Daniel McAbee of The Tangled Web in Spartanburg, South Carolina saw our coverage of the attendance at Wizard World Chicago (see 'Wizard World Chicago Attracts 56k'), and shares his view of the competition between exhibitors and dealers:

 

Before reading the published attendance for WWCH05, I would have bet that this year's attendance was down.  Sure, sales at the show were healthy and about as good as in past years, but traffic in the dealer area seemed much lighter than in previous years.  I could actually see up and down the aisles at noon on Saturday for the first time in many years.  I suppose that the change in traffic patterns is an indication of where the people are spending more of their time (and money!) - in the exhibitor areas.

 

Call me old fashioned, but I remember when exhibitors did just that - they exhibited their products, but they didn't sell.  Now, with each passing year, more and more exhibitors are actually vendors at the show; which makes them in some respects, my competition.  Three years ago, I was one of only a couple of dealers who had almost an entire 10' x 10' booth section set up with manga.  I did tons of business in my manga section and so the following year, I brought much more manga to help satisfy demand.  Imagine my surprise at seeing Tokyopop there, in a 50' x 50' booth, selling their own manga - 'Buy 3 and get the 4th Free' (or some such sale that amounted to 25% off).  This meant that not only had my main publisher of manga set up a competing area to sell their product, but they were actually discounting it as well.  I took no manga to WWCH this year because of this conflicting interest.

 

Every year that passes, exhibitors seem to find more ways to get the money out of the pockets of the ticket-holders before they even get to the dealer area.  Convention exclusives have become much more prevalent than in previous years and, according to my WWCH program, there were over 25 exclusive products listed (and about 20 more that I can remember that weren't listed).  The average price of these exclusives was about $15 each, so a person who wanted all of the exclusives would be spending about $675 on them.  That is, if they can even buy them...

 

The newest trend is to make the con exclusives SO hard to get that you have to keep going back to the vendor's booth each day to try again.  At Mattel's booths (2 years running) you have to pull a ticket and then take the ticket to the counter to see if you have a winning ticket.  Do you know what happens when you DO have a winning ticket?  You win a chance to buy the exclusive thing.  You don't even win a figure; you still have to buy it!  (The marketing guy who came up with that idea should have been a lawyer.)  By the end of the show, they just let everyone 'win' and go buy a figure; they just want to keep up the facade of the item being 'super-rare' (Mattel had 9 different possible Catwoman figures and 2 different Batman figures that you could 'win' for $20 each this year).  Don't even get me started on WizKids and their Galactus (2004 exclusive) and Phoenix (2005 exclusive) figures.  'Thanks, Mr. Retailer, for stocking, selling, and running organized WizKids tournaments for our games!  No, you can't have one, Mr. Retailer (and business partner), you can't even buy one.  Now run along and let daddy get back to counting his money!'

 

What happens to the lowly dealer on many (but not all) of these 'exclusives?'  We get left out in the cold because we can't spend the required time it takes to jump through all the hoops for the exclusives.  I had several customers ask me to bring back the King Randor He-Man figure and the Super Grover Muppets figure, but both were either sold out or just not accessible to me because of the long lines.  I don't really expect any special treatment or 'free' things just for being a dealer at the show, but some accessibility to these items would be a good step in the right direction.  OK, now back to productive things...

 

And now for the good stuff on WWCH:

I have set up as a retailer in Chicago for the last 7 years and have watched the show grow each and every year.  Despite its rapid growth, the show has remained one of the best organized and most efficiently run shows that I attend each year.  Easy, convenient load-ins and friendly convention center staff are not the norm at many shows but are a staple at WWCH each year.  The WWCH staff that I have dealt with (Brenda, Brent, Scott & Butch) has always been quick to respond and help out in any way they could.  I tip my hat to the entire crew for the effort that they put into the show each and every year and I look forward to seeing them in 2006.
 
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