Conventions are the only official channel for your target buyers to see and touch the product in person at a place they are already going to. It has unique utility in your marketing arsenal. Gates is just right. Listen to your subject matter experts.
I know for a purchase this big there are tons of people who won’t buy online without getting the chance to see it in person first. Even if that means that they order it down the road (like with the next kickstarter) without putting a deposit down at the show.
This. I think information about the conventions they are at is important. That should be on the website. The website needs to be far more functional and needs to communicate with their customers and potential customers. I'd go to a convention to get hands on experience with a prophecy table before buying it. Showcase the furniture and a couple main accessories with a stand that has all the videos show casing the other accessories. Simply it so you can run leaner at conventions.
I think a single retail store is a bad idea..it's one location marketing gaming related items to a small group of people. Conventions gets you a concentration of your customer base in one place from all over the country. Probably a better option than a store.
Caveat - what about pop up shops? I see seasonal shops hiring spaces for a month at a time all the time here in the UK, I'm sure it happens in the US as well. A convention team could do that in the weeks after a convention and potentially shift a lot of gear - but in a city obviously.
@@jonevansauthor Given they're only talking about doing one, even if you did NYC, you're still limited to a mostly local base of gamers, and then reduce that to the ones that, after paying to live in that city, can afford Wormwood products. I just don't see it working well, but I could be wrong. I personally would rather invest in getting to the places where there's a higher concentration of people interested in gaming that could have the income that could afford their stuff. It also puts their stuff in front of people as opposed to seeing it online, so while they may not jump on it right there, it may sway them to make a purchase a month or so down the road.
Doing this in a market they currently don't provide shipping to also makes sense. Send a container full of tables and other stuff to Essen and sell to the EU market with an open pop-up shop as long as they have stock. If it proves to be popular, start sending more containers.@@jonevansauthor
I said exactly that the last time they talked about retail. They already have a niche product, a shop in any given location only gives you a potential chuck of people that could come into your store. 90% of the people that might come to your store from that area wouldn't buy the table. Of the people that might, a bunch probably already know about it or already have it. At least at a convention it is flipped, where 90% of the people there are potential customers.
This is where it gets hard from a business perspective. Their demand is so much higher than the supply they are capable of producing, that it may not matter if you wouldn't have purchased it otherwise at this point in time. It will probably matter at some point in the future once they stabilize supply. Right now it seems like the better option would be to use the 300k to help produce more tables till they reach the current demand without conventions.
@@bradleyhurley6755One thought I had, is if they scale back because demand is to high, they are removing themselves from the public minds and conversations. It will be effective at reducing the demand to better match the supply, but it will probably keep going as they saturate their smaller audience and suddenly they run out of work to do and have to start firing people. It is probably a lot easier to maintain the higher levels of public awareness and demand than it would be to build it back up from a low point.
its not that simple though, what he wants to simplify is to help make more money, and the store idea is just one way he might be able to make more money
Seriously, is Doug on drugs during the episode? Guy is not making complete thoughts. Conventions are not at all a distraction to a business whose focus is in table top gaming which almost entirely revolves around conventions!
@@jessicalawson1417 There's no way opening a retail store for high priced gaming adjacent stuff is going to be profitable in the way he thinks. You're putting yourself in one spot and selling to a small group of a small group that can actually afford their stuff.
Doug is painfully short sighted. Cons add brand exposure. A Chief Marketing Officer would understand that. Listen to Gates. You need to have a presence, but you don’t need to go over the top. Doug is going to focus on MGT production only and solve that problem while demand slowly erodes because no one knows who Wyrmwood is.
