Our final outing for March is the 2-day Triples show, taking place on the weekend of 19th/20th March at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield.

The club website is here: http://sheffieldtriples.co.uk/ but there's no trader list as yet.

We'll need pre-orders sending through to us before Sat 12th please.  We're extremely busy with all these shows, so please don't leave it too late!

Anybody heading along to Triples this weekend?

Nope. Not me.

Its never been a show I've been interested in visiting, for some reason. I've been to Leeds, York and Kelham, but I've never thought about going to Sheffield.
I think its the name that's always thrown me. The Triples. I always, wrongly, thought it was just a big wargames tournament.

Quote from: RoyWilliamson on 14 March 2016, 08:43:32 PM
I always, wrongly, thought it was just a big wargames tournament.

It used to be, but these days it's reduced down to a couple of dozen gamers at most.

Been to Triples a few times.
Before and after the move to the English Institute of Sport.
Somehow its lost some of its character. I haven't attended for the last two years, but its worth a visit.

The Grimsby Wargames Society's putting on a Anglo Dutch War naval battle, and I'm attending on Sunday

Take care

Andy

I'm reading quite the few opinionated (re)views about this show, on Facebook and blogs.
I hope Pendraken (and Colonel Bills) did well  

Living almost within spiting distance, I went both days, Saturday for a wander around and today for a bit of buying.

I thought it was relatively busy and possibly bigger than the last one I went to a couple of years ago.

Went on Saturday and to be honest I wasn't greatly impressed. It didn't seem to be at all busy and I'd think that traders might have been disappointed. A two day show must be costly for them.

 Here is a few pictures of triples

Triples Sheffield Wargames Show 2016

Take care

Andy

Nice looking games.

What a terrific photographic report, Andy. Thanks for posting. Particularly like the Anglo Dutch ships (Langton?).

Quote from: Womble67 on 21 March 2016, 11:13:39 AM
Here is a few pictures of triples

Great piccies, Andy.

Did you take them really early on, or was it that quiet ? Hardly seems to be anyone there. 

Cheers - Phil

From other pics I've seen they look like pre-show ones as there are so few punters around

Quote from: Westmarcher on 21 March 2016, 12:35:25 PM
What a terrific photographic report, Andy. Thanks for posting. Particularly like the Anglo Dutch ships (Langton?).

Yes Langton that game was put on by a Andy H & Steve M both from the Grimsby Wargames Society

Quote from: Techno on 21 March 2016, 02:35:25 PM
Great piccies, Andy.

Did you take them really early on, or was it that quiet ? Hardly seems to be anyone there. 

Cheers - Phil

No it was like a ghost town, a number of traders are saying they won't be coming back. Which would be a great shame.

Take care

Andy

Stroll on.....If it was that quiet, you can't blame the traders.

Cheers - Phil

I considered going even though it meant getting up around 5am to get on a train at 6am and not getting back home until after 11pm. In the end Real Life (tm) got in the way and I didn't go.

From what I'm reading on-line and the report back from two friends who went I'm glad I didn't go tbh.

One of those who went said words to the effect that Claymore (my local show) was busier before the doors opened than this show was when it was "busy." Which is probably an exaggeration but doesn't inspire me to try to go next year!

Are there too many shows, too close together at this time of year ?

Cheers - Phil

I've posted on our Facebook page today with a lot of responses (https://www.facebook.com/pendraken/), so I'll pop it here as well:

There's been a lot of comment and discussion online since Triples, so here's our viewpoint on it.

The show was extremely quiet, to the point where I can't remember the last time a show felt that quiet. The numbers through the door were significantly down on previous years, despite claims to the contrary. Our takings are down over 50% over the past two years at Triples. Around 90% of the traders I spoke with during the weekend were in a similar situation, and even the ones who did well were still generally unhappy with the event in it's current form.

There were 21 traders missing from last year, the majority of them being well-known faces you'd expect to see at a large event like this. By Sunday afternoon, there were at least another 10 who said they won't be returning next year.

Unfortunately, I don't think we'll be back either in it's current form. If they move it back to May and reduce it to a one-day show then we'd consider it, but as the last of 3 shows in 3 weekends, all within 80 miles of each other, it just doesn't work for us. After 3 weekends on the road, we're well behind on our mail orders and we'll all be working overtime this current week to catch up.

The other major concern this year was that there was no advertising to inform people of the change of date. The first time I saw it online was Tuesday night on TMP, 4 days before the event. Various customers on the day told me they'd only found out about it in the week prior. If you move your date and don't tell anyone about it, then it can't be a surprise when the numbers fall dramatically, as we all saw this weekend.

I'll pass feedback on to the organisers, as well as offering to help out if there's anything we can do, but the trouble is that it rarely seems to have any effect and they carry on regardless. That might be OK in the very short-term, but once the more well-known traders start dropping out of any show then there's less and less reason for the majority of gamers to come along. With venue hire costs as high as they've got, you can't afford to ignore the kind of comments/feedback we've seen online so far.

This was looking down at the hall from the gallery, at 11:30am on Saturday, which should be peak visitor time:


I did a rough headcount while I was up there and got around 400 in both halls at that point.