For the first time in our 11-year history, earlier this October Stonemaier Games attended Essen Spiel as an exhibitor. This is the biggest tabletop game convention in the world, and we thought it was time to experiment with having a booth there.
In attendance from the Stonemaier Games core team were Dave (focusing on the booth itself), Susannah (focusing on retailers and localization partners), and Alex (focusing on distributors and localization partners). It was the first time attending the convention for Dave and Susannah, and Alex had previously scouted it out.
After everyone returned to St. Louis and was well-rested, I asked them (and Conor at Inside Up Games) to share their thoughts with me, and I’ve compiled some of the highlights into today’s post for other publishers who may consider exhibiting at Essen Spiel for the first time in the future.
- Sharing a booth with an experienced partner is great. We’re fortunate to be friends with Conor at Inside Up Games (Earth, Summit, etc), and Conor has had a booth at Essen for 5+ years. By sharing the booth with Inside Up, we benefited from Conor’s experience, and we both benefited from a larger shared demo space, complementary product sales, and mutual support. In the future we might also try to find more overlap between our demo teams.
- Price products at the convention to match current webstore prices. It isn’t uncommon for publishers to sell products at full MSRP at conventions, as it is quite expensive to have a booth, to air or ocean freight the games to the convention, to rent all the equipment, to cover travel/lodging/food/ticket fees for employees and the demo team, and so on. Most publishers are lucky to break even. That said, we heard some confusion from customers who were surprised by the prices at checkout after seeing lower prices on our webstore (it was launch week for Apiary and the Wingspan Fan Art Pack, a 5-day period during which webstore prices are lower than usual). In the future we’ll launch products before the convention, make sure the webstore/convention prices are the same, and improve signage so no one is surprised at checkout.
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photo credit: Patrick Day Prepare for taxes and point-of-sales. Legally, if you sell something in Europe, you must pay VAT (value added tax) and list prices with VAT included so it isn’t a surprise to customers. This applies whether you’re accepting cash or debit/credit cards. We used a POS (point-of-sales) system called Square that wouldn’t let us sell in Euros because we don’t have a German bank account, resulting in some complications and confusions. In the future we’re going to try to set up Square to accept Euros and to post prices in Euros, USD, and British pound sterling.
- Find and retain great demo team members. If you’ve been to a game convention and seen dozens of people at a booth wearing a publisher’s shirt, most of them are demo team members, not employees (game companies are very small). We’re very fortunate to have passionate, kind, welcoming, and knowledgeable Stonemaier ambassadors around the world to reach out to for convention support. In the future we will try to find volunteers to assist with setup and tear down too.
- Have a plan for reviewers. I received dozens of emails from reviewers leading up to Essen asking if they could get free review copies from our booth at the convention. As I mentioned above, we’re hoping to break even at shows like this, so it isn’t fiscally responsible to give away games. Out of consideration for this, my recommendation to reviewers and publishers is to wait until the waning hours of the convention to see if a surplus of any particular product is available (or demo copies used during the event). In the future we’ll also make sure we have a distributor lined up in advance to buy any surplus products; we had a few extras this year, and Alex found a distributor to take them.
- Consider the logistical implications of accepting preorders. We got a lot of requests leading up to the event from customers who wanted to place an order in advance for pickup at our booth. This didn’t work for our new products, as they weren’t appearing on our webstore until the convention began, but we still discussed it for earlier 2023 releases like Expeditions. Our conclusion, however, was that it was a logistical complication that could cause confusion, delays, and other issues at checkout. We did, however, allocated different quantities of our new products to each day at the convention so it wasn’t just a mad rush on day 1. I like Karel’s recommend allocation per day (see the comment) of 35-30-20-15. Preorders are something we might try in the future for a subset of units just to see if it’s as complicated as we think.
- Focus on long-term implications. One of the reasons that publishers attend conventions despite the most likely scenario of breaking even is the potential for forming long-term relationships with customers who may not have otherwise have been exposed to their products. While there is a big rush at Essen Spiel for the hot new products (Apiary had a long line), many attendees use the show as their primary way of discovering, learning about, and buying games. In this way, it seems to help if you have a welcoming, well-lit booth where people can sit down and immerse themselves in a game with the help of a demo team member. The show is also a great place to meet face-to-face with partners in Europe.
Promote new releases in advance. From my observations, it seems that there is a huge value in talking about new releases in the month leading up to a big convention like Essen Spiel in the hopes that you’ll get on several “most anticipated” lists. This is primarily for the eager early adopters. Conor also spoke highly of the new release showcase area of the show to get more media attention. It also seems to be perfectly fine to have older products in stock at conventions–probably not nearly as many as brand-new products, but we still find people discovering games like Wingspan at conventions even though it’s almost 5 years old at this point.- Discuss line- and inventory-management systems in advance. It’s exciting to see games attract lines at conventions…if you can process the line quickly. I think it’s helpful to play through these scenarios in advance: What makes long lines form and how can you pivot in the moment to get the line moving? In the future, we’ll make sure people aren’t standing in a long line with the product in hand (it’s safer to hand over the product at checkout, though fortunately we weren’t aware of anyone just walking away with a game).