He's not wrong in that their online stuff with insta and tiktok is all the brand exposure they could ever need though. What he is wrong about is not listening to Ian (and Im sure Gates has the same idea but was trying to use the business case casue thats what Doug was prepared to listen to in that moment) the intangibles of being front and center in the gaming community are huge. I would never trust a company doing gaming accessories that don't go to gaming events and most peopleI know wouldnt either. If they want to pivot to 'normie' furniture like theyve been doing then thats entirely okay but they shouldnt expect gamers to keep caring/brand loyalty to stay
I think the laser focus on MGT (to the exclusion of all else) is very short sighted and potentially risky. Accessories used to be the whole company and now it's sidelined as "legacy". Doug already identified one of their biggest threats in a video the other week; IKEA If IKEA put together a decent "gaming table" offering they will steal the lower end of the market almost entirely. Quality won't be nearly the same but it'll available locally(ish) in quantity across basically the whole of North America and Europe. "IKEA Hacks" types would be all over it with mods off the bat and I reckon it would generate a fair bit of hype. It's not really the Wyrmwood target market but they'd probably forced into making that shift towards the high end that's been discussed. If the company is dependant on a single product then it feels really vulnerable to shifts in that market.
Gates is right, just slim down to furniture at the three biggest shows. Don't let your competitors (Allplay, Rathskellers, etc.) be there getting customer attention without you
I would still bring accessories, but I would set up a display and not try to sell them. Direct people to the website instead. Then the products and the website get exposure without the overhead.
@@michaelbaker2718 I know personally if I go to a convention I would be wanting to buy it there, and if I can't I'm probably buying from a competitor who can sell me the item then and there. The accessories for the table might make sense to have, but the RPG accessories wouldn't unless you had the stock to sell them.
That's a good point about competitors. To some people they'll feel like "Oh, these must be the best options because they're here". Plus the fact that people can handle the products and spread the word. If someone needs a new table, chances are they'll just search "table" in google or w/e and not think about a gaming table that could serve the same purpose. But if they see it and go "ohhh. I didn't think about that". How many people would just remember the idea and wait to go home and do research? lol
@@michaelbaker2718 I disagree. Variation in wood grain makes cons the perfect place to buy accessories and legacy. There you can really know that you love the look of the pieces you're getting.
@@shanwilson3605 Good point. Though if that's the case, Doug's suggestion of a storefront would probably be better, though they'd need to find the right location.
Speaking as someone who discovered wyrmwood through pax East years and years ago, I can say that being able to see and touch a mgt first hand was the main reason I ended up buying one.
Same for me. I know a couple of people who ended up buying a LOT of Wyrmwood stuff (for us that's three MGTs plus other stuff) after finding them in Essen a couple of years ago. I would've never spent that kind of money without having a closer look at some of their products; even though it only was a prophecy or two and dice towers etc on display I believe you cannot judge the success of conventions by just looking at the revenue/cost numbers. The marketing imho by far outweighs the actual revenue generated and brings in more money down the line
Yeah I'm waiting to hopefully see a table in person this year at pax before I make the final decision to buy one. I really dislike the table configuration on the website as it stands and I don't think it accurately displaces the tables well enough
@@RexIT362 The table configuration pictures on the website do not do the tables justice. I think I've had my table almost two years now - every time I take my tablecloth off is like love at first sight again.
I’ve been a convention pitch salesman for nearly 20 years. I’d be willing to bet that a large percent of the prophecy sales come from them. The hands on, direct access to ask questions is huge if handled properly. If you want to get off the kickstarter dependency, maintaining and reinforcing your cons is a strong tool. The key is setting the shows up for success: having your passionate employees work it helps, but you really need people who can sell. You need to empower them with a reason to make someone want to come to the show for you. Consider a seperate priority queue for furniture sold at shows, it ultimately won’t be a huge quantity, but at a higher margin could justify the weekend shifts you want. If bringing all the accessories is a burden bring just enough to display at a station or two and then have free/cheap shipping for online orders placed at the show.
Yes, I’ve seen a few stands at conventions having convention deals for ordering on their website after/during the fact. Saves them taking loads of stock behind sample pieces, but they still get sales. And that way they’ll be able to track sales influenced by convention attendance too, which as Ian was saying is currently an unknown, because there’ll certainly be people who see something at a con, not have the money at the time and save up to order later having seen that it’s worth it in person (or they sold out of a certain skew in person and this have to order online).
