I posted a few hours ago: “I’m curious how many people will show. I expect it will be more than twenty. I hope it will be more than forty.”
I can’t name numbers. Trade secret. Sorry.
I can say this. I way low-balled the number of customers that showed up for the midnight launch. Even at my most delerious I wouldn’t have imagined this many customers for a PC game.
I hoped for forty. I had a lot more than forty people pick up World of WarCraft. Gamers in the Raleigh area are a happy lot tonight.
Wow.
I knew when I arrived back at the store at 11:30 that I made the right decision. A dozen people were outside the store awaiting patiently. As the minutes to midnight ticked down I couldn’t get a good feel for the number of customers out in the parking lot–the shopping center doesn’t have a lighted parking lot. So when one of my employees opened the door and told the customers to walk to the back of the store and then up to the counter to form an orderly line I wasn’t prepared to see the store filled. The line ran from the counter, to the back corner, and back to the door, and there were still people outside, who couldn’t fit into the store.
Wow.
Forty-five minutes later it was over. World of WarCraft was in the hands of the public. I was positively giddy.
A lark of an idea I had on Friday, one of those idle thoughts sometimes best left ignored, had paid off in spades, beyond my wildest imaginings. We sold through ninety percent of our stock in forty-five minutes. Ninety percent. All but a handful of copies had been sold. Only a few hintbooks remained.
I couldn’t have done this without my staff. The stepped up to the plate, made the phone calls on Saturday to the pre-order list advertising the midnight opening, and spread the word. Were it not for their efforts our midnight sale would not have been half as successful. I cannot thank them enough.
Sometimes I amaze even myself. 😉