❖ Version History ❖

3rd-4th of December 2023
In the weeks that came immediately after the conclusion of our Kickstarter experience, there were some swift decisions that had to be made. With it being the mid of November, we knew that we had a product in hand, and that it was time to start capitalizing on the winter marketplace for the holiday season!

Almost exactly one year prior to this point in time I had begun attending some event spaces that I thought would one day be good destinations for selling the game if we ever reached the point of publication. At this point, I knew it was time to reach out to these event planners and see what we could get ourselves involved in with the short amount of time that we had to plan. This led us to two very important (and totally different) event plans that we assembled at the last minute for December: The Yule Festival & Start in the Station.

But with just a product in hand were we truly ready to take on the task of local events? The answer, of course, was: no. There are so many things that needed to be done on an incredibly short timeline to get us prepared for this next major step up. The key elements missing from our repertoire of business ingredients at this point in time were:

1. Financial Transactions: Though we have developed a product and now brought it to market, we were not operating as a physical storefront. So, up until this point in time, we have never needed to prepare credit or cash transactions in person, we have only ever operated online. As a result, we were in need of establishing a POS system for the company, and a cash purse as well.

2. Table Presence: As akin to our in-person cashing out problem, we have never needed to decorate a space with our content before. We had many wonderful things that we could display on a table, or on a shelf, but we had no such preparation for: banners, posters, table coverings, or other displays to drawn in the attention of customers who might be walking by or interested in talking to us / doing business.

To solve these problems, I immediately got in touch with the bank to begin the preparation for our POS system and get some hardware ordered. After setting that up, I whipped up some tapestry designs of the cards / logos from Calendra and got those ordered with expedited shipping. We only had about 3-4 weeks to prepare for all of this between kickstarter conclusion and event #1, but the timeline was exactly long enough for what we needed. Here are the photos and stories of our two events:

~:: The Yule Festival ::~

The Winter Yule Festival takes place in New England once a year, and is hosted by the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism). This year, we were honored to take up a table space for this event! We had a splendid time meeting all of the wonderful people who visit this space annually, and we were very grateful for the large area we had available to share the Calendra experience! (talk about the perfect place to get down for a medieval Celtic card game!)

Our event table was broken into two parts, we had a 10ft. display of all the current Librarium Games Products, and we also were lucky enough to have a play testing space available to let people who were curious about the game take a moment to settle in and give it a try!

~:: StART in the Station ::~

Similarly to the Yule Festival, there is a special artist market space that is held once per year in the central train station of Worcester. This space is meant to highlight the wonderful local / small businesses in the area who produce art based and homemade products. This was a perfect location for us. We highlight a mix of very art-driven designed products, alongside handmade products like the shirts and books that we sell as auxiliary products for our games!

Though this time around the space was much smaller and a bit cramped for the day, we still had a nice little setup where we really condensed everything that we had to offer into our tiny 6ft. space!

Taking on these new adventures in the field was an experiment for us to see how we would fare in the public marketplace. Though this was all a test to see how things would turn out, it could not hav possibly gone better. We had a great time, we made many new friends, we had a very positive business experience selling nearly 2k in product in the two short days, and we confirmed for ourselves that this is not only something we are capable of, but very excited to do again in the future.

Unfortunately though, this was the end of our event / marketing planning for the 2022 year. While we were so happy to bring all of this magic to life, there was a limit to how much we could get done. It was a magical experience to bring the Kickstarter to life, and to attend some local events, but now we need to sit back for a bit this winter and begin concocting new content and plans for the upcoming 2023 experience!

In the months to come, we hope to organize several other in-person events, update our website presence for the Calendra suite of products & prepare it for more content to come in the future. Additionally, we are very much looking forward to doing some more work on another one of our games which we hope to release in the next year or so: Phoenix Farm. This may mean that there will be a lull in our online presence as we get ourselves prepared, but please stay tuned my friends, the Librarium will be back for more fun adventures soon!