Exactly. Not being able to convert hourly employees to salary to get around overtime laws is a safeguard against the exact type of pay arbitrage that was being suggested. If any of it is actually bad law, it is the weak enforcement of employee status on people improperly classified as contractors. Wyrmwood could make the case for convention workers, but, for UPS and Uber, the contractors are the core business and the companies control too much of the contractors' work process.
And Doug himself is being a dumbass. The law is there so he can't make employees who are working 40 hours a week work 60 at a convention and not get compensated. It's great his management is willing to do it, his labor should absolutely not be asked to do that without compensation. It just comes down to Doug not wanting to pay people. Why not keep them hourly, let them work 60 hours at the con, then give them the next week off? I'd guess it's because he doesn't want to pay people the doubletime they deserve when they work a 14 hour day.
@@thomdenick Doug also assumes every law should be written for his particular niche business. "How silly is it that I can't pay my hourly employees a flat fee for a convention and give them the week off" Well Doug because most businesses aren't boutique furniture manufacturers. suck it up and pay the overtime 6 times a year for 6 people.
I find it kind of weird that a company that wants to make such niche products for specific people seems so against going to the places where the very people they'd be selling to would be able to actually interact with the products. Opening a single store is great and all, but that's a limited location. Cons are all over the country, and are also spectacular for folks to see, interact with, and learn about things they maybe didn't know before or had been on the fence on.
Yeah exactly. A single store is the opposite of what Wyrmwood needs. An expensive niche products needs to go TO its customers, needs to seek them out, and marketing TO them. Few people are going to travel to visit a Wyrmwood store, so you're really limiting yourself in that way. Put your products in places with a really high concentration of your target audience: conventions and local game stores. They should offer discounts to FLGS that have play spaces so that gamers who come in to buy or play can experience the table, use it, and say "yes I want one."
At its core, marketing is a very simple concept: getting the right message in front of the right people at the right time. Wyrmwood has a luxury product aimed at a very specific niche group and conventions are the perfect vehicle to get in front of that core audience. The fact that Doug doesn't understand this is concerning. The fact that Doug places more value on retail is even more concerning. Might want to rethink hiring a Director of Marketing, because Doug clearly doesn't get it.
If it’s between conventions and a store to me, that’s a no-brainer to do the conventions because conventions are a traveling store where thousands of people who are in the market for gaming supplies are present.
Yeah, a store is limited to foot traffic in a single location, and people who already know the company. That's a pretty limited potential customer base
@@SirGambitRocks Throughout my life, the amount of single location specialist & hobby stores I've seen come and go within the span of 12 months is staggering. Especially gaming related. On the other hand, I've seen people who literally live off of conventions and festivals. It's their full time job to make stuff in between those events, and then sell them at those events. As a company with a specialist product, if you want to show off your product you need to be where your customers are, because people are not going to drive for 6 hours across the country just to see a table, but they sure as shit will drive for 6 hours across the country to attend a convention.
@B3RyL importantly their not just a specialty niche product but one that is has a pretty finite limit on how many times a single customer will buy their product, not many people are going to buy more than 1-2 nice dice towers, even less are going to buy more than one table
Looking at conventions as a waste because of production constraints is very short-sighted. Like Ian said, "networking" has an unbelievable impact on customer retention and new customer interactions.
Doug is the type of guy that will say outrageous shit without any data to back it up and then be right about 10% of the time, feel great about it, and then dismiss being wrong 90% of the time to him just being "rowdy" and "unfiltered" instead of being ignorant and just plain wrong.
Conventions are extremely important for brand recognition. I first learned about Wyrmwood from seeing you at conventions. Honestly, I barely even checked out the booth. But a while later, after a different con a friend was super excited to have one of your products, and I was like, oh yeah I remember that brand. And then later still I started watching Wyrmlife, because again, I remembered it from a convention. Y'all have word of mouth and prestige partly because of those conventions and IRL conversations about quality. I don't run a business, but I think you should run them even if it's at a small loss.
