Beginning this issue, Derrick Bang's Vendor Viewpoint becomes a regular column in GAME TRADE NEWS. The column will feature topics of interest to manufacturers and distributors as well as retailers. Each will present the subject with Derrick's more than ten years of retail experience behind it. This month, with the HIA Show Preview in the forefront, an article on cross-merchandising should provide ideas on displays for the new products on the way. I took my annual vacation last September--a month my wife and I selected to escape the heat ... so, naturally, it rained this year ... but we had a nice time anyway, thanks for asking--and left my shop in the capable hands of my Assistant Game Warden. (I'm the Game Warden, you see ... what else would you expect at a Game Preserve?) He got ambitiousor, perhaps, boredduring his two weeks, so he reorganized many of the shelf displays. I didn't mind, conceptually; one person's vision tends to grow stale after awhile. My relief manager made a few mistakes, however, which led directly to the topic of this month's column: displays and cross-merchandising. He'd very reasonably located different styles of the same game adjacent to one another. He placed Boggle next to Big Boggle, with Pocket Boggle in between. He did the same with original Pente (in the tube), notso-original Pente (in the flat box) and Pocket Pente. Very neat, very organized, very sensible. Unfortunately, it's the sort of sensible mistake which might be made by somebody with the experience of a few weeks, rather than several years: it fails to acknowledge the buying patterns of my customers. People travel a lot. Many don't drive, preferring instead to take chances with unstable jet engines, poorly-maintained train tracks, or other less bothersome forms of transportation. When they travel in such a fashion, something is needed to fill the hours. Thus, people specifically ask for "travel or pocket games." In anticipation of such a request, all the portable games are kept in the same corner of the shop, even if an identical-but-larger cousin rests elsewhere. Pocket Boggle and Pocket Pente, therefore, belong not with Boggle and Pente, but with RumE-Go, Pocket Parcheesi, Pocket Chess, Backgammon, and Checkers, and Pocket Scrabble, not to mention Uno, Flinch, Rook, and all the other compact card games. Folks need browse in just one corner to examine all their options. So here's the critical rule: be aware ofpublic buying patterns when planning your displays. Clumping all the Boggles together might seem organized, but it puts a strain on the customer who, looking for travel games, doesn't know about the existence of Pocket Boggle. When patrons have to work to make their purchases--for example, search high and low to find all the pocket games-they may not buy at all. Ideally, you'd keep some Pocket Boggle with the other Boggles, and some with the pocket games. With a mere 385 square feet and the necessity of making every inch count, though, I'm not able to do both. Nor is mine an isolated example; most game stores do not have a reputation for being oversized. Faced with the need to make a choice (in this and in other similar decisions), try to decide what will most help the customer. Remember, a good shopkeeper caters to the tastes, whims, and habits of his customers, not his own. I'd prefer to stock nothing but stimulating, welldesigned, and imaginative products, but that ignores reality; there'll always be several million people wanting to buy a Pet Rock. Following his own consistent logic, my assistant next placed all the trivia games in one area. Trivial Pursuit and its six companion sets were grouped together. That much was fine; I'd already done the same thing. He continued, though, with ALL the trivia games: The Avalon Hill Game Company's Game of Trivia, Stage 11, San Francisco Trivia, Superquiz 1, 2, and 3, Axlon Trivia Supplements, Bible Search, Sexual Trivia, and several others I can't recall as I sit before this typewriter. Seems reasonable, doesn't it? Well ... a funny thing happened after the Great Trivia Explosion of 1984. People have gotten a little tired of the concept, and I've had several customers get downright antagonistic when confronted with the spectre of yet another question-and answer game. After making that connection, and adjusting displays appropriately, my sales in trivia games actually went up when the various items were banished to different parts of the store. (Another mistake, although less critical, also surfaced here. Sexual Trivia, a game whose content should be left to the adults in the audience, was placed where more impressionable fingers could reach it. Admittedly, the box doesn't say much, but I-and those of my customers with children-feel it's more socially responsible to keep the game out of reach.) So how d'you know? How can you tell when that special moment has passed, and something has to be arranged differently? What else can I say? You gotta be there, paying attention. The game industry is in constant flux. Youthoriented products, in particular, move in and out of fashion with the speed of spiked haircuts and patchwork sweatshirts. A game shop isn't something you can do by committee, or trust to the handling of three different assistant managers. You've got to keep your finger on the pulse, so to speak, and stay in the front lines yourself. So ... trivia games aren't hot anymore ... what is getting warmer? As I cast my eyes around the shop, I immediately notice our center table, strategically placed so that customers, as they enter the store, have to walk around it or trip over it. Until recently, the space was used for new fantasy and war games and supplements. As of yesterday, that changed. 1985 promises to be the year of the parlor mystery game (and by the time you read these words, we'll all know whether I was correct). As a result, the center table was been reorganized. The three games from How to Host a Murder stand next to the six frornJamie Swise Mysteries, with the three from Murder Mystery Party occupying another corner. Lying flat, taking center stage, is a pile of David Landau's Murder To Go. Old reliables, such as John N. Hansen Co.'s 221 B Baker Street, and Sleuth Publications' Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, rest in the rear (but still quite visible). The left corner is devoted to a pleasing cloverleaf arrangement of the four recreated Murder Mystery books by Dennis Wheatley, Random House's Clue Armchair Detective, Simon and Schuster's Photo Crimes, and Godine Press' Crime and Puzzlement, books one and two. Adjacent shelves contain the overflow: Milton Bradleys Mystery Mansion and Scotland Yard games, Parker Brothers' Clue and VCR Clue, and The Avalon Hill Game Co.s Sleuth (yes, we still have a few.) Similarly, we try to keep all our word games together. Selchow and Righter's Scrabble, Deluxe Scrabble, Foreign- Language editions, Scrabble Duplicate, and the LargeType edition, don't stiay too far away. Selchow & Righter's new word challenges, Ipswich and Alfred's Other Game, moved in right alongside. Milton Bradley's Upwords and Last Word, Parker Brothers' Option and the Boggle family, Waddington's New York Times Crossword Puzzle Game, and The Avalon Hill Game Co.'s Bali (yeah, still got a few of those, too) stay pretty close. To me, all this makes good sense. There is a dissenting view: many shop owners would argue, with some justification, that it's better to mix everything up ... that way, a customer is forced to see everything in the shop during a quest for several specific items. That's the difference between softsell and hard-sell, between catering to the comfort of customers or tricking them. I'd rather be known for the former; the game industry doesn't need a lot of used-car schlockmeisters. I think hard-sell antagonizes people, maybe even on a subconscious level, where they're not completely aware of it. When I have a home electrical project that needs my attention, generally several components are required. I might need wire, electrician's tape, fuses, light bulbs, sockets, and any number of other items. I want to be able to walk into a hardware store, find the electrical supplies, and get everything as quickly as possible. If I have to search through paint, plumbing, and woodworking departments because some nit wanted me to tour the merchandise, I'll find another hardware store. I have this warped delusion that stores should make shopping easy for the customer ... a belief I put into practice within my own four walls, and a courtesy I expect from others. Pretty unreasonable cur, ain't I? Back to Table of Contents -- Game News #11 To Game News List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1986 by Dana Lombardy. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com