud of the work the team did this year. We have over 1,500 SKUs represented and have a strong showing of what we offer. Our goal was to create a premium LGS experience in a 20x10 booth...and I think we accomplished that.
And our sales from day one proved it! We expected a slightly bigger crowd this year, but our booth size was halved. So, we didn't really know what to expect, but knew that day one would tell us. We sold a lot of Eclipse. We sold a lot of long-tail games. But, oddly, we sold almost zero Magic or Pokemon TCG. I'd hypothesize that there are other booths that are focused exclusively on TCG so maybe folks are shopping there? Also, our booth is the farthest distance from the TCG play space, whereas last year we were 50 feet away. Anywho...we'll remove some TCG in favor of other items that are selling. All in all, today was great in the hall.
After the hall closed, we headed to our Mass Ave store for an Old School Magic Tournament. Players were slinging cards like Black Lotus, Moxes, Juzam Djinn, The Abyss, Library of Alexandria and more.
What a fun way to finish the first day of GenCon. Here's to three more days of adventure!