I have been to multiple (albiet smaller) cons and while Wyrmwood wasn't there, the non-table products were; they were simply being ripped off by random people. Dice towers, master vaults, HexyTime products, all of it. Your customers are at cons, they just can't buy from you so they buy from the people who are selling them. Even my son, who was 11 at the time, went "Hey, those are Wyrmwood dice towers! Can we get one?"
This is a silly debate. Gates is right. As presented conventions are, or are very nearly cost neutral. So the 300k does not matter because the business they bring in offsets the cost. That means leaving conventions is only negatives. You stop interacting with your most ardent customer base, stop getting the goodwill of being 'in the scene', lose all the advertisement of the booths, lose the ability for people to touch and feel the object they want to purchase. Tbh moving on from conventions is a bad idea.
If Doug can't understand the value of brand awareness, then that is testament to a desperate need to get someone with formal marketing experience. Like others, if it wasn't for a convention , I wouldn't have put much interest in Wyrmwood. The accessories are what lure in the majority of the customers. After they purchase or touch the accessories they understand better the value and quality of your product. At that point, they then pivot to looking at tables.
"We don't know how they perform" perhaps having a CMO could help. Doug's hyper-focus on tables with "drop everything else"-attitude in my opinion leads down the keystone pathway but with a market that can be saturated quite easily. Becoming a niche furniture company that lives off its mailing list till nobody hears of the brand.
sounds like gates says: "Give me 200k a year. i'll make you 400k a year in revenue. we will only sell furniture with a 5-6 man team on the 3 big conventions. and doug is like "hmm i don't know if i like money all that much..."
I agree with Gates on this one. With my experience in live events, your ability to get face to face with customers and physically strengthen your brand. With a store front, you have a single location and market you're tapping into. Wyrmwood is already a national brand, so you're only hurting yourself by not getting that face to face interaction. I would love to assist if Gates needs help.
I am an MGT buyer, now have tons of wyrmwood stuff. It was at GenCon that we put our hands on Wyrmwood products (pre-MGT) and saw the prophecy which was out of our range. Seeing it and touching it versus the other table sellers at GenCon my wife and i knew that there was no substitute for what Wyrmwood was doing.
Gates is probably right. People need to see and touch the tables. Accessories are a much easier thing to risk money on buying blind. Showing up at conventions makes Wyrmwood *the* gaming furniture company.
A brick and mortar store for you guys makes about as much sense as trying to have a snowball fight in the Sahara in summer. The amount of foot traffic a static storefront would receive over the course of a year would likely be laughable compared to how many people pass by a booth at any given con. People will travel thousands of miles to go to a con, but they may not even be willing to drive 100 to go to a store. I would say keeping those 3 big conventions is a definite must, but maybe add 1 or 2 more as well. Don't keep those as fixed locations though. Rotate through different conventions year to year so you're hitting markets you've yet to come in contact with. Of course with more markets being reached you'll have even higher demand and as such will require even higher throughput than you currently need but don't have. And for that you need to finally bite the bullet and get your own shop built that can handle it.
I had been a wyrmling for a few years before I ever ran into your booth at a convention, it cemented the quality difference between you and some of the other (at the time I could only afford accessories) tabletop shops like Elderwood Academy and others. Visually from online, I would have said that "they are all the same", "it doesn't matter that much, it's more about the style or color you like" and then I went over to the booth and got to touch and open dice vaults. The difference in quality was shocking. I immediately started saving to order from you guys. I bought my wife a purple heart dice vault and now proudly own a Hex table. Without that physical element, I don't know that I would have recognized that wrymwood was worth the price. And rather than trying to herd the Internet to your site, you already have a target audience of both : hardcore gamers, people with more than average money that attend the cons. My vote is to potentially cut back and only do a few cons per year. Pax, Gen Con , and Dragoncon
I’m onboard with Ian on this! Conventions, even with slim profits, are fantastic marketing! Intangibles are hard to look at and justify, but every time I go to a PAX or GenCon, I’m on Wyrmwood’s site later that week thinking about what I wanna get next.
