Bartertown.com

Hello B towners,

I currently live in the New Orleans area. Way way back in the day we had only one game shop. War Games and Fantasy. Then several years later in the same city of Metairie along

came another game store Galactic Games. Soon Wargames and fantasy was bought, moved and renamed Gamers Matrix.

Then across the river,still in jefferson Parish, opened up Rising Pheonix. Then another store opened nearby called Gamertopia. Galactic Games and Gamers Matrix had been open

for over 10 years. Now guess how many stores are left in this area??? NONE!!! The last game shop Galactic Games closed its doors just a few months ago. Gamers Matrix suffered

the wrath of Hurricane Katrina. Rising Pheonix had great support,only store on the West Bank and near a military base. But lacked good management and foresight. Gamertopia was

just lousey and had a very bad location. Galactic Games was the premier store in the area. Supporting Huge warmachine tournies, 40k tournies and WHFB tournies. DBM,

Board gamers, Collectible mini's games. (no computer games) Amen.

The property owner,of Galactic Games building, went up on rent, i believe to drive off the game shop because he was moveing his own business to the same parking lot.

property and wanted the majority of the parking. So Galactic Games moved and so did most of the followers. Most. But soon there were new faces. The store was a bit smaller

then the original store. Nothing like a cramped up room full of gamers that maybe bathe every-other day. One guy I remember used to come in once in a while and smelled like toe

cheese. On a hot day it would nearly knock you over. Anyway....

Now I have talked to several of the original owners of these past game stores and one of the chief complaints was online stores. See online stores and eBay have huge discounts and

sometimes even free shipping on just about everything dealing with gameing. So how does a game shop compete with this? How do game shops stay in business these days???

I have ideas but I need input.

The internet is a huge detriment to game stores. On the internet, I can look up a game, find reviews, get previews of the book or rules, see pictures of the contents (if it is a sealed game), and order it cheaper. I don't have to deal with annoying twits who don't bathe and who want to ogle my wife. I can get decent recommendations that aren't hinged upon my listening to a guy talk about his character or campaign or whatever other special thing he has going on.

In an physical store, I may be able to browse a book - though some game stores shrink wrap everything that come in. But I have to deal with the comments above. Yeah, I could leave my wife at home, but when I go to a LGS, it is about 30 miles away and my wife likes to do some shopping in that area with me.

The big thing a LGS offers is the environment - a place to play and meet other gamers. The internet is even taking that away with online game tables and meet up groups. I don't play at any LGS, but my group met through an rpg forum.

I feel it depends upon the shop owner and the area. A savvy shop owner will make sure to
1. Keep everything clean and kept up. You would be surprised how some shops turn into slums.
2. Keep everything up to date.
3. Keep a wide variety of "attractions". Focusing soley on one gaming aspect or game system can chase away customers.
4. Keep things under control so that a few local strong personalities do not chase off others.
5. offer some sort of discount of run a club with a discount.
6. Run reguler events as well as a variety of events.
The list goes on of course.
While it is true you can get a lot of stuff cheaper online however
1. You dont get to peruse it,
2. You dont get to look at the blisters to check for 'withered feet" and other defects.
3. You dont get a place to play, participate in tourneys, set up events ect
4. I would say that you dont get to discuss the games but you do. The only thing is, online, you have to wade through the trolls, know it alls, and other assorted idiots. At your local store, you can just go directly to the people you want answers from and get "hands on' assistance.
Again, the list goes on.

I feel the bottom line is the shop itself, how it is run as well as the local community and how close knit it is and wiling to pay a fraction more for the benefits the local shop can offer.

