We will not be at The National
Do not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time, it will bring a harvest if you do not give up.
I went to my first National in 2018. Fell in love with the show and the card family that comes along with it. The show is a great opportunity to meet collectors and make new friends from all over the world. I absolutely love meeting our customers. The dinners, the conversations in the hotel - every minute is an opportunity to start a new relationship as well as an opportunity to grow our brand.
There are countless benefits to attending this show every year, but the most productive moments are spent learning from hobby legends like the owners of Indy Card Exchange, RbiCru7, and Meelypops. I will definitely miss that this year!
Sometimes, you have to make hard decisions.
The logistics are a hard factor for every card business's day-to-day operations back home. For us, the week of The National is Sort Week - where we ship out our subscription boxes (taking orders through Sunday). The best option was to ship our boxes in the first week of August. We had to ship June's program a week late and I did not feel good about doing that again for July's program.
Along with the logistics, the financial side of setting up at The National was looking more and more irresponsible. To be completely transparent, we did not have a good March-April-May with our Pack Plus Program. We have been playing catch up ever since. We had to sell a significant amount of our singles to help the cause. Selling these singles (and not being able to replenish quickly) was reducing the potential of a successful show at The National. We reached a point where the amount of inventory and the cost of the trip was not worth complicating our subscription box responsibilities.
It was a hard decision, but I believe it to be the right one for our business at this time. We were able to do some catching up and make June's program especially strong. July's program is strong as well - each Gold Football Box is guaranteed to have a hobby pack of both Chronicles and Optic. We want to continue to invest in our subscription box, making it a great opportunity for those collectors that love to rip packs. I am happy with our efforts and will continue to push forward.
Our biggest upgrade in our Pack Plus Program will be the introduction of The Golden Ticket. This promotion is going to be a $400-$600 giveaway to someone that has a gold subscription. At this point in July, there are only 58 gold subscriptions. We are actually going to give away one Golden Ticket per 1,000 packs sold (we are over 1500 right now in July). Imagine having a gold subscription for $255, getting $275+ worth of packs, then getting a FREE box of Prizm Hobby Basketball. Yea, that's going to happen to some folks.