Doug's ideas in this, not backed by data. Shows were profitable at just an attendance THAT DAY minimum. What isn't tracked is the delayed data on who sees a table there and buys one later. The trailing data would most likely prove a value that well exceedes it. Marketing cost at a place that is "the subject expert" type conventions here... is worth the dollars. The accessories are seeds to buy these tables. If my vault feels good, if my tower then feels good... I can take that quality item because "maybe I cant afford it today, I can afford xxx" and then when i'm fiscally capable... This agggressive attempt to drop the NERD and Gaming customers here is surprising.
Yeah, the standing desk stuff should have been a wake up call. The general public isn't that interested in buying general furniture products form Wyrmwood. Wyrmwood is (currently at least) a wooden gaming accessories company. Dropping the nerd / gaming focus feels like it'll go poorly for them.
Conventions are IRL social media ads. People see your booth, they see your products. The awareness alone over the past 3 years at conventions may be the reason you are so out on table sales. Now that you've grown to a point where you're so far behind on production, it does kind of makes sense to shift convention $$ into production and shrink your convention costs. You'd be crazy to not do pax east given its proximity to you. Other than that, i'd be holding out for the biggest conventions and look for ways to reduce its total cost each year.
I found Wyrmwood at PAX West. I would have no clue what a MGT is or Modular desk is without you being there. Now after touching and feeling i know i want it all. Conventions have made me a future furniture customer. That said I've only bought accessories at Conventions so far.
Yeah but they miss this point entirely. You've bought accessories so you're a built in fan, a customer, a walking gaming advertisement, and if they keep you loyal, a future furniture customer. That's key.
I work full time as the operations director of a few conventions (7000 people). Gates' reasoning is sound and spot on. Ive also been to your booth 4 or 5 times at other shows. Generally speaking, the two largest expenses for exhibitors at conventions are the weight of what you bring and labor. Cut your accessories brought, (maybe make your wood booth a little lighter) and your savings will compound.
I will say that a video someone recorded of Doug at a convention showing off the GM screen is what turned me on to Wyrmwood. They do get the word out about the company.
If your website was better, having a few kiosks at a convention to order furniture would probably convert a bunch more people as well. Getting people to see something cool and allowing them to order immediately is much better than showing them something and telling them to go to the website on their own time after they've forgotten.
I think gates has a point worth exploring. If only one of the conventions was able to sell most of what was spent on 9 conventions. Might be worth keeping.
I think no longer doing conventions is a mistake, it’s a great opportunity for marketing and customer interactions. It gives people a chance to have hands on time with the product and really see the quality. I also think no longer selling accessories at conventions would be a mistake. Speaking from experience, there’s something about being at a convention that leads to impulse purchases. I picked up one of your dice towers and dice trays last year at Unplugged. I’d been looking at them for a while, but something about being at a convention and seeing them in person made me finally make the purchase.
Doing the big 3 makes sense. Between Ian’s point about intangibles & Bri’s point about customer interface, it’s good to have Wyrmwood out there in the world. But yes, do everything you can to reduce cost. If it’s just Gates & 1-2 other salaried employees, hire contractors for the rest.
In a convention you are not only selling products, you are also selling your brand. Arguably, with good enough marketing, you don't need conventions to do that, but it is a thing to consider. If anything, it may be beneficial to attend the big ones at least, so people know you exist and are in good standing.
Personally, I always stopped by the Wyrmwood booth to impulse shop accessories because I riding the convention high and want to expand my gaming setup. I was disappointed when Wyrmwood decided to stop coming to Dragon Con. That’s my main convention.
Doug's inability to be able to see beyond his company is concerning. While they appear to want to work with employees and agree to a work/life balance for this very limit time period for conventions, he can't seem to recognize how other employers would abuse their employees and try to make them all salary and never pay overtime. Maybe he should do a little research on labor history to see why laws were created in the first place.
