Posted in: Comics | Tagged:

Diamond Retailer Best Practices Awards: Summer 2019 – Best Movie Display

Published Mon, 15 Jul 2019 12:30:49 -0500

The Diamond Retailer Best Practices Awards: Summer 2019 will be announced as San Diego Comic-Con on the Friday. Submitted by retailers, the Diamond BPAs seek to identify and honour comic shops that demonstrate "best practices" in their stores, offering customers and community a consistently appealing shopping experience…

Nominations for the Summer 2019 Awards span four categories: Best Kids Section, Best Free Comic Book Day Event, Best Online Ad Campaign, and Best Movie Themed Display. Winners in each category receive $250 credit from Diamond.

Here are the nominations for the Best Movie Display Section.

Korka Comics – Pembroke Pines, FL

With Avengers Endgame coming out we knew it was going to be the movie of year. The anticipation for this release was eating at everyone since Infinity War. We really wanted to capitalize on this by converting our main display in the front of our store to feature only everything and anything Avengers.

We ended up with a four tiered shelf of amazing items starting off with key Avengers comics, trades and hard covers. We wanted to make sure that fans could really dive into the Avengers mythos beyond what they have seen on the screen to get a better appreciation for the characters and maybe even become subscribers to the books.

With Funko Pops being a huge fan favorite we of course had to have those included. We had various pops from multiple different MCU movies including Avengers on display for fans to get their hands on.

Action figures, from Marvel Select to Marvel Legends, we had a our fair share of Avengers toys on display and ready for people to grab.

Finally, for those who wanted to cosplay or just have fun at home pretending to be their favorite hero or villain, we had life size replicas of key items such as Captain America's shield to Thanos' Infinity Gauntlet that people could wear and interact with.

The display was well noticed by our customers and made for great sales on our end.

Comic Quest – Lake Forest, CA

We create a rotating display of movie related graphic novels, comics and related toys. We display material for each upcoming movie. Examples: Shazam, Captain Marvel, Pokemon, Avengers, Dark Phoenix, Spider-man, etc.

To help create fun & pizazz, we added a red carpet that runs from the front entrance to the display. As well as theater style gold poles and velvet ropes. These add to the theme and frame the entire display.

To connect the movie to the comics, we include in each display a poster from the actual movie, and a poster of a similar comic cover. We incorporate logos from both the movie and from the comics.

While the top section promotes the movie material, the lower section includes other hot media tie-ins, to make it easier for new customers to find familiar products like Umbrella Academy, Sabrina, Happy, etc.

An artist on our staff paints our outside windows with movie related characters. Each window is created before each movie to add to the promotional timing and anticipation. See pictures below.

To add to the display we used a rotating lighting unit. The DJ style lightshow helped simulate a movie premiere style.

Level Up Entertainment – Mays Landing, NJ

The most ambitious crossover in movie history deserves to at least be our featured section for a month. Located at the front of the store, so you'll see it as soon as you walk in, seeing Endgame is inevitable. We tried to keep at least one title for each principle hero and one shelf for the villains, stay perfectly balanced, as all things should be.

Famous Faces & Funnies – West Melbourne, FL

You can find a movie display every day at Famous Faces! We have a red colored rack directly in front of the front counter that we use as a staging ground for all our movie displays. Currently, you can find Godzilla, Spider-Man, Dark Phoenix/X-Men books, a little bit of Captain Marvel still since it's just now out on DVD, and a few comics that reminded us a whole lot of Brightburn! Before that, you would have found Shazam, Avengers, and more! We often have a display of Pops right to the side of it with whatever correlates to the rack best. Each change of the rack goes on Facebook, usually with a deal where if you bring us your ticket for Avengers, for example, from a local theater you'll get 20% Avengers or Avengers team-related merchandise including anything on the red rack.

It isn't the flashiest display, but it gets the job done. Keeping it right up front allows us to engage customers with it and answer any questions they may have. When Umbrella Academy dropped its first season, we were constantly selling out of both volumes off this rack until we were sold out completely. The same thing happened with a few different Miles Morales titles when Into The Spider-Verse released. Just having the books out where people can see them is enough to sell them. It helps that they're popular titles (UA probably being the less well known of the last year); some of them sell themselves such as Infinity Gauntlet.

So, with that in mind, we keep it simple. We just change it out as we see fit, and always make sure it's well stocked without being overwhelming.

We also have a constant display case we frequently change out featuring comics, graphic novels, toys, and Pops at our local movie theater just four minutes down the street from us. We bring our prize wheel where we give away several Comics, graphic novels, and other prizes at every movie premiere weekend where we are promoting our Free Comic Book Day and other store events. We have a great relationship with Cinemaworld over the last 20 years and it helps get new people in our store after every comic movie!

Chimera's Comics – LaGrange, IL

Chimera's Comics has always strived to be a safe, welcoming environment to all our customers, whether it's a typical business day or a special weekend for comic fans, like Wonder Woman's release was for so many of us! We created displays that featured content for all reading levels, toys for collectors, and back issues at a discount for those who wanted to take a look at Wonder Woman's history. Alongside our display, we invited and promoted several local comic creators, all women in various fields of the industry and the fandom, to host a panel and sell their wares (for free of course) in a makeshift artist alley! We had wonderful turnout with supportive customers who partook in activities like DIY tiaras, coloring stations and photos with Diana herself!

Space Cadets Collection Collection – Oak Ridge North, TX

We are getting hyped for the Bloodshot movie and so have made a large display with all of the Bloodshot and related material we can find: graphic novels, figures, Promo material, standees, posters and vintage key comics. Many thanks to Valiant for helping us with items to make this display.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!