Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University. This week, Thorne talks about his store’s plans for Halloween and GAMA’s Game Store Day.
Carbondale’s downtown business district hosted trick or treating for local kids this past Friday afternoon, in conjunction with the local university’s homecoming concert. We likely had a couple of hundred extra people walk through the store. Our local Main Street organization sponsors the Trick or Treat on Main Street event and the recently hired manager mentioned he was considering canceling it because the main street office “did not see much foot traffic.” I pointed out to him that was anecdotal, at best, and he ought to talk to downtown businesses before deciding to end the program.
Even though customers rarely spend any money during the event, I am a big proponent of any event sending an extra 200 plus people through my door. These consumers have kids; I have items appealing to kids, like Pokemon TCG. Even after all these years, I still have to contend with the fact that the first place most parents and kids think to get Pokemon TCG is Walmart or another mass market store. Getting this group into the store helps because it’s a group that might not have come in otherwise.
As an aside, there is a muted national push among some retail organizations to move Halloween from October 31, 2025 to the last Friday or Saturday of October. I am not a fan of such a move as some things should not be messed with, even if it may potentially lead to more profit.
The store received the promotional kit for Game Store Day and I was impressed with what GAMA put together in a short period of time (see “GAMA Announcements and R.I.P. Robert Wieland“). I’ve noticed a significant difference between the way ComicsPro promotes Local Comic Shop Day and the approach GAMA has taken towards Game Store Day, at least for the first year.
With Local Comic Shop Day, ComicsPRO chose to follow the pattern for Record Store Day, currently managed by the Department of Record Stores. ComicsPRO worked with publishers, who created a number of variant cover comics and limited-edition hardcover collections for stores to purchase and release on LCS Day. ComicsPro also reaches out to publishers and suppliers to offer stores discounts and promotional items to give stores an incentive for registering the store for the event. This works well for Record Store Day as melophiles seek out the store for the limited edition variants. I have not seen similar response to variant covers on Local Comic Shop Day at our store, but we have not developed a large customer base for variant covers and other stores in more metropolitan areas do have customers come in for them.
Meanwhile, this first Game Store Day focuses on the event itself as stores registering received a box containing window clings, stickers and a bundle of coupons offering the bearer 10% off on their pre-registration to Origins 2026, as well as a pair of coupons for four free admissions to next year’s Origins. GAMA also emailed a digital media kit for participating stores to use. I was pretty impressed by the kit, given the time frame GAMA worked with. Maybe next year we will see more advance promotion and products and discounts similar to those offered for Record Store Day and Local Comic Shop Day.
Comments? Send them to castleperilousgames@gmail.com.
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.
Source: ICv2