Yes, that is funny. He doesn't get that just because he's not an outright sociopath, that the lessons of the Victorian era don't show that many bosses are exactly that. But it's not uncommon in Americans, because so few of them have travelled to Europe and other places which are more advanced. They often think a masochistic level of self flagellation is not only the norm for employees but to be positively encouraged. As has been said by several people there on that topic, pay is not the only thing people value, work life balance and how they're treated really matters and productivity often goes up with fewer working hours.
Yes! Wyrmwood products are a lot easier sell when you get to physically interact with them. Online, for someone who doesn't know Wyrmwood, it's super hard to tell if a product just looks nice in photos but is crap in person, or is actually high quality. Put your products physically in front of your customers, the higher the concentration of customers (conventions, local game stores, etc) the better.
Imagine being able to go into your LGS and interact with an MGT or Prophecy(or maybe smaller analogs of them), all the various accessories, and being able to order right there in store.
It wasn't through wyrmwood because they hate the UK buttttt (wanted a MGT so bad), I ended up getting my gaming table because I could physically see and touch the thing at a convention I went to. I probably wouldn't of pulled the trigger if I was just looking online and seeing just pictures of the table that's going to cost me a fair penny Its like a car showroom, you have to see the thing that's going to cost a good % of a years salary to purchase then just ordering it via some intangible pictures on a website
I think seeing a table and accesories in use, as a whole system in person is better marketing than having to guess the quality from pictures and videos. Maybe you need a dedicated team of convention workers to go to conventions and work for commisions from sales at cons.
Brand loyalty has value, and getting to touch the product got me when I was at a gencon that when you offered modular gaming table sold me on backing it with extra
Doug "I spend 0 dollars on marketing": Conventions are too expensive! We can't do them and we spent 300k on them o,.,o. I dunno, I'm starting to feel that wyrmwood spends a lot of money on marketing.... lol
Yeah... Feels like Doug's definition of 'marketing' is strictly things like paid ads in search / publications / video platforms. That he doesn't count things like Wyrmlife, Conventions, etc. is odd.
These Geek and Nerds Who really want your tables and accessories . Save $$$$ to go and spend at conventions. Also if you do not represent some one else will fill the table spot. Option. What about. just doing accessories and advertising tables.
Bobby on the floor is the twist we never saw coming. I mean, y'all could ditch the conventions and all the nerd shit and the gaming shit and just go make regular furniture. That could be profitable. Regular chairs and tables and such. That could be the direction that Wyrmwood goes into. Or you could keep marketing towards nerd shit. Your choice. Maybe the nerd market will still be there later on after you've dropped them because you decided to focus on being "production constrained." Or maybe not. Once you finally kick all the tables out, you might find that your entire market has evaporated, because you stopped marketing to them. Then what? Close the doors? Alternately, you could pick which conventions are worth your time and do a targeted/limited number of those. But you can't not do conventions and still market to nerds at the same time. Look at bonus pay: drop a conventioneer to 0 hours on wage, but they get a bonus $ amount to do the convention. They do it, they get paid, everything's legal.
I got interested in you guys cuz of seeing you at conventions. I had touched and experienced a prophecy so when you launched MGT I had already decided I trusted your quality. I might have not pledged if I didn't already know your brand.
Brie and Matt always dropping wisdom. It seems wild to me you would choose a single retail store over conventions where you get tons of impressions on your target audience not just on the product but on the people and the brand.
I would love to see Wyrmwood booth on millionaire row at either Miami or Ft Lauderdale boat show. Every yacht owner I know would love a Prophecy either in their homes or on their boats or both if they see them in person.
Yup. And if you took that hexagonal uber one they were talking about the other day to such a place, you could find even more whales to buy it. The number of extremely wealthy people in Hollywood and Silicon Valley who play board games and are roleplayers is pretty huge. Their dismissal of it because the current design is more complicated is nonsensical. Firstly come up with a better design, secondly put the price up.