- Plan travel and lodging early. One of the reasons I’m writing this post now is that a convention like Essen Spiel requires a lot of advance planning. Everyone I talked to spoke of the value of booking hotels now. Conor also recommends flying into Paris or Amsterdam (not Germany), both to see multiple cities and because the cost ends up being about the same (even if you have an overnight stay in one of those cities).
Huge thanks to Dave, Susannah, and Alex for going on this adventure and Conor for all the generosity he extended to our team. If you’ve exhibited at or attended Essen, I’d love to hear your top recommendation (or any modifications to mine) for a publisher looking to exhibit for the first time there.
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30 Comments on “10 Lessons Learned from Our First Essen Spiel as an Exhibitor”
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Jamey, thanks for this post. It means you guys had some time to reflect on your experience.
It is honestly a shame that the best you can hope for is to break even. Having you and all publishers at the convention is very important to everyone who visits. I’m very happy you came (that’s what she said!) and I marked Stonemaier’s booth as one of my must-visits.
I visited 2 days, and Apiary was sold out on both. I found out it was cheaper (including shipping!) to order from the website (with my Stonemaier Champion Discount) and have it delivered to my home, rather than lugging it around with me all day at Essen, so this ended up being a blessing in disguise.
I notice a lot of US companies are ill-prepared for the EU market. Things are so similar that the things we do differ in, almost come as a surprise. It’s hard for someone from the US to understand what it’s like to live here and it’s not always easy being an EU customer from an American store – not speaking about Stonemaier in particular, but it’s just something I noticed. You guys had a crash course coming to Essen, it sounds like. Thanks for taking the effort.
As for lodging, I recommend looking at some towns around Essen, less than 30 minutes drive away, prices are easily half of what they are in Essen. And if you are looking for a possible volunteer who speaks reasonable German and fluent English, drop me a line.
Finally, Essen is a time for me as a customer to get excited with the company and the people who make the games that bring colour to my life. I got a chance to meet Vital Lacerda, for instance, talk with Lucky Duck Games about their upcoming Food Chain Magnate release and got my games signed by Vladimir Suchy (who I talked to for 2 minutes about our experience with his games, only to find out his English was next to non-existant *lol*). Jamey, there is hardly anyone in the industry more accessible than you, so forgive me when I say: it’d be great to see you there next year as well. Don’t feel obligated, but man, that’d be cool! All the best to you and your fantastic team.
Thanks for your comment, Sebastiaan! I appreciate you making the choice that was right for you for Apiary. And I appreciate your tips about where to say and the value of designers attending Essen to meet great people like you. I hope to have that honor someday (and I’ll share your email with Dave in case he’s looking for 2024 volunteers).
I was part of the team at the booth this year and really enjoyed it! I would certainly echo Karel’s suggestion when it comes to allocating stock.
The booking system for demos worked well I think – next time it could be useful to announce this plan ahead of time in order to give as many people the opportunity to sign up for a demo. We tried really hard to be fair to as many people as possible, and I think we achieved that, but there were some people throughout all the days who would ask about demo slots long after they had all gone.
All in all a really enjoyable experience, so thank you to all at Stonemaier (and Dave in particular!) for allowing me to be a part of it
Thanks so much for helping out at the booth, Ben! That’s a good point about communicating the demo signup system as early as possible.
Hi Jamey, I had a big problem with number 4 too and spent ages looking for a solution to accept Euro payments. I setup a Shopify account and intended to use ShopifyPOS to take in person payments using a card reader (which the support team mistakenly assured me would display and accept payments in EUR and convert to GBP in the backend for payouts). It turned out that that wasn’t the case and I had to scramble to find another solution 4 days before the convention.
What I ultimately went with was still Shopify (and using Shopify Payments with multi-currency support for payments) but via a QR code for people to visit the online shop and check out their purchases online, showing me the confirmation page. This let them pay in EUR (or as I found out later whatever currency they preferred, including PLN and SEK payments). It was a bit fiddlier than just tapping a card direct, however some people actually preferred it as they could easily pay by paypal, apple/google pay, and even some other local payment solutions I hadn’t heard of. It didn’t lead to many lost sales as, even those that were put off by the complexity just paid cash. Only one person did have problems paying online and had no cash, but they wanted the games so much they came back the next day anyway.
Plus it let me joke that I was offering free shipping as I handed over the game. That joke got told quite often during the weekend :-)
Ben: That’s a really clever workaround! I’m going to share it with Dave.