I just re-read the original post more closely. Here are a few ideas that I hope may help you.
1. Install security cameras. Make them obvious and post that there are more the the obvious ones. Too many people get sticky fingers.
2. Along the lines of #1, keep the gaming area and the shoping area seperate. Too easy for people to put stuff into bags and cases.
3. Encourage a local club. If ther are enough people, encourage more then one to form for competition so that they wil need to "one up' each other in terms of games. it will also help draw people in. Especially if you have a local college or schools.
4. Along the lines of #3, advertise. Encourage the clubs to advertise themselves for new members which will in turn frequent your shop.
5. I believe you mentioned military base. Advertise there. Maybe even offer service members a discount.
6. To piggy back on #5, offer active club members a small discount. Maybe get a fancy hole punch and have a card where they get a punch for every $10 spent or something to trade in when completed for $5.00 off a purchase or something. The discounts will help keep people offline.
7. Talk to people and find out what THEY want to play. Even if it is a game that you feel is horrible, suck it up and try it out or encourage them to run demo games of it. Even if you dont like it, others may and buy it. It also keeps people happy.
8. Keep a close eye on "strong personalities". Make sure they dont chase people off. May be a ticklish situation in confronting them but confront the behavior rather then the person. There is a WIDE variety of resources online where you can get help and/or advice on that. The same goes for the "smelly people" It HAS to be addressed.
9. Run reguler events. Run reguler tourneys. Heck if you dont have a tourney scheduled and you have 8 people in the shop, ask them if they would want to play a mini tourney just for fun. It may be they would be willing to pop in $2.00 each for store credit. Thats $16 that you would not otherwise have made and the players are happy to play it.
10. Be carefull of buying stuff or trades. Only deal in store credit. NEVER cash. Also be carefull of what you take. I remember a shop who bought magic cards at 1/2 value and never sold them and lost hundreds of $ at a time on the "deals". The same shop owner would also buy stuff he wanted for himself from out of the store funds and lost more that way as well.
11. Dont be afraid to make it a family business. the less you have to pay clerks, the less you are paying out. Even if it is your own kids, you can usually trust them more and that is more your kid has to spend (less you have to give them for movies and such ).
12. Scenery. I know this is just for wargames but trust me. Nice tables and a wide variety of scenery is a huge draw for gamers. Allow locals to assist and make sure they all realize that if the shop closes, they lose the nice tables to play on.
13. Use your local resources. For example, I was a Job Corps counselor. I took my kids to the local. The kids in the cement shop donated a bunch of cement lizerds to the shop to use as scenery. The kids from the brick shop made a tile sign for the local. Even used scraps from the carpentry shop to make scenery. So not only was I able to help the kids out by giving them a place to play and something to do, I brought the local shop a bunch more busniess and some free stuff to improve the gaming at the shop.
I know there are a million and one ways, if I think of more (I'm rather brain dead right now), I will post them. Hopefully, others will also give assistance to you. Always good to see locals.

Great thread on a related topic;

viewtopic.php?f=40&t=45375

The game store needs to have an internet presence. Maybe even an internet store.

Right now a new store has opened up within a few miles of me (Yaya!)
I have seen several stores in the surrounding areas simply go belly up after a few years of operation. I'm trying my damndest to give them business and drum up intrest in mini games there myself as they currently only survive on Magic and other card games.

The last 4 game stores (within 30 miles) have all gone belly up or dropped mini gaming entirely thanks to the internet. (though 1 store had HORRIBLE customer relations, failing to follow through on promises and orders to several key customers)

I blame the internet, which is really funny as there was one individual who went to great lengths to ensure that others could buy their GW at a discount (like going to online retailers that we all know and love) right in front of the store owners. Then he was one of the loudest complainers when the store went under and he had no place to play.
I just shook my head and flatly told him that he was the cause thanks to his crusade to get a 20% discount. At the time a Tact squad was like $25, so you saved $5, that money went to the store to pay for all the terrain and play space you twit.

I saw a message on the Privateer forums iirc, that stated if you want to open a game store, take all of the money you were going to invest and put it in a pile. Then burn it. You will save yourself a lot of heartache and get the same result. While I think this may be harsh, it seems more and more accurate as time goes on.

Opening and running a game store is darn near impossible now it seems. A friend of mine worked on a business plan, got the loans, did his research and opened one after a lot of trepidation. 6 months later he had to close. There were a couple of reasons, one of which being the internet discount people could get. He offered a decent discount, something like 10-20 percent, which compares to a lot of online dealers, but sometimes he could just not help the customers save that 2 extra bucks (his discount was not large enough since he was ordering small amounts). He did not count on gamer frugality being that much of an issue, unfortunatley it was.

