Sharpening the Sword is a regular column by retailer John Riley of Grasshopper's Comics, a 1300 square foot comic and game store in
I'd like to start off by saying thanks to all the people who have either publicly or privately expressed their support for 'A Gathering of Heroes,' especially Wizard, which was the first organization to publicly endorse the idea.
In my last column I stood on my pedestal and made my emotional plea for why an industry-wide charity event is not only the right thing to do, but also ultimately good for the industry. I held off writing this follow up article until we had finished our own charity event this past Saturday so I could include our experiences.
Since writing that column I've spoken with many people in the industry and discussed operations difficulties and other issues and boiled it down to what I feel is a realistic starting point. So let's start with what I feel is an achievable objective in 2007:
Name: 'A Gathering of Heroes' (tentative name)
Date: Late November-Early December 2007
Purpose: To raise money for Make-A-Wish and local children's charities
Goal: To unite 100 Retailers and 100 Creators/Manufacturers/Publishers in an industry-wide event featuring in-store events and an online auction
I'm sure that when I wrote about what 4,000 stores could achieve last column there were many people reading saying, 'We can barely get half the stores in the country to participate in FCBD, an event meant to help retailers! How are we going to get this off the ground?' Well, I think a starting point of engaging 100 retailers is a very doable goal. That's only one in 40 retailers participating, and when you take out the few who have already contacted me, we need only 1 in about 50 of the remaining retailers to reach that goal.
Each retailer would participate by running one in-store event of their choice. It could be a party/charity raffle like we run, a special tournament, an overnight 'gamer lock-in' or anything they could think of. The objective would be for each store to raise just $100 to go toward the cause. This format would allow each store to play to their particular strengths, eliminate the infrastructure needs of running a larger overall auction, and allow each retailer to benefit from operating under the larger 'Gathering of Heroes' banner. Each retailer could choose to split the money raised between the national charity and local charities.
I can easily envision a retailer having an 'overnight gamer lock-in'. You could charge $25 to have gamers participate in an all-night tournament, mega-battle, or some other crazy event. Five dollars per participant could go to pizza, soda, and bagels, leaving $10 to go toward Make-A-Wish, and $10 for a local charity. In this way, a retailer would only need ten participants to raise the $100, or five participants if they didn't split it with another charity.
Creators, publishers, and manufacturers would simply contribute one item to a large 'Gathering of Heroes' Charity Auction. Like I said previously, these could be anything ranging from a sketch to an artist proof statue, a guest appearance in a comic book to a professionally painted miniature. The idea here is for each entity to provide one unique item that is actually inexpensive to them, but highly valued to collectors. Can you imagine how much a graded signed set of Civil War variant covers would go for?
With only 100 items being up for auction we sidestep the logistical issues of running a massive auction, and we could easily post and process that many auctions in a timely manner. Since each store would be responsible for its own event, each retailer could just forward one check made out to Make-A-Wish, which we would collect and forward on behalf of the industry, again sidestepping another logistical problem.
Our industry is extremely efficient at disseminating information. Wizard has already publicly committed to the idea and can run articles on the events, items up for auction, and the stories behind them. I'm sure the major online sites would also be happy to run articles on it, list the items for auction, and generally publicize it as well. Of course we'll have a Website set up to direct everyone to participating stores and their exciting events.
As I said before, I waited until we had finished our charity event before writing this. I'm glad to say that our 3rd Annual Charity Raffle raised $4,800 for our local children's charity. It's the most we raised so far and it was an excellent event. But I understand Mark Craddock's frustration with trying to run such an event, so I thought I'd briefly describe ours.
Each year we basically throw a big party, which we combine with our annual club member sale. For the past few years we've gone all out, and brought in hot food (which my wife cooks), heroes, soda, chips, and my wife is nice enough to spend two days baking cookies, which are very popular! We have a huge crowd and everyone has a great time.
For our raffle we start by putting up a few prizes, such as a big comic, a few statues, etc. We usually ask a few publishers and manufacturers for a few freebies like variant covers, which DC and Diamond have been kind enough to provide. Games Workshop and Battlefront have also been very supportive. And then, believe it or not, we ask our customers to donate prizes. We usually get so many that at some point we have to tell them to stop bringing them in! People then purchase tickets and we have a grand old time giving it all away during the party. It's a great atmosphere, and we've had people winning items and returning them to be included next year, as well as giving their winning tickets away to kids, or other people who haven't won yet. This year we had over 100 items in the prize pool and it took well over an hour to give it all away. Like Mark Craddock, we had trouble getting people to talk to us (not one artist supported us this year) so we took it upon ourselves to come up with our own prizes. It isn't easy, and there are people who will simply not respond, but it can be done.
If you're a retailer who would like to participate in 'A Gathering of Heroes' please send me an email at ghopcom@aol.com and I'll start making a list. Also, please express your support here on ICv2 so that other retailers know that there are people out there who want to get this done. Once we get enough retailers to express interest we'll approach the other tiers and push forward.
Someone once said, 'whether you say you can, or can't, either way you're right.' I think this can be done. Now let me know what you think.
(Next time we get back to business.)
