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 discussed his recent trip to the ACD Expo (May 21 – 23, 2025).
For the first time in several years, I had the opportunity to attend the 2025 ACD Expo last weekend (see “New Records at ACD Expo 2025“). One of the first things I noted was the change in name of the event from ACD Games Day to ACD Expo. ACD representatives explained the company changed the name of the event to reflect that the company had added additional product lines beyond games with vendors such as Tomy and Fun in Motion in attendance (If I remember correctly, ACD tried distributing candy some years ago but pulled the plug on that fairly quickly).
Here are a few points of interest from the show:
Distributors Still Fulfill a Function in the Supply Chain. As I have noted before there are basic functions a distributor fulfills (see “Channels of Distribution: The Basics“). I was reminded of two of them while wandering the exhibit hall: assorting and breaking bulk. I really like Fun In Motion’s Shashibo puzzle cubes; they sell slowly but steadily for us, but not briskly enough for us to want to buy the quantities required to order directly from the company. Smart Toys and Games is another company we saw at last year’s Astra Marketplace but we could not justify ordering the quantities necessary to put a direct purchase in with the company. Combining orders from those two companies along with others allows us to stock them without the tying up of capital in inventory that will sell slowly.
New Products. Sirius Dice showed off the display box for their next set of blind bag dice, The Yawning Portal (see “Sirius Dice Enters D&D The Yawning Portal“). While I do not expect to see the same sales levels that we did with Acerack’s Treasure, as the novelty has worn off (Xanathar’s Treasure has sold about half what Acerack’s Treasure sold for us), I do expect to do quite well with this set. Although with the raised plastic ring around the opening, I do wonder about the extra space it will take up in shipping.
Since we have a strong Warhammer 40,000 and Age of Sigmar customer base, I am also looking forward to the Nurglings plush from Tomy and the Games Workshop pins from Foam Brain Games. The new Devsisters’ CookieRun: Enter the Braverse TCG got a lot of promotion with at least two seminars on the game and learn-to-play sessions on Wednesday evening and Friday afternoon.
Seminars. Three seminars really stood out to me: “For the Love of God, Have a Personality,” “Cultivating Long Term Success & Community Relationships Through Community Outreach” and “Building a Special-Order System that Works.” Lord knows I need to work harder on all three of these. “For the Love of God, Have a Personality” reminded me of something The Fantasy Shop’s Dave Wallace used to say: “You are selling Spam.” He meant all the products stores sell are indistinguishable. The copy of Catan or Watchmen I sell, generally, is the same as one sold by a store in Peoria or San Diego or Newark. Why should customers buy from my store instead of the one across town or Target or Amazon? Personality certainly helps, as does community outreach and handling special orders.
One final thing I liked: The way meals were handled. I realize meals are paid for by sponsoring manufacturers but not having to sit through two hours of presentations by multiple manufacturers recapping the material they presented during their seminar earlier in the day. Keep meals to an hour, give publishers 5 to 10 minutes rather than 15 and attendees will be a lot happier.
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.
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