Of course this all assumes the show goes on, which I do believe it will, even with the media doing its level best to turn the coronavirus spread into a full-on public panic. The official GAMA statement is both credible and sensible, and canceling the show is really unnecessary. And you're not reading this from a pure layperson; remember that I spent almost eight years working at the Arizona Department of Health Services. I was backstage during the 2009 H1N1 epidemic, and I can tell you that the state health agencies are generally staffed with consummate professionals who know how to direct and manage public behaviors and health resources to inhibit the spread of the illness and to deploy treatment where it is needed most. I would classify the response from Trump and Pence as disappointing so far, but there are fifty different state agencies who are a lot better at this kind of thing than they are. Cooperate with yours and odds are you'll be fine.
While the show is certainly going to go on, I would not be surprised to see many attendees bow out or cancel, which will be an interesting change from last year's completely-sold-out standing-room-only event. Hopefully there isn't too much of this, but in the event there is, you will get to take advantage of not missing out on any seminars or activities that have filled up. That happened relatively often last year and I ended up missing some speakers I really wanted to see.
The show schedule has now been posted, and the roster of retail tradecraft seminars is astoundingly good this year, despite not featuring yours truly extolling the virtues of video games. If I tried to write a recommended itinerary for you, it would be too long. I do have a few notes and I'm going to mention some seminars you might otherwise overlook:
Monday at 10am you'll be forced to pick only one of three highly relevant seminars happening at the same time: Stephen Smith from Big Easy Comics on buying and selling entire stores, which is either irrelevant to you or the single most important thing you'll hear about all week; John Stephens and Tim Blakely from Total Escape Games on management structure where an owner is absent, again either irrelevant or extremely critical to you; and Jamison Sacks from Common Ground Games on the true costs of running events and when they might not be helping you.
Monday at 11am are two seminars delivered by people who know these topics in such immense depth that if your store is in that category, you really can't skip them. And fortunately, a lot of stores that are heavy in one are not involved in the other. Michael Caffrey from Tales of Adventure will share his expert playbook on better buying of secondary market merch, which is an absolutely critical skill for the TCGs, comics, video games, and toys categories. I served as a test audience while Caffrey workshopped this seminar and I can tell you for stores like mine, this one is must-see. Next door, David Finn and Jon Galvin from Giga-Bites Cafe will teach the methods and means for success with miniature wargames such as Warhammer. Giga might be the strongest store in the world in that product category; they are surely no worse than top 3 depending how you argue it. If you were opening a steakhouse you'd pay to have Gordon Ramsay teach you. If your store is significant in minis, you need to attend this.
Monday at 2pm has the largest slate of seminars and there are several that may be important for you specifically. The only one I'll single out for this slot will be Josh Fohrman from Game On Arizona discussing Quickbooks and accounting admin for game stores. That's one of my jobs with DSG, and let me tell you, doing it wrong is a good way to have the Tax Enforcement People whip a padlock on your door that no locksmith can overcome. If you outsource all your admin somehow, or you aren't the one who does it, there are multiple other great options at 2pm.
Monday at 3pm, you're in a spot. Literally every single option is a recommend and you can't see them all. If you saw Finn and Galvin at 11am and wanted to see Caffrey also, he encores in this slot. If your store has felt the cash-flow pinch, you may want to hear Josh Wilhelmi from Game Goblins discussing capital financing at the FLGS scale. That's a seminar I'd love to have seen in 2015 or 2016 before DSG's costly move and construction the following year.
The Monday 4pm slot is great because it's mostly encores from earlier, so this may be your chance to catch a seminar you were double-booked on earlier. Among non-encores, for those of you in competitive major-metro markets where brand impression punches extra hard, you may want to check out Brooke Rutledge from Little Shop of Magic discussing how to craft and develop the perceived value of your store and customer perception. Brooke encores on Tuesday in case you miss it.
Monday's final slot at 5pm offers a batch of encores again, and there's so much value to be gained in essentially every offering here. For those of you steering your store's offering away from "pure sales" and toward the service and event end of the spectrum, Rob Gruber from Good Times Games is at the absolute cutting edge of this part of the hobby game industry and he's doing things most of us never even realized could work. He teaches his secrets right here at GAMA. Also, Jennifer Ward of Crazy Squirrel Game Store teaches growth planning, highly relevant as she just completed a gargantuan store move that made DSG's big 2017 upheaval look amateur by comparison.
The GAMA Retail Division Board elections will be the very first night of show programming, Monday, just before dinner. There are four Board positions up for grabs. While the slate of seven announced candidates are pretty much all excellent people -- and others may be nominated the evening of, if I understand the rules correctly -- there are four candidates who I formally endorse, as I know each of them personally and I trust to their integrity and judgment: Erik Bigglestone of Games of Berkeley, John Coviello of Little Shop of Magic, Dave Salisbury of Fan Boy 3, and Jennifer Ward of the Crazy Squirrel Game Store. I was the one who nominated Jennifer back in 2018 and I still believe today as I did then that her expertises are tremendous assets to the Board, with years in management and journalism living and working in locales like Texas and California, each of them very different communities and markets. Vote your conscience and your judgment of course, and if you have another candidate you believe in, then by all means write down their name. (Retail attendees get four votes per store and the four highest total votes decide the winners.) If you don't know any of the candidates in particular, then I hope my endorsements may help as you weigh your options.
Tuesday's first two morning slots are mostly encores from the Monday retailer seminars, so use this as an opportunity to catch ones you missed. Starting at 11am, the publisher presentations will provide a look at what's going on with each of their upcoming releases and programs. These are always variable in quality, though they got a bit better last year in some cases. I always recommend seeing publishers that either figure heavily into your store's merchandise mix, or that you have never heard of. The ones you skip are the ones you know about, and don't carry or plan to carry. The value of your heavy hitters should be obvious. The value of those you've never heard of can be sneakily great as well, especially if it introduces you to a product range that you never realized your customers might be interested in. These presentations continue into Wednesday morning.
The rest of the show schedule is pretty straightforward -- go to the game nights if you are interested, everyone goes to the exhibit floor for at least one of the two days, and something I'm seeing this time that I don't remember seeing before are plenty of after-hours and off-track presentations, panels, and similar meet-ups between retailers, publishers, manufacturers, and others. It seems like that might be a good place to make some acquaintances. TCGPlayer typically hosts a very high-end cocktail party on Tuesday evening and displays some eye-opening initiative or feature they've been working on, and I guarantee it will be the talk of the show afterward.
I'll offer one final piece of advice for your GAMA guidance this year, and it's something I wasn't good at in my early trips to the show because I just didn't realize the lay of the land and did a poor job of understanding this until later. And that advice is: Be sociable. Not necessarily interacting with anyone and everyone the entire time -- an autistic introvert like me would never recommend such a thing and as I've said, I'm bad at it anyway. What I mean is, expect that you're going to meet some people whose importance to your business might seem tenuous at best, or might not become apparent until afterward or later. And if you meet someone whose store or company seems like it may be on the outs, disregard that and network like a professional. A lot of people this industry counted out have come roaring back and your courtesy today could end up giving you the inside track to a windfall tomorrow. And that means being on your "A" game with everyone and making a friendly, positive connection even if you're not sure whether it's going to matter. I can tell you I would definitely have better relationships with publishers, distributors, and other retailers today if I had been more sociable years ago. Fortunately, many of them are forgiving and I've mended a lot of fences since.
Since I'll be on a semi-vacation, semi-staycation with the family next week, I won't have a blog post on March 10th in all likelihood, and the stuff I have started sketching my notes on will come later. Have a great beginning-of-spring and keep washing those hands with soap!
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