Weighing between the two, a store or a convention, I would pick a convention. Conventions will get your name out to a wider area, you don't have to take all the products either, just some sheets of "here's what else we offer!" and various woods, and direct them to the website. A store not only you have startup costs, but maintenance and bills to keep the lights on, and you'll be stuck for that one space. Loving Bri's Harley-Quinn style jeans!
Think of conventions as an arm of your marketing budget, NOT necessarily a meaningful sales channel. People will want to physically see and touch furniture before sending over five thousand dollars on it. Brand awareness and physical experience of the product are huge factors. Let Gates do this, absolutely.
I learned about Wyrmwood seeing them at Gen Con many many years ago when Doug was still going to them. Having the ability for your customer base to see your product first hand, and often times next to your competitor is huge. While I usually don't buy anything at the convention, I now watch Wyrmwood on a daily basis, I have purchased many accessories, and we have purchased 3 modular gaming tables; a lilput, a coffee table, and a medium size dining table. We also have plans to buy another lilput when the dog bed version eventually releases. We are even looking at possibly purchasing 2 of the modular gaming desks in the future as well. It's hard to say if we would have ever purchased a Wyrmwood product if it wasn't for us seeing Wyrmwood live in person at a convention.
PAX Unplugged was my introduction to you guys. I've now purchased an MGT, DM Screen, Dice Tower, Hex Trays, Sit/Stand, Poker Set, and a few others. I would have never purchased anything that large without actually seeing the product in person, and the accessories wouldn't have given me enough confidence to extend to the MGT, Sit/Stand or Poker set.
You know how good your furniture is because you're seeing it day in and day out- your average non-Wyrmling on social media could just be thinking to themselves "That seems cool, but who knows how this measures up to reality" but they follow anyway. Seeing and experiencing a table in person is your opportunity to convince a wide swath of people from other parts of the country that the quality is there and that the wait will be worth it, and that is an experience that they will take with them for many years into the future. This is big picture sales- it's about the connections you make not the immediate revenue.
The exempt and nonexempt discussion as an engineering project manager is always fun. I love being forced to get things done and not get paid for it, while others are taking in OT and in some case time and a half. FML, I feel Doug’s frustration but from a different angle.
I have been to GenCon multiple years. Never bought Wyrmwood there but I looked at things in the booth. Went home and bought stuff (furniture, vaults, dice towers, etc) only after seeing it in person. Conventions is where people can see the premium quality and then are more willing to pay a premium price.
If the conventions are really that big of a concern...still have a presence at the conventions and just downsize the booth - booth prices, for the trade shows I've been a part of, go down SIGNIFICANTLY when you aren't occupying such a large space
Cons are such a good way to keep in touch with customers and show off product. I remember going to my first gen con and spotting the Wyrmwood stall. We had just gotten our modular table and it was amazing to see all of the new attachments at the con. My husband and I spent a good 30 minutes talking to other customers, employees, and looking and the vaults and dice offered. It was truly a remarkable experience, and I would be a little devastated not getting to have that experience ever again.
The whole point of a physical store is so people can see and touch this furniture. That's what conventions do. You're just striking more of your customer base there.
I didn't know what Wyrmwood was until I saw you at GenCon. Told my friends and family about it after. 3 years later, 4 friends have modular game tables, and my parents bought me one.
A million percent on team Gates - went to my first GenCon this year, and the amount of people looking at the furniture that had no idea what they were, what features they have, etc; It's so unfair to say conventions don't bring in sales when MGT and accessories couldn't even be ordered at convention. With the move to get those more available in the moment and capturing a real-time sale you're just going to see cons do better and solve for the issue that's been discussed multiple times that they want to reach more people who don't know about the tables or the company at a single convention that is bringing in people from all over (and not just 1 store front location in the middle of f-all Eastern US)
I told my brother that there's this fancy table I saw online and that I want to buy one once I can. And he was like "oh I think that's the table my best friend told me about". I live in Germany. Wyrmwood was in Essen for a convention a few years back and his friend saw the table there. So yes, those conventions do generate visibility and recognition. Whether that's worth this much money, I don't know. I'm not a business person ^^
When I worked as an engineer at an automotive plant we had to spend at least 2 weeks working different jobs on the floor every year so we knew the processes better and could design processes that were better for the manufacturing employees to operate. Good to see you guys initiating a similar policy since I think it encourages more empathy for all of the employees.
