This last weekend we at EN Publishing attended UK Games Expo in Birmingham, as we do every year. This year was UKGE's busiest ever, and that was reflected in our takings for the show!
As usual, set-up day was Thursday. Thursday was a very hot day last week, and the UK has high humidity and little by way of air-conditioning, so it's not easy to cool down. Nevertheless, we arrived in two cars on Thursday afternoon to begin setting up our stand. Our stock always arrives separately, courtesy of our warehouse/fulfillment partner GamesQuest, and the tables, chairs, etc. are provided by UKGE, so there's not a massive amount of stuff we have to physically haul to the show. Importantly, this also means we can use cars, which lets us bypass the big queues of vans and lorries at set-up and tear-down.
Here was the team after we finished set-up (from left to right: Dave, Jess, Russ, Lauren, Al; Al is, in fact, normal human sized, but some weird perspective thing makes it look like he's Gandalf standing next to the hobbits!)
We were trying something new this year, with a shift into smaller items rather than the big hardcover books and chunky boxed sets we normally sell. Those things are hard to sell sight-unseen to convention-goers who are often buying on impulse. When we sell a £140 Voidrunner's Codex boxed set, or the three core rules hardcovers for Level Up via our online store, what we don't see is the three months somebody was thinking about and researching it--we just see the bit where they finally decide to hit the button. At a convention, folks don't get the luxury of that first stage, and so it's harder to take a risk on a big purchase. With that in mind, we started to, as an experiment, shift into smaller items in the £10-£15 range--our new card game Split the Hoard, our new ShortQuests for D&D, our Awfully Cheerful Engine game line, and our first solo adventure gamebook called Craven House. We were pleased to see that the experiment worked: those are much easier to sell! As a consequence, we will have a second card game, another load of ShortQuests, and one or two more solo adventure game books next year. We'll still have the big hardcovers, of course, but probably fewer on-hand; that stuff we'll focus more on selling via our online store and other venues.
UKGE has grown significantly over the last decade. This year, over 800 exhibitors filled up three enormous convention halls. And it really felt big--I was not able to see more than a fraction of what was there in the spare time I had off the stand for wandering the halls. That said, I only had one shift off-stand over the three days, so I wasn't able to cover as much as an attendee might in a full day or two. The sheer size of it made it easy to get lost amongst the maze of stands.
Fortunately for us all, the weather cooled from Friday through Sunday. I remember a year at UKGE, maybe in the mid 2010s, when the air conditioning in the exhibitor hall was not working and the weather was intense. That was a muggy, uncomfortable time for all with a very special aroma all of its own. Fortunately, that only happened the once!
Friday is usually a slowish day at UKGE, with the main traffic happening over the weekend. However, Friday felt noticeably busier than in previous years. We had our most successful Friday ever, and the nearby vendors we spoke to reported similar results. This was followed by an even busier Saturday and Sunday, making 2026 the most successful UK Games Expo--in terms of takings--we've ever had. While part of that was due to our shift towards smaller items, it was also definitely a direct result of the increased footfall at the show. It's not cheap appearing at a convention, especially when you take into account hotel fees for staff (at least there were no airfares, as there would be at a foreign convention like Gen Con!) so we never go in expecting to make vast amounts of profit, but we were pleasantly surprised this year.
That said, it's worth comparing to the other main convention we do every year--Dragonmeet in London. Dragonmeet is just one day rather than three, but it is very much more TTRPG focused; UKGE is boardgames first, TTRPGs a younger sibling. As a TTRPG publisher, we traditionally sell more in one day at Dragonmeet than we do on any given day at UKGE. This year is the first time that UKGE's Saturday (the busiest of the three days) has exceeded our Dragonmeet takings. Dragonmeet, like UKGE, is expanding year-on-year, and last year moved to its new location at London's ExCel, having outgrown the Hammersmith Novotel it had occupied for a number of years.
One of the other, less tangible benefits of attending a show like this as an exhibitor is the networking and marketing effects. Being there gets you 'seen' by folks who might never discover you otherwise; and meeting and chatting with fellow exhibitors, publishers, and manufacturers is incredibly valuable--and also fun! Over the repeated years, you make friends with other industry folks in ways that you might not online, and it becomes a real pleasure to catch up with these people once or twice a year at various conventions. Plus actually meeting your fans and customers is something you can't really replicate online. There's something special about when a podcast listener or somebody who ran one of your games drops by to say hello!
