The Importance of Events

Whoo, it's an especially busy Q2 this year. I am in the midst of attending events and/or traveling for five weekends in a row.

The Cancer Society Games Fair kicked off the 2025 Cheeky tour. It was the event's fourth year, and I had some concerns after last year that it wasn't attracting repeat customers. I suggested a way Cheeky Parrot could add value to the event: for the same amount of money I've donated in previous years to have a two-table booth, I offered to run a family free play area instead. Although the event was slow to get revved up on both days, I and the lovely volunteers I was able to recruit entertained a gratifying stream of attendees. We were a little busier on Mother's Day Sunday and can only hope that might have been down to word of mouth, both for the event and our area in particular. Organisers were pleased with turnout but hope to hit the 2000 attendee target next year.

Being on my own working from home most of the time, it really does me good to have a chance to interact with the people who play my games. It's such a special and sacred thing to be a loved part of someone's childhood and to know I've already managed to create a few evergreen games that just might still be around for these girls' own children to enjoy someday:

This is a staged recreation of what was a spontaneous outporing of enthusiasm when the girls spotted my Hoard T shirt and they learned I publish their "favourite board game ever".

I've made several attempts over the years to get into overseas markets but for the most part, my efforts simply haven't paid off and lately I've been thinking I should keep my focus here in Aotearoa, my adopted home and the birthplace of my company. A Fairgoer who'd heard of Cheeky Parrot but didn't realise we were a Kiwi firm brought this point home to me.

Events allow me to see which games work best for certain groups. Our crowd pleasers, Granny Wars and Flipology, take up to eight players and work well for all-adult groups. Competitive couples seem to especially enjoy Flaming Pyramids, which is at its most strategic at that player count. Raid the Pantry played in two teams of two, Hoard, and Flipology are great starter games for families. This sort of information is useful for my retailers

too.

Game designer meet ups are well and good but events are an opportunity to foist prototype games on the general public. At the Games Fair we even conducted a poll about the best name for a prospective game and garnered some really useful intel!

Of course, especially when I have to go out of Auckland, it can be expensive to attend events and since I don't sell directly to the public myself, impossible to have any concrete measure of the ROI. This year I will use my travel budget to attend a couple of events for the first time: Board at Valkyrie (which has been known as Board in Palmy) and Tabletop Tūranga, a free family event in its third year and now running for two days at the main Christchurch Library. I'll also mix business with pleasure during a short trip to Southland with my husband. I look forward to meeting retailers in that region and visiting their stores.