7th Inning Stretch with Scott Fragale - Live from The Hawaii Trade Conference

As some of you may know by now, I'm down in Florida at the Hawaii Trade Conference (it used to be held in Hawaii but has since been relocated to Florida) which is the sports collectibles industry's yearly conference of dealers, manufactuers and licensors. The conference is a three-day event in which a wide variety of topics are discussed including successful business priciples, roundtable discussions with retailers and the manufactuers, expert panel discussions and Q&A sessions where anything and everything sports collectibles is fair game.

With the state of the industry and the the state of the economy in general, this year's event may be more important than ever before. Because of that and the fact that many could not attend in person because of those economic factors, I'll try and give you a brief recap of the events taking place and some of the highlights. If you have any questions or want more details, please make a post and I'll check back throughout the conference and try and answer those questions as best as I can.

Dave McCarthy (NHL senior marketing director) discussed:

3 basic principles to build on: 1. Know your customer/ serve them well; 2. Make great products; 3. market them aggressively

New Hockey calendar host events from October straight through June including: NHL Faceoff which combines music & start of NHL season; Premier Series which will be a 2-game series in Stockholm, Sweden and Helsinki (possible) Finland for 2010; Winter Classic: New Year's Day game featured game at Wrigley Field with 41,000 in attendance in 2009 and looking at a 2010 game at Boston's Fenway Park, sample packs were given out to all those in attendance and encouraged those receiving sample packs to complete the entire set; Card & Memorabilia shows set up for NHL All-Star weekend; NHL Entry Draft; Opened up flagship NHL store in New York

Josh Zusman Hockey Brand Manager UD discussed: How well new products such as UD Black, a high-end product that was released early in the season for the first time and UD Collector's Choice were both very well received in the hobby. Other successful products included the Montreal Canadiens 100-year Centennial set. Other successes included National Hockey Card day: 200, 5-card packs to hobby and retail stores with plan to expand in 2009; Rookie Class Campaign; build on success of UpperDeckU.com which is targeting 6-14 year old boys to expose multi-player online game; Stronger advertising campaigns aimed at children.

Dr. Kim Beason of Univ. of Mississippi discussed results of Consumer Behavior Study (that was also conducted in 2004) including: 55% of people questioned still want to collect despite tough economic times; other interesting results provided were that most consumers still feel there are too many products and the fact that many collectors are switching focus toward autograph collecting vs. card collecting.

Other notes: 85% said they currently collect cards vs. 70% in 2004; 61% indicated the reason they no longer collect cards is because the did not believe the quality of content of the cards justified the price of the cards; 33% said they no longer collect because the found another area of sports collecting (mainly autographs) and 58% indicated that they didn't believe the money they spent on cards would hold its value over time.

What this says to me is that people simply want more bang for their buck when it comes to buying cards. They also want a chance to hit it big, with many buying into Lottery mentality. While that type of buying won't go away anytime soon, people need to get back to collecting for the love of collecting and not because their looking to get rich quick. Until that happens the hobby will continue to have dissatisfied customers but those people will likely find something else to bitch about even if they do pull a rare rookie sig card.

Back with more from the Trade Conference later.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009 5:02:27 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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