Of course, at a show like this it's not all games. There are stands for artists, writers, jewellery, even clothing. One exhibitor had an actual double-decker bus; our friends at Roll & Play Press brought along their 'tavern'--their stand is basically designed as a tavern, complete with walls etc., and the staff dresses as medieval tavern staff. It's awesome! Various cosplayers wandered the halls, from Ghostbusters to Doctor(s) Who to D&D characters. I found an amazing Star Trek stand full of starship models and toys and cards and other paraphernalia, and bought myself a couple of gold-coloured Enterprises. Shiny nerd trinkets acquired!
In other news, our attempts to eat were met with persistent failure. We booked restaurants all four nights. Thursday night we arrived for our table at TGI's in the nearby Resorts World only to be told they had 'run out of food'. Friday night we went out for a curry, and found that the restaurant did not have an alcohol license--I'm told this is common in Birmingham. Saturday night we were so tired that we decided to just eat in the hotel--the most Premier of Inns, I'm told. We waited an hour for our starters, while the table next to us arrived, ordered, ate three courses, paid, and left; and when they arrived they'd brought one of us three prawn cocktails for reasons unknown, and then our main course 17 seconds later; we asked "Can we eat our starters first, please?" and were grumpily informed "oh, well it'll have to go back under the hot lamp then." Yum. And finally, for the Friday night we booked our official team dinner at Las Iguanas, again in Resorts World, to be informed when we came to order dessert that no, we were not allowed to finish our meal as the kitchen was now closed (and no, it wasn't late--it might have been nice to know we were on a speed-eating run before we started!) So, convention: win. Eateries in Birmingham: disaster zone! I'd say we were just unlucky four times in a row, but we had similar issues last year, too. Ah well.
Overall, though, we had a blast. It was by far the most exhausting UKGE we've done, but it's also incredibly rewarding. Thank you to everybody who stopped by our stand, to everybody who took a chance on a new book from us, to all our friends and fellow exhibitors who it is always a delight to see, and to the UKGE staff who were great. Next stop: Dragonmeet in December!
As usual, set-up day was Thursday. Thursday was a very hot day last week, and the UK has high humidity and little by way of air-conditioning, so it's not easy to cool down. Nevertheless, we arrived in two cars on Thursday afternoon to begin setting up our stand. Our stock always arrives separately, courtesy of our warehouse/fulfillment partner GamesQuest, and the tables, chairs, etc. are provided by UKGE, so there's not a massive amount of stuff we have to physically haul to the show. Importantly, this also means we can use cars, which lets us bypass the big queues of vans and lorries at set-up and tear-down.
Here was the team after we finished set-up (from left to right: Dave, Jess, Russ, Lauren, Al; Al is, in fact, normal human sized, but some weird perspective thing makes it look like he's Gandalf standing next to the hobbits!)
We were trying something new this year, with a shift into smaller items rather than the big hardcover books and chunky boxed sets we normally sell. Those things are hard to sell sight-unseen to convention-goers who are often buying on impulse. When we sell a £140 Voidrunner's Codex boxed set, or the three core rules hardcovers for Level Up via our online store, what we don't see is the three months somebody was thinking about and researching it--we just see the bit where they finally decide to hit the button. At a convention, folks don't get the luxury of that first stage, and so it's harder to take a risk on a big purchase. With that in mind, we started to, as an experiment, shift into smaller items in the £10-£15 range--our new card game Split the Hoard, our new ShortQuests for D&D, our Awfully Cheerful Engine game line, and our first solo adventure gamebook called Craven House. We were pleased to see that the experiment worked: those are much easier to sell! As a consequence, we will have a second card game, another load of ShortQuests, and one or two more solo adventure game books next year. We'll still have the big hardcovers, of course, but probably fewer on-hand; that stuff we'll focus more on selling via our online store and other venues.
Our stand, ready for action, before the show opened on the Friday morning!
UKGE has grown significantly over the last decade. This year, over 800 exhibitors filled up three enormous convention halls. And it really felt big--I was not able to see more than a fraction of what was there in the spare time I had off the stand for wandering the halls. That said, I only had one shift off-stand over the three days, so I wasn't able to cover as much as an attendee might in a full day or two. The sheer size of it made it easy to get lost amongst the maze of stands.
