Teresa Moran, 22 years in business selling comics in the same spot, of Acadiana Comics & Collectibles in Lafayette,
Hats off to all of you guys and gals who worked to make FCBD happen worldwide!
We took a risk this year to see if FCBD could stand alone without the usual big movie theme party, costume contests, and passing out free issues at the local theater...and guess what! We surpassed the previous years of FCBD!
We just decided to have an Open House during regular store hours from 9 to 8 p.m. We put out a long table with the free comics, got a platter of chocolate chip cookies from our Albertson's bakery close by, cups and plenty of ice water, and every half hour or so, or when there were new people in the store, we would walk around with a big orange plastic bowl with tiny bits of paper with numbers on them and let people draw one from the bowl. Their number would correspond to prizes that we already had marked with the numbers. Most of the prizes were the little Wolverine HeroClix figures that we ordered in bulk from Diamond made especially for FCBD. Mixed into the mix, we had some small action figure toys that my husband had picked up during the year, on sale at Toys 'R Us, Walmart and Target.
We sent out news releases four weeks ahead to all of the local and surrounding area newspapers and TV stations. Then we just asked God for His help. We were shocked when the local newspaper put a picture and article on the front page of the Friday paper just before the Saturday event! It really pulled people in. Also, one of the local TV station's newscasters plugged us on the six o'clock news saying that we stayed open until eight and that people still had time to go out and get a free comic.
Our customers had been helping advertise weeks before too. They put up fliers in various places; I gave them free hats and t-shirts with the FCBD info on them that we ordered from Diamond to wear around as walking advertisements.
I did order a big banner from the company Diamond recommended and hung it out front a week or two before the event. With all of these kinds of advertisements, it brought in a lot of people and they did spend money.
Because it was an open house all day, we had time to chat with the people who flowed through. It was so much easier on everyone and enjoyable and we actually did more sales than FCBD the year before!
I did go ahead and order some extra X-Men/Runaways FCBD comics to give to the theater, with our store stamp on it, to hand out to people going in to see X-Men 3 this Friday. Hopefully, that will do some good for our store.
The only thing my helper who manned the FCBD table suggested was that DC do a better job next year on their selection for FCBD. They really did not put forth any effort and their offering was a comic on something that was already going for some time. Marvel did a wonderful job with their offering, and so did all of the others. DC is much better than that and we hope they will pay more attention next year.
I forgot to mention that we did purchase the video promo ad from Diamond and had a showing on a local station. We really didn't get much from that but it may have been because it's a small local station. We chose them because a lot of people from that station have been buying comics here for years and we just wanted to return the favor.
