Soft Opening, Grand Opening, and Local Cons

[Harmast]

You mentioned the period between the soft opening and the grand opening. How long (or short) should this be.

You also mentioned local cons for both pre-opening marketing and promotion. Is it useful to time your grand opening to it.

I was thinking that with a local (in the same town probably 1 mile from store location) doing the soft opening the week before the con, being active at the con, and having the grand opening the weekend after the con would be a good way to get lots of draw. But, is it bad timing because the customer base will be cashed out from the con?

My impression is the grand opening isn't about sales THAT DAY, but about establishing yourself with a blast and making an impression. In that case would the cashed out worries be less meaningful?

[LBrownIII]

The period between the soft opening and the grand opening is usually short--about a month. Basically, you use this time to wrap up any projects incomplete at the time of the soft opening. Finish painting. Maybe your floor plan that looked good on paper has a chokepoint or a sharp corner that keeps cutting people's elbows as they walk by. The high-speed internet hasn't been installed yet. Whatever. Deal with that.

It's also a chance to get over the inital focus of attention on the customer service and fine-tuning your procedures and turn back to the focus of getting the word out to as many people as possible. Track your demographics and see if the people you expected to come in are coming in. If not, you might want to change your grand opening advertising. Is your level of walk-in traffic what you expected? Are they buying the game categories in the ratio that you exepcted (ccg vs. rpg vs. mini)? How is your conversion rate, and what's your average ticket price? Get a measure for these things, because they affect the financials on measuring the effectiveness of your ads.

Take this time to gather your promo materials from manufacturers, if possible, or order premium items.

Of the two, I'd rather time my soft opening to the local con. Show up at the con, run a game or two, and let everybody know about the store opening. Either right before or right after the opening, you'll probably have a lot to do, but this could be a valuable use of your time. Catch them while they're excited, and they'll swing by. They'll know you're there and mentally bookmark you for later use.

You're right in that con-goers will probably be strapped for cash after the con. Some of them will buy something just as a token of support, but don't count on bonuses like that. You're also right that getting them in the door that first time is more important than getting their money right away. Gamers tend to shop on a regular basis, and if they know you're there, you've done most of the work.

[Harmast]

You're also right that getting them in the door that first time is more important than getting their money right away. Gamers tend to shop on a regular basis, and if they know you're there, you've done most of the work.

I remember hearing a rule of thumb about this for restaurants: After X people have been there it generally has a sufficient customer base to be self-sustaining. I know it's just a rule of thumb for early planning, but are there similar ones for retail?

[LBrownIII]

I've managed restaurants for years and I don't know about that metric. We generally look at the average customer spending and use that figure.

For a retail store, calculate your average ticket price, divide that into your break-even sales goal and you'll see the number of sales you make. Then imagine a number less than that, and that's the number of regulars you need. Slightly more seriously, I'd guess that 80% of your sales come from a regular customer base, and 20% come from out-of-town visitors, people too far away to shop on a regular basis, people who don't like your products/service/prices, etc. or other non-regulars.