Now there is only 1 game store left. It is decent as far as variety, but packed with the stereotypical unwashed nerdly masses much of the time. I certainly don't dislike nerds (being one myself), but I loathe the lounging-nerd subspecies. The kind without a job or money, who sits there all day trying to get anyone to play some archaic RPG or discuss their last game of Munchkin. My wife (bless her kind soul) ventured into the store with me once, and won't go back due to the smell and nerd-humidity. I will not take my daughter in there, as tons of parents drop off their sickly youngsters for hours on end as a free babysitter. Pink-eye is the natural state of many of the kids present.

Did you know that a small space packed with chunky fellows in 3 day old clothes gives of atmosphere? The windows get so fogged up that the condensation starts running in rivulets down the panes. Pure, undiluted nerd breath and sweat vapors. With pink-eye. Yum.

Sorry about the rambling there. In short, I have no idea how game stores stay open nowadays. So I am going with: A wizard did it.

To have an effective game store, you need a couple things:

1) An online store with a 20% discount(ish) in addition to offering that same discount IN-STORE.
2) A Large stock pile of product
3) A good business plan

If you cannot manage any one of these 3 facets now days, you will go under, unless you meet criteria #4.


4) Live in a podunk town that cannot get internet service but (somehow) has a huge gaming presence.


You have a better chance meeting all of the first 3.

Eric

A few things that help us out is:

-We are really close to the 'defense language institute' and the "naval post graduate school" so we have a but load of nerdy military kids and older people who have a lot of loose cash from them having paid food and board. these people are the majority of our sales.

-we have a good sized local store (can have about 10 6x4 tables and 8-10 card tables all set up at once and more set up outside) and more then enough terrain for all the tables.

- we stock alot of 40k, warmachine/hordes, rpgs, magic (normally have 2 cases on hand 24/7), flames of war and alot more so have a lot of inventory

- we have 6 resturants who gladly walk food over for to-go-orders (its a silly but nice thing)

-we kick the smellers/ druggy people out, no joke if you smell then get out.

-we have a event everyother saturday for 4ok/fantasy/malifaux/wm


but yeah its all about the location of the store, if its in the boondocks or outside there then it dies perty quick. We really arnt the best store but our location and pep gave us the edge over the competition that we killed off

EZ mac wrote: - we have 6 resturants who gladly walk food over for to-go-orders (its a silly but nice thing)

This is a nice feature. The local store has a Subway nearby, that while they won't deliver, for $0.25, you get a sticker on your drink and you can go back and refill whenever you want on the same day. Nice feature for events - buy lunch, after round 2, walk and get a re-fill. And I am sure Subway loves getting the business - they even drop coupons off at the store for deals.

Gotta agree with the local food joints. My local one has a few close by places that will walk it over and I know that if you communicate with the shops yourself (as the owner of your shop) and work out some deals, you can take it a step further to the point of almost catering or setting up larger orders for events.

Not sure how my local shop stays running, since it's in the middle of nowhere, but I suspect that it's because they run a LOT of events.
There is literally an even every day of the week, with mutliple events on weekends. Magic events keep people buying cards, as does Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon. Monthly 40K and WHFB tourneys. Weeknight get-togethers for RPG games, HeroClix, etc. LOTS of booster drafts for various games.
The shop also sells soda and snacks cheaply, which keeps foks from crossing the street to the convenience store for sodas and whatnot.
There are also a couple smaller rooms with couches and such where you can pay to play their console games. The local teens like to hang out there and socialize while two or three play the console games.
The space is HUGE, which helps a lot. They were actually able to comfortable run 40K 'Ard Boyz and a Magic PTQ at the same time last weekend.
Staff is friendly, though busy and often stressed with all the events running at once. One other thing: the staff is small. One owner, one paid employee, and a ton of volunteers who keep minor events running. Not paying out a ton of salary keeps overhead low!

My FLGS is an old shop under new management. They seem to be doing quite well.

They have a board game section and a mini/card games section. They don't offer any huge discounts or have massive amounts of stock, they just run the shop well. A good amount of stock, with a lot of sample product, and demo games. Endless events schedule and extremely good support. You order something its there by the next week. The place is clean and bright, jerks and smelly people are put on notice politely, to shape up or ship out.

I actually think they do really well on the pop, chips, and snacks business. Think about it. If you sell 50 units pop chips or snacks a day, that's about $1500 a month. Hell that pays your rent. 50 pops on a weekend is nothing. I know I regularly down 5 pops on a Saturday myself, and there is about 50 people in the store all day.