I ran a small 20sqm booth at Spiel last year for the first time. Especially for first time publishers / selfpublishers a few things I would recommend some things (not all being exclusive to Essen):
1. booth space is expensive at Essen Spiel, so if you are new, start with 10 sqm and/or think about sharing booths.
2. Content creator exposure: if you are not well known, contact content creators upfront to arrange meetings to get coverage, otherwise you may well be overlooked
3. Furniture: Booking furniture directly through the venue is hugely expensive. Instead try to find an outside place to rent (or buy furniture if you can store it in a sensible place).
4. Time management: this goes for many conventions, but Essen is so busy it is definitely a top contender: manage your timetable (especially if you are not yet that experienced) and try to have enough booth personnel so you can do more than just explain games. Setup your calendar via calendly (or another software) so people can book appointments with you easily and share it with business partners or other people of interest.
5. Food & drinks: again this goes for any convention, but Essen Spiel is probably the busiest it gets within Europe, so make sure you drink and eat enough. Also have drops or something at hand to keep your throat from turning sore from all the talking.
6. Take some time off afterwards: If you are like me and want to make the most of the convention tim, also utilizing social media at any minute or hour that you are not at the convention, you will likely need some rest afterwards. Again all conventions are busy but I have never had a more intense work week than during Essen Spiel.
7. Set up on Tuesday. Wednesday you will have to run the press area, so if you can do your setup on Tuesday already, it makes things a lot more relaxed. It also gives you the option to network with other publishers and people at the convention on Tuesday already, which is nice.
8. Self-organized team: try to get your team to be self-organized if possible. You will have enough things on your mind, so anything that your team can solve themselves helps.
Eike: I love these tips! This is great feedback. It reminds me of a post I wrote about Gen Con a few years ago, including a similar tip about drinking a lot of water.
Thank you! I will look for your GenCon post as well!
Hi Jamey,
it is very interesting to read your report about the first visit of Stonemaier Games in Essen. Above all, it is very helpful in its detail for all publishers who are planning a booth in Essen in the future.
I think I can judge it well, as I have been visiting the fair since 1984, was in charge of the Pegasus board game booth in 2003 and 2004, and had my own booth in Essen in 2009 and 2010.
On Instagram you wrote me that I could play Apiary in Essen. It was a good fit. Already on Thursday morning I had the opportunity to try Apiary in a very nice round and a very friendly promoter.
I liked the game very much and it was one of my highlights in Essen.
Phantastische Grüße
Lutz
Thanks for sharing that, Lutz! I’m glad you had a good first experience with Apiary. :)
I’ve only been to Spiel once, in 2015, it’s about a 2,5hr drive for me. Looked around, visited some booths of game designers I knew about, joined in to play the demo of a few games (which is often difficult due Spiel being so crowded), bought a few games, etc..
There’s one thing that stood out during our visit. We went past a smaller booth, with a guy dressed up in a steampunk get-up, Alex Churchill, he was promoting his game Steam Works, which looked interesting to begin with, but what stood out (besides his outfit) was how he was all in character demoing the game to us, we played about a third of a game in 15-20mins or so, which is plenty to get the gist of it, after which we all just looked at eachother to see who would buy it, since we all knew we wanted to have it. I ended up purchasing the game, Alex even signed the box.
Of course this was a singular experience and is difficult to maintain for every demo, especially if you are already more well known, but out of all conventions I’ve been to that’s something that still stands out to me. The personal touch and it was more like an experience than just a game demo.
And I still play Steam Works every now and then, so it being a fun game is also a big part of it of course.
I appreciate you sharing this example! That’s some impressive teaching.
I’m glad you raised point number 3. Always baffles me how this is not done in the US too. Makes shopping here in the UK so easy you pay what you see.
I have questioned kickstarters about this before, being that their ‘products’ are advertised into uk/eu should they not be advertised with Vat included? I’m sure with your kickstart, wisdom would know.
Especially when UK law/ASA says, The use of VAT exclusive prices should only be used when the prices are aimed at buyers who can recover any VAT charged.
I never seam to get a response about it.
Kenneth: Most Kickstarters are run on Kickstarter’s US platform, so sales tax is for the US, not the various other places where people can buy the product. It becomes a bit more nuanced when you later ship those rewards from a fulfillment center in Europe–at that point, you should pay VAT (as many creators do via the pledge manager).
I wonder about how other companies deal with the MSRP situation vs website price. Because it makes sense to me that if I want a product that I can take right now I would need to pay a bigger price instead of a lower price to get the product sometime in the next 2-4 weeks.
Right, I agree. Plus if you’re buying in person, you’re not paying shipping costs.
Great article. This was my 1st Essen too after many years doung UKGE.
