Upper Deck names two card shops Hockey Card Heaven
Upper Deck‘s mission to dub a pair of Canadian sports card shops as “Hockey Card Heaven” is complete — the divine locales are Comic Connection in Hamilton, Ontario, and Wayne’s Sports Cards in Edmonton, Alberta.
Here are the details from Upper Deck …
Comic Connection created a window display using 1990-91 Upper Deck Hockey Cards (Upper Deck’s first NHL release) that spelled out “HOCKEY CARD HEAVEN” to help get the word out and ran different specials every day during the promotion to thank customers for their support. To engage kids, they designated every Saturday as “Kids Day” and offered a variety of specials to make the shop more family-friendly. They also tied in some of their larger promotions, including charities such as the Canadian National Autism Foundation.
“We’re extremely excited,” said Ted Krieg, owner of Comic Connection. “We’re big hockey fans and it’s fantastic to have something like this happen for us. We thought it was a great promotion and all of our staff just jumped at the opportunity. We worked really hard for this, but it’s also been a lot of fun, especially for our customers!”
Wayne’s Sports Cards held coloring contests for kids, while adults were invited to show off their collections. One promotion was called “Score with Upper Deck” where customers purchased a box in exchange for an opportunity to shoot on the owner (slap-shot style) decked out in Edmonton Oilers gear. If the collector scored, he won a prize. Some additional promotions were built around releases like SPx and Black Diamond.
“Programs like ‘Hockey Card Heaven’ really help a retailer get motivated to come up with new and exciting ways to engage our customers,” said Wayne Wagner, owner of Wayne’s Sports Cards. “Anytime you can bring in a professional athlete to the store, it creates a buzz. Getting to meet a player face to face is such a great experience for fans and I know our customers are going to love it.”
Both shops will be host an NHL player appearance in the coming weeks.