I think that is a portion of the business that many store owners neglect. The kids are hanging out there you might as well take that $10 out of their pocket rather than let the subway down the street do it.

To take it a step further, buy a fountain dispenser. They it only costs you about .10 per cup of pop. You sell the "all you can drink cup" for $5. the kid can't drink enough for you to loose money on him. Multiply that by 50 kids on a Saturday. You just made yourself $250.00.

Kids get hungry and usually don't care what they eat. Put in a microwave and sell frozen burritos, roti, hamburgers. Other than chips, muffins, hot rods and chocolate bars.

It's all about capitalizing on getting the money out of your customers pocket when they are there to play the game. When a customer has a completed army/card deck, he really doesn't have to spend any more money for a night of entertainment, so if you are not getting that $5-$20 out of him every time he comes in from supplemental products you are missing an opportunity and will proabably be closing your doors unless you have a lot of customers with a lot of discretionary income.

An old FLGS that i used to frequent when I lived in Ottawa found what the customers were interested in and then sold it. A few customer wanted to get into paintball when it first came out, so he did some research contacted a supplier for paint ball guns and accessories and got setup. He wound up selling us all paintball guns equipment and then bought a compressed gas cylinder for air refills. There was a few thousand bucks in his pocket rather than someone else's.

Be:
Clean
Bright
Smell nice
Know your product
Stay current
Listen to your customers
Sell other stuff your customers want to buy.
Run tournaments

Yeah, the food thing is a near-necessity. With the cost or those product in bulk from Sam's Club, Costco, etc, you make a good amount. Plus, Maine is a bottle bill state. The shop has big bins for bottle and cans, and at a nickel apiece, the bottles and cans from a month's worth of traffic can add up to your light bill for the month.

But, if a shop offers food and drink, it's VERY important to stay clean and tidy. Clean that microwave daily, weekly at the minimum. You don't need your customers falling ill because your shop is a pigsty. I heard horror stories about a shop that closed up north, where there was rat feces on the floor behind the microwave stand. The rats would come out at night, eat up all the crumbs and bits, and leave presents on the floor. Ugh.

It's also a really good idea to advertise that you do custom orders from your distributors. Give the customer a reason to buy from you, and not from the manufacturer. Let them all know what day you submit your weekly order, and what day all your shipments arrive. I ordered with a shop once for some paint. They were happy to order it for me, but neglected to mention they only submitted orders biweekly, and never called me to tell me my paint was in. It was over a month before I even laid hands on my stuff. I didn't pay in advance, so if I'd never returned, he'd have been sitting on $35 worth of paint.

Our local shop also does a trade-in service. You can trade in your old product for store credit toward new product. Don't want to play Orks anymore? You can trade your army in for store credit to buy another one. Not sure what the rate of exchange is, though. This one is VERY risky for a shop owner. If you shell out too much for trade-ins, you end up with a mountain of old product that nobody wants. But, at least your customers keep coming back to buy from you.

Also, player-to-player sales are strictly BANNED in or around the shop,or its message board. You want to sell Bob your Dwarf army? You sell it to him for store credit. He hands the shop your asking price, you hand him the army, and the shop hands you a gift certificate for the price. Do not allow your customers to undersell you in your own shop!

Me and my friends go to a LGS to play rather than make purchases. I generally don't buy because the stuff there is at full Gamesworkshop price. However two things I have noticed is that when people go to the store for an event they will sometimes buy something that they would rather get online because they need it for the event and they dont have time to wait for it online: this ranges from glue to fix units that broke during travels to full units to up their arsenal. I have noticed is that there is a natural compulsion to buy when your in a store. I dont generally buy units for the reason mentioned above but I have friends who will come for the awesome terrain and large tables and other free convenience tools but will buy because they are there and I will admit that I buy food and drinks while I am there. The second thing I have noticed is that my LGS is only open on weekends. Because of this it concentrates it's sales into a relatively small margin and always has people present because their time is limited. People know they may not come back for a while so they buy things that they might not buy otherwise because they are there now.

One more thing to consider is that not everyone trusts the internet and for poeple who dont but still want to play, there aren't that many options.