Some of my takeaways:
1. Germany is behind the rest of the world with use of cards, many places took only cash, and that seemed very odd to us uk peeps and many other europeans.
2. Queues were somewhat organised but big queues, like apiary, were hard to find the end as they were several stalls away.
3. It was confusing to get in line with some people already having stock to checkout (and nobody making sure they just didnt walk off with it) and the staff manning the queue saying just ask to get stock at checkout.
4. Essen, unlike UKGE, has NO public gaming areas, this means the latest releases need to be shown off on stall better as when there are playing areas, a lot of teaching and advertising happens there when people walk up and go “oh cool”.
5. Essen hall 3 is MUCH louder than many conventions I have been too, take headache pills.
6. The Square till needed 3 different cards to finally work for me, because of fraud prevention measures, as it wasnt my 1st purchase in moments, and exhibitors being based everywhere around the world, it blocked 2 cards thinking they were being abused.
7. I know it was in Germany, but It felt very German focussed overall. It was nice to see English language stalls occasionally, but it lowered my personal interest and surprised me as English is still a common language over all Europe.
Thanks for sharing these observations, John. I heard from a few different people about how loud Essen Spiel is.
It was really wonderful to be a part of the big Stonemaier family for a couple of days. I always enjoy my days at Essen, but I really enjoyed being at the Stonemaier booth this year!
I have one recommendation to add to the article: consider people who only visit the convention on certain days. Not everybody goes all four days. Some people come for one day, other people come for the weekend.
To make the convention “fair” for everyone, you can do 2 things (and we applied that at the SM booth):
1. Split the stock of popular games over the convention days. If you brought 500 copies of a popular game, it’s probably easy to sell them all on Thursday, but that’s a bummer for people coming in on Friday at 10, learning that the game is already sold out for the entire convention. Instead, if you split the stock over several days, you will disappoint more people on day 1 (because you will sell out more quickly), but you can tell them to come back the next day at 10, and people who don’t attend the first day will have a chance to get the game too. This may lead to some unsold copies on Sunday evening, but it’s a better experience for the customer. The lesson for the future might be to not split up 25-25-25-25 over the 4 days, but maybe rather 35-30-20-15, as the fanatic gamers and collectors all come on day 1. Hot games sell like crazy on day 1 and 2, and then the demand lessens.
2. Don’t let people sign up for a demo table for the next day. For the demo tables at our booth, we had a schedule (we used time blocks of 90 minutes). Those schedules were quickly booked at the start of the day, and people asked if they could already sign up for the next day. To give all visitors a fair chance (including the 1-day visitors), we only started taking names for a new schedule the same day at 10.
A third, somewhat related thing to do:
3. Don’t sell games before 10. The general public is allowed entrance at 10’o’clock, but the other exhibitors and their volunteers already roam the halls and buy a lot of stuff between 9 and 10. In order to not sell out before the day even starts, it’s most fair for the visitors if you only start selling at 10.
Thank you for being such an amazing member of this year’s demo team, Karel! I like your 35-30-20-15 split for hot games over the first four days, and I appreciate your other recommendations as well.
Exactly the points I would have added as a long term visitor.
It was great seeing Stonemaier booth at Spiel this year! But yes, US companies that do not have their EU sister/child company have VAT problems (hence the difference in price for some games). Most of EU/German companies priorities sales at Spiel, and numbers for some items are crazy. We’ve seen pallets and pallets of games sold.
One cool thing to do, if you have many abroad partners is to have a small after hours gathering, usually at your booth where you can invite your Localisation/distribution partners and just network and talk about games. Connect your partners and connect with your partners.
Hope you managed to break even at Spiel, and hope that next year it will just be better!
Thanks Jovan! I like the idea of having hosting a small group event for partners instead of (or in addition to) one-on-one meetings.
I’ve always been curious about Essen. Any language barrier issues?
I didn’t hear of that as an issue, as many people in Europe speak English.
Essen attracts an international crowd. People from all over Europe — and from all over the world — flock to Essen to see the new games. So, as Jamey says, almost everyone speaks English. What you will see as a booth keeper is that many Germans (the majority of the audience) will talk to you in German, as many booth keepers are German too, but as soon as you say you want to talk in English, they switch without a problem. For me personally, it was a good exercise in German, but only the listening part. So people spoke to me in German and I answered in English. :)
My Deutsche is limited mainly to metal lyrics and general profanity.
I loved seeing one of my favorite board game publishers at Essen Spiel ❤️ and would really like to see you guys again next year! Especially to personally say Hi to Jamey if that would be possible 😃
My recommendation for publishers (why I, as a gamer, attend Spiel every year) is to have as many gaming tables as possible for me to try out your games. So a large booth (as you had this year) is a must.
Thanks for your input! I heard we had a relatively small booth compared to some publishers, but we prioritized gaming/demo space.