View from the Game Store is a column by Marcus King, Owner of Titan Games & Comics in London, Kentucky.  This week, King reports what he learned attending the Smoky Mountain Gift Show, which offers retailers and other attendees a chance to see new products and learn about the latest trends for the gift industry.

In November, my wife and I attended the Smoky Mountain Gift Show in Gatlingburg, Severeville and Pigeon Forge Tennessee.  We had a great time.  You can find more out about this event for 2017 here.

I have previously attended the Gama Trade Show, the National Retail Hobby Stores EXPO and other hobby shows and toy shows.  But, in 31 years, I have never done as much ordering of new products as I did at the Smoky Mountain Show.  Most dealers were offering 50% or more off their products Suggest Retail Price.  Most were offering terms of 30 - 60 days.  Almost everyone had a minimum order of around $100, and most of those were offering free freight.

That kind of deal: 50% off, min $100, terms on first order, and free freight is unheard of in the Hobby Game Industry.  Plus, these vendors were asking for business, not making me jump through hoops to qualify. 

Unlike most other shows, at least in the Game Industry, the Smoking Mountain Gift Show is free for retail shop owners.  Kim and I got a cheap hotel for $59 a night, ate at regular restaurants, and even with all that - the show cost us less than $400 to attend.  That allowed us to do so much ordering.

The show itself is so large it covered three convention centers spread out in three different, neighboring towns, and each exhibitor hall was as large or larger than the Gama Trade Show floor, and with a much larger variety of merchandise.  I will absolutely confess that about 30% of the booths we looked at were one-glance affairs.  There were literally hundreds of booths that held no interest for us at all.  I was happy to note not one booth had “vape” stuff.  There were of course handmade soaps, candles, high end jewelry, music boxes, t-shirt vendors, wooden toys, fancy chess sets, and other items we were not interested in - either because they didn’t fit our store, or because we already had a source for them - but those booths were busy.  So, many attendees had to find them of interest.

What we did find of interest to us was both distributors and manufacturers of plastic, pewter, porcelain and resin dragons, fairies, incense burners, busts and other statuary, as well as dozens of blade and knife dealers, book publishers and various other collectible items.  There was a game distributor I deal with set up at one of the shows, as well as companies like Funko, Mountain Shirts, rock & gemstone dealers and much more.

We opened 20 new accounts at the show, placed 12 orders, and got well over 50 pounds of catalogs across the 4 days we attended.  We only walked by every booth once each, but we found plenty of dealers for plush, blankets, flags, wall scrolls, posters, rocks, statues, blades and more.

One of our big winners was the dealer who sold us 200 keychains for $1 each, which have spiders, scorpions or other nasty bug creatures in them - of which we have sold many at $5 each.

I would recommend this type of show to any game or comic store dealer. 

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The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.