Hi everyone, i have finally recovered from the weekend (and what a weekend it was) so I wanted to give a massive thanks out to everyone who attended, sold at and helped us out at the VideoGame Market on Saturday, its great to see soo many people who are interested in retro gaming, i met lots of great people, caught up with lots of old friends and I'm so happy to see the scene being embraced so well.
It was a successful day all round i believe, but there were a number of issues. As it was the first event it was a sort of unknown, we were kind of testing the market for this, but its a learning experience and we can now plan bigger and better for the next one and plan accordingly so we don't get the same issues as this one.
The turnout for this took us completely by surprise to be honest, we always thought that there was a demand for a purely sales event but never on that level. So a truly heartfelt thank you for everyone who waited patiently to get in and putting up with the heat and the crowding.
We were expecting around the 4/500 mark to turn up over the course of the 6 hours, this is the standard type of volume that the comic fairs, toy fairs and vinyl fairs get in Leeds. We also looked at the big events like Play Expo, Revival, Nerg, Geek, they get lots more visitors but as they have so much more on offer than just selling and are designed to keep you there and entertained for a whole weekend, people go to them for a larger number of reasons, so we honestly believed that 4/500 was a realistic number for the day........ but we actually had over 1500 tickets sold! (and thats not including all of the under 16s who came in for free).
The venue had a maximum capacity which we reached early on, and then for health and safety reasons it had to operate on a one in one out policy, so unfortunately it did mean that people had to wait for long periods of time, but as the day went on the queues went down and in the end everybody would have been able to get in. We went through the queue a few times apologising for the wait, giving out sweets and t shirts and everyone we spoke to seemed ok with it (and it looked like a lot of people were making new retro buddies in the queue). So thanks for the patience and understanding guys, hope you all got some good pickups inside.
We definitely need a much much larger venue next time and that is what we will get for you guys! In hindsight we should have gone for the main hall room, it is massive and would have had the space to accommodate everyone easily but we have learned a lot from Saturday and we can now plan accordingly for future events now we have real tangible numbers to work with. Let us know your thoughts too, what did you enjoy, what didn't you like, what did you buy too?
Personally, it was great to see so much retro goodness in one room, i love seeing all of the games, machines and fellow enthusiasts. Thanks again for coming, thanks to everyone involved and I'm looking forward to seeing you all at the next one.
Roll on the sequel!! .....
Topic: The Video Game Market Sales Fair - Leeds THIS SATURDAY!!! (Read 4896 times)