Another midnight opening. This time, for World of WarCraft.
Unlike Halo 2, though, this isn’t a company-wide phenomenon. In fact, I know of no other stores in the chain doing a midnight opening.
Like Halo 2 we had the product in stores, in the backroom, awaiting the street date. Pre-sells were solid, substantial, not Halo 2-like numbers, but several times the anemic numbers Half-Life 2 produced.
I pondered. What if we did a midnight opening, what if fifteen or twenty people showed up? Twenty copies of the regular edition at fifty dollars a pop, that’s a thousand dollars in sales. I pulled up the pre-sell list, called up a few customers I knew fairly well, and posed the question, “Would you be open to a midnight sale on World of WarCraft?” Five customers called. All five said, “Damn skippy.”
On Friday’s distict conference call I brought up the idea. Would the company be opposed if we did a midnight opening? My district manager was all for the idea, even encouraging it as a way of getting the jump on the competition. And visions of that thousand dollars in sales danced around my mind.
I’m curious how many people will show. I expect it will be more than twenty. I hope it will be more than forty.
No one is requiring that I do this. Had I the sense to not spread myself thin at this time of year–and I assure you, there are a million reasons I’m already stretched out near my limits–I might have gone the safe and narrow and banished all thought of a midnight opening from my mind. But I want to do something different, something unexpected. I want to stand apart from the crowd.
I want to win.
In three hours I’ll know.
Too bad that a) I don’t live near you, and b) I’d have no way of getting home from a midnight opening since the buses stop running around 10:30. 🙁
Good luck! Tell us all about it!
I think we won, Allyn. Good job on everyone’s part.