Along with figuring out when to pull the plug, Shamus also figured out earlier than many entrepreneurs that he needed the help of professionals. From the moment he launched Wizard, he says, he was looking forward to hiring executives and stepping away from day-to-day management. "I was 21 years old," he says, "and I knew I didn't know everything. I wanted to bring in people who were great at what they do, because when you do that, they are the least expensive people that you have no matter how much you are paying them." The most important person he brought in was Fred Pierce, who had been a vice president at Valiant. "When I met Gareb, he literally was not old enough to rent a car," says Pierce, who quickly became a mentor to Shamus. "Whenever I had a problem," says Shamus, "I would call Fred. He was always helping me out. At this point I was starting more magazines, and I needed someone to help me run the business. After Valiant got sold, I brought Fred in to run my operations."
Let's Leverage It
Pierce, who is 16 years older than Shamus, became president of Wizard Entertainment in 1994. Having him at the helm allowed Shamus to pursue other opportunities, and he quickly extended the scope of Wizard beyond publishing. Since launching Wizard magazine, for example, Shamus had been attending the nation's major comic book conventions, including a big one in Chicago that was owned by a comic shop retailer. The show had gotten too big for the shopowner and his staff to handle--but not big or profitable enough to allow him to hire help. He also could not afford to market it properly. When the convention began to struggle, Shamus saw an opportunity.
At the time, it was the second largest convention in the comic book industry, but it was just a comic show. "They had maybe 5,000 or 6,000 people over the weekend," remembers Shamus. "Because we now had a gaming magazine and toy magazine, I thought, Let's invite the gaming and toy industries and leverage it into different markets. Unlike a typical start-up, we already had the relationships with all the companies." He bought the comic show and transformed it into what he calls a "festival," adding gaming tournaments, movie previews, autograph sessions, lectures by stars and directors of comic-based movies, and exhibitions by comic book artists and writers. He also made it family-friendly, charging no admission for kids. The first year he drew 20,000 fans; today, it draws 56,000 and Wizard attracts 125,000 attendees to five highly profitable consumer conventions and one trade show for the toy industry. It also attracts sponsorships from companies eager to reach those 18- to 34-year-olds, including Sony, which wanted to pitch its PlayStation even though Wizard doesn't have a magazine devoted solely to video gaming. Now a major sponsor of Shamus's conventions, Sony pays Wizard to put its logo on all convention materials and ads, and it also buys ads in the various magazines throughout the year.
Another key extension was Toy Wishes, a semiannual toy-buying guide, aimed at holiday shoppers, that has become something of a bible to the toy industry. The magazine is sold to consumers on the newsstand, but much of its circulation of 400,000 comes through Toys "R" Us, which distributes copies to shoppers. Every fall Shamus holds a major press event and trade show in New York City to announce the magazine's Holiday Hot Dozen toys list, as compiled by his editors. Every year, he gets the CEOs and top executives of all the major toy companies, along with representatives of major press outlets, to attend. They have little choice: In addition to nearly half a million shoppers, his list is picked up every year by about 100 TV shows, over 500 newspapers, and all of the wire services. "Probably 80 to 90 percent of the press you see over the holidays on what toys are hot originates with us," says Shamus.
The One That Got Away
In many ways, despite the dramatic growth, little has changed at Wizard Entertainment Group. Shamus still owns the company debt-free and with no outside investors (his brothers have small stakes). Not only hasn't he sought investors for Wizard, he's even turned them away, including Bernie Tenenbaum, a former associate director of the Wharton School's entrepreneurship center and a former toy-industry exec now associated with a venture capital firm. "I bet on jockeys, not horses," says Tenenbaum, "and I saw the potential in Gareb and tried to invest money with him, but he has kept it private."
And even as they've matured, Shamus and his staff have continued to enjoy their childhood pursuits. Shamus's office is in midtown Manhattan with his advertising sales staff, but the heart of Wizard's operations is the 35,000-square-foot facility he owns in Congers, New York, north of the city, where Pierce and most of the company's 80 employees are based. Most of the offices there are stuffed with toys, posters, comic art, and games. Pat McCallum, the editor in chief overseeing all Wizard publishing, has a giant TV in his office wired for the video games that he often plays with other employees. When boxes of new product arrive, which happens constantly, employees stop what they are doing, rip them open, and check out the newest toys or books, even sitting down and playing games for an hour or two in the middle of the day--behavior Shamus and Pierce encourage. "It was very important to me to build the kind of company that I would want to work for," says Shamus. "We have a product that is fun, we write about a lot of fun things, and if the people internally are not having fun at what they do, it will come across. At the end of the day, the magazines have to get out, but we have a lot of fun doing it."