You have no Idea how many people buy a table after they have seen it at one of these conventions. What I would do is every convention do a giveaway, have people put their email address into a drawing for some piece of wyrmwood gear. Then you could use those emails to track how long after a convention you see orders from someone that entered their email address. Have the sales staff track how many customer interactions they have too. You could probably extrapolate reasonably well, how many of the interactions entered the drawing, and based on conversion rate of the drawing entrances, how many sales you got from people that interacted at the booth, but didn't enter the drawing.
Just from my own perspective. I only learned about Wyrmwood through Pax East. There's not telling when I might have discovered you if not for that initial interaction, and this point I've probably spent over $15k on Wyrmwood products. Should also note that some of your competitors will still be there, so all the potential customers you would have picked up there would be going to them instead. Could also add that if you're at a convention, you should probably still sell accessories, mainly dice vault/trays. The tabletop scene at conventions is only getting bigger, and by selling dice trays/vaults/towers there, you're getting people who will be immediately using your products and showing off to others.
Conventions are where your people are. Your marketing team *should* take ownership of this. Even if it was losing money it would be worth it as marketing.
I’ll echo others that at least some conventions is necessary. Don’t underestimate the value of goodwill and brand loyalty in the densely populated, EAGER TO SPEND atmosphere of a convention center.
Obviously they should do what’s best for the business but I would never have the relationship to wyrmwood products that I do if it wasn’t for conventions. As an annual gencon attendee, being able to see the products in person, choose between grains, being able to touch, feel, (and smell 😅) is an experience that isn’t replicated with an online shop. I purposefully skipped the MGT 2.0 kickstarter and waited till gencon to order my table so I could again see in person. From a community perspective it would feel like a mistake to abandon this
I bought my prophecy, from Gates, at PAX U this year. He and the Wyrmwood staff were kind and awesome. The ONE thing I overheard from those browsing the booth the most while I was there purchasing was "One day I will own one of these tables" and you believed it. A couple of years ago I said the same thing, and now I do. Sitting at, touching, and realizing the dream of owning nice furniture doesn't happen on a website, it happens when a butt is in a seat saying "Yeah, this is really nice." And then its giving something for someone to dream about and work to own. Nuking that for 300k it returns strikes me as incredibly myopic. Where would Wyrmwood even be without GenCon's and PAX's of the past? Why does a sunk cost of 300k invalidate the future?
Prophecy owner here. Found you guys at C2E2 way back and wouldnt have even considered spending 5 figures on furniture before that (or join your ecosystem). Listen to Gates.
The eyes on your products at conventions are worth a lot more than the views you get via social media and mailing lists. Seeing the product in person has greater value than just seeing it on a site.
As a member of a team who are all salaried and expected to work sometimes ridiculous hours with no consideration for weekly average, overtime, or holidays; that law exists for a reason and in fact, it doesn't go far enough.
Cons do so SO much more than sell product! Nintendo doesn't need the marketing or the sales of going to Pax or ComicCon but they do to reward their fans (intangible benefit). Wyrmwood certainly has a fan base and having hands-on time with products and celebrities from wyrmlife is a reward to the community. Big companies go to cons because merely having a booth can be a billboard to thousands of people, leading to future impressions (intangible benefit). In any industry cons, having a booth at all is a requirement to show you're still part of the industry. If a competitor has a booth and you don't, you're not in the equation. For many companies, going to cons is the minimum cost to stay relevant in the marketplace. Cons are worth it and sales from cons are just gravy
