Letter from the Executive Director

Dear friends,

Welcome to the Fall 2021 issue of Around the Table. It’s hard to believe that the holidays are just around the corner. For many this is the busiest quarter of the year and is the culmination of all your efforts this year to have a positive holiday season for your games and stores.

In this issue, Dawn Studebaker offers suggestions for low cost ways to put your store on its best footing to impact the effects of buying decisions with visual cues has been a technique that takes your store to the next level with her “Visual Merchandising” article. In addition, GRD Chair Jennifer Ward offers “A Retailers Perspective on Attending GAMA EXPO” looking at how you can calculate the ROI of attending one of the biggest B2B events in our industry. GAMA recently rolled out the Horizons Fellowship program to support unrepresented communities in our industry.

We would like to take a moment to introduce you to the first class of Fellows and learn a little more about their story and how this new six-month accelerator program seeks to help them with “A New Pathway in the Tabletop Games Industry”.

We hope you find these articles useful. As the magazine of the tabletop games industry, we want the publication to be interesting and have actionable information for you. As such we welcome submissions for articles for the magazine. If you have an idea for a story or something you would like to share, please send an email to us at media@gama.org.

Last, I would like to personally invite you to attend the upcoming GAMA EXPO, March 14-18 in Reno, Nevada. We are super excited to be back to in person shows having just completed our Trade Day Program @ Origins Game Fair which was very successful.

For GAMA EXPO 2022 we are expecting a full exhibitor hall with more than 150 game publishers and distributors, two days of peer-to-peer education programs, and hours of networking and learning from your fellow industry professionals. For more information on the trade show, please visit our website at: https://www.gama.org/page/gama-expo.

See you in Reno!

Regards, John Stacy, Executive Director

Thank you to all the industry professionals who contribute their time and expertise to Around the Table! If you would like to contribute to future issues of Around the Table by suggesting a topic or writing your own article, please email media@gama.org.