Magic Shop
Magic fascinates us from when we are small children and someone produces a coin from behind our ear until we are adults transfixed by the likes of David Blaine. We all want to know what the trick is, and many amateurs spend a fortune trying to emulate the big name professionals.
In idea #047 we talked about joke shops and many people will see the similarities between the two ideas, but be careful as Magicians are a proud bunch and see their illusions as a craft requiring a lot of practice, patience and skill. Talk about tricks, novelties and other unflattering terms will soon lose you your potential customer base.
You will need to stock both basic/beginners illusions and more complex ones. It may also be a good thing to carry related books and training materials particularly if you are an expert and able to write them yourself as this can be very lucrative.
Distributing your illusions can be done using any of the following: -
Ebay
Website
Conventions
Community events, charity dinners etc.
Advertise
Shop
Ebay has over 1600 results if you search for “illusion” but many products use the word to enhance their own appeal. Limiting this to “illusion magic” produces 279 results; some of which retail for thousands of dollars. The more customary “magic trick” search brings more than 2700 results but misspelling this as “magik trick” only produces one entrepreneurial entry, a mini magic rope cut trick.
A simple search for illusions brings back more than 20 million results but “magic illusions” delivers a mere 1.4 million. The top result is sponsored but you can view the source code of the 2nd listing to see what metatags were used. A decent SEO firm should be able to decipher other aspects of the search engine optimisation and improve on it for you if you want to increase your chances of picking up browser traffic. Another method might be to set up a number of pages that all link back to your main site but with different headings, meta tags etc. to broaden the reach of your site. Of course the simplest way to get traffic is still to promote your site whether that be on or off line.
Magicians are a social lot and enjoy getting together to see what the competition is up to, and to network amongst themselves. Even if you don’t take a stand this is a great place to give out business cards and possibly even pick up new suppliers for your own stock as well as ideas for new illusions.
Performing for free at high profile public events is a great way to get free publicity but even the local school fete can generate some additional customers. If you are not a performer it doesn’t matter. It might be worth teaming up with, or even hiring a friend to perform at no cost to the organisers. This is an additional part of their event but allows you to display a sign, hand out cards or other freebies to promote your business. If your partner does performances and you do illusions then you can both win from this.
Whether you advertise your business on or offline you will find people who are interested in browsing as well as serious collectors looking for something special. The serious collectors are more likely to find you, but the browsers are more likely to make an impulse purchase. Be clear in your own mind who your customers are and then place your adverts accordingly. Magicians union magazines will get you plenty of serious collectors but if you are selling card tricks and “magik rope tricks” from Ebay they aren’t very likely to buy.
A shop in this instance does not have to be on the high street in fact you will probably go broke pretty soon if it is. A corner of a warehouse, a barn, a grade C or D location should all suffice. The point being that people will come and find you if what you stock is worth having, and if it isn’t then you can’t afford the higher rents in town anyway! Equally you don’t need to spend a lot on décor but make sure you have adequate lighting for your customers to inspect your stock
Where do I get my stock?
I would look to have a number of suppliers; www.alibaba.com will suffice for the low end “magic tricks” type of stuff for interested children and beginners. Make sure you master some of these so that you can demonstrate and then show browsers how they are done.
For the mid-level illusions I would look to find wholesalers in your local market, people like www.klamm-magic.com that supply real magicians but also carry a range of stock and are amenable to doing discounts for regular customers and bulk buyers.
High end illusions should be made to order, ideally from a custom design. You could drop a line to info@jimsteinmeyer.com and ask about how you go about getting an illusion designed and then manufactured or do what I did and search for “magic illusion designer”.
I would look to have a number of suppliers; www.alibaba.com will suffice for the low end “magic tricks” type of stuff for interested children and beginners. Make sure you master some of these so that you can demonstrate and then show browsers how they are done.
For the mid-level illusions I would look to find wholesalers in your local market, people like www.klamm-magic.com that supply real magicians but also carry a range of stock and are amenable to doing discounts for regular customers and bulk buyers.
High end illusions should be made to order, ideally from a custom design. You could drop a line to info@jimsteinmeyer.com and ask about how you go about getting an illusion designed and then manufactured or do what I did and search for “magic illusion designer”.
If you are “into” magic then this is a great business for you, you get to introduce people to your hobby and to make money from it.
Read “The Prestige” by Christopher Priest, which gives a fascinating insight into the mindset of the most serious illusionists, it’s a competitive business.
There is nothing to stop you trading in 2nd hand illusions. Many hobbyists give up and don’t know what to do with their stuff. You will of course need to see the illusions working to ensure that all the pieces are intact.