Fortunately for us all, the weather cooled from Friday through Sunday. I remember a year at UKGE, maybe in the mid 2010s, when the air conditioning in the exhibitor hall was not working and the weather was intense. That was a muggy, uncomfortable time for all with a very special aroma all of its own. Fortunately, that only happened the once!
Friday is usually a slowish day at UKGE, with the main traffic happening over the weekend. However, Friday felt noticeably busier than in previous years. We had our most successful Friday ever, and the nearby vendors we spoke to reported similar results. This was followed by an even busier Saturday and Sunday, making 2026 the most successful UK Games Expo--in terms of takings--we've ever had. While part of that was due to our shift towards smaller items, it was also definitely a direct result of the increased footfall at the show. It's not cheap appearing at a convention, especially when you take into account hotel fees for staff (at least there were no airfares, as there would be at a foreign convention like Gen Con!) so we never go in expecting to make vast amounts of profit, but we were pleasantly surprised this year.
That said, it's worth comparing to the other main convention we do every year--Dragonmeet in London. Dragonmeet is just one day rather than three, but it is very much more TTRPG focused; UKGE is boardgames first, TTRPGs a younger sibling. As a TTRPG publisher, we traditionally sell more in one day at Dragonmeet than we do on any given day at UKGE. This year is the first time that UKGE's Saturday (the busiest of the three days) has exceeded our Dragonmeet takings. Dragonmeet, like UKGE, is expanding year-on-year, and last year moved to its new location at London's ExCel, having outgrown the Hammersmith Novotel it had occupied for a number of years.
One of the other, less tangible benefits of attending a show like this as an exhibitor is the networking and marketing effects. Being there gets you 'seen' by folks who might never discover you otherwise; and meeting and chatting with fellow exhibitors, publishers, and manufacturers is incredibly valuable--and also fun! Over the repeated years, you make friends with other industry folks in ways that you might not online, and it becomes a real pleasure to catch up with these people once or twice a year at various conventions. Plus actually meeting your fans and customers is something you can't really replicate online. There's something special about when a podcast listener or somebody who ran one of your games drops by to say hello!
Of course, at a show like this it's not all games. There are stands for artists, writers, jewellery, even clothing. One exhibitor had an actual double-decker bus; our friends at Roll & Play Press brought along their 'tavern'--their stand is basically designed as a tavern, complete with walls etc., and the staff dresses as medieval tavern staff. It's awesome! Various cosplayers wandered the halls, from Ghostbusters to Doctor(s) Who to D&D characters. I found an amazing Star Trek stand full of starship models and toys and cards and other paraphernalia, and bought myself a couple of gold-coloured Enterprises. Shiny nerd trinkets acquired!
In other news, our attempts to eat were met with persistent failure. We booked restaurants all four nights. Thursday night we arrived for our table at TGI's in the nearby Resorts World only to be told they had 'run out of food'. Friday night we went out for a curry, and found that the restaurant did not have an alcohol license--I'm told this is common in Birmingham. Saturday night we were so tired that we decided to just eat in the hotel--the most Premier of Inns, I'm told. We waited an hour for our starters, while the table next to us arrived, ordered, ate three courses, paid, and left; and when they arrived they'd brought one of us three prawn cocktails for reasons unknown, and then our main course 17 seconds later; we asked "Can we eat our starters first, please?" and were grumpily informed "oh, well it'll have to go back under the hot lamp then." Yum. And finally, for the Friday night we booked our official team dinner at Las Iguanas, again in Resorts World, to be informed when we came to order dessert that no, we were not allowed to finish our meal as the kitchen was now closed (and no, it wasn't late--it might have been nice to know we were on a speed-eating run before we started!) So, convention: win. Eateries in Birmingham: disaster zone! I'd say we were just unlucky four times in a row, but we had similar issues last year, too. Ah well.
Overall, though, we had a blast. It was by far the most exhausting UKGE we've done, but it's also incredibly rewarding. Thank you to everybody who stopped by our stand, to everybody who took a chance on a new book from us, to all our friends and fellow exhibitors who it is always a delight to see, and to the UKGE staff who were great. Next stop: Dragonmeet in December!
