Memorable Customers - Arrow-Dude
Welcome to the first of many Memorable Customers. This is a collection of awesome customers (for whatever reason) that stick out in the minds of our LUDers. Join us to get to know some fantastic people who visit us at conventions or send us an email over the interwebs.
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My first memorable customer came to me at my very first LUD convention, Sydney Supanova. It was my first time out on the floor so, needless to say, everything was pretty confusing. I’ve spent the entire morning of Day 1 showing beautiful dice to awesome people, and receiving gasps and squeals of delight. Then, a customer approaches the booth curiously, almost cautiously, and starts to look at the dual-colour aluminium dice sets.
“Hi!” I said, greeting him with a smile and a wave, “have you seen our dice before?”
He looks up with a wry smile, looking almost concerned for me, “no… what is all this?”
I was more than happy to answer. “These are our aluminium dice sets, they’re precision cut so they’re as accurate as dice can be!”
He looks confused. I try to steer him in a different direction and pull out a Malachite D12.
“And this is a die made out of semi-precious stone, this particular one is Malachite!”
He looks at it, mildly intrigued but still with an extremely confused look on his face. I was starting to think that maybe he didn’t quite know what dice was.
“Do you play roleplaying games?” I asked, trying to probe.
He looked up from the Malachite D12 in his hand at me as if I was somewhat crazy and replied “no.”
I tried again. “Do you play board games?”
The answer was identical, “no.”
“Video games?”
“No.”
I was trying to rack my brain as to what else was at Supanova, “comic books?”
“No.”
At this point I had truly run out of ideas. “What are you at Supanova for?”
“To take a picture with Arrow.”
Of course! I had totally forgotten about the gigantic lines that make up half of Supanova visitors waiting to see their favourite actors.
He then launched into an epic tale of how Arrow changed his life and it would be such an amazing experience to see the actor live. He also mentioned how the Malachite reminded him of the character because of its colours. Eventually, he returned the D12, and meandered off to find the queue for his favourite dude.
Fast forward to the end of the show, as we were packing up the dice to hibernate until another show, I saw a familiar face across the cabinets. I couldn’t pick a name, but I could certainly tell we had had a conversation before. He was greeting me with a massive grin on his face and waving excitedly. As I greeted him with equal enthusiasm, he pulled out a signed poster of Arrow. I realised it was the same customer from earlier that weekend coming back to show me his beloved Arrow wares.
“You got it!” I exclaimed, surprisingly excited for him, “You got the Arrow stuff! You accomplished what you came to Supanova for!”
He was beaming, grinning from ear to ear, “I did. Thank you. I’m so happy.”
He looked around at the booth being packed up, and looked almost sad.
“Maybe by next year, I would have started playing Dungeons and Dragons, and I’ll be back to see you and your dice again,” he said to me with a smile, his longest sentence to me yet, and turned and melted into the crowd on their way out of the centre.
Arrow-Dude, if you’re out there, I hope you’re enjoying you signed Arrow poster and picture. I hope you’ve stumbled into your local game store and tried out a D&D game or two. I hope I’ll get to see you again and present you your first set of luxury dice.