*IMPORTANT* - Might be time to think about some rent fellas

[huggies01]

6-10 pc and tv's. That's going to be a fun electric bill.

[sergentzimm]

Wow this is quite the issue at hand. Been here before seen it before. My best example of a store is this one in Spokane http://www.thegamershaven.net/gamers_haven.php  That is the name of the store I used to own, re-opened by the previous owner, long story. They have a huge gaming space and a small retail space. They can run a full 70+ card tournament and 40 person tabletop tournament at the same time, roughly. They focus on the community and let the sales come into them. They live the philosophy GW tried to teach, build a community and focus on keeping it going. It's important to have other people steering your games as well. Most people follow what the shop owner is playing, but you want a few others to keep interest in more games than you have time for. 

 

To me my biggest question is did the rent go up? Did he get scammed, like a lot do in bham, with a first year is cheap then raise it? Personally I am not sure that railroad gives you the best bang for your buck but I havn't looked at real estate lately. 

 

One thing that could do well would be to look into a beer license, though I know that requires food purchase here in Washington. 

 

I can say that I don't think the LAN space would pan out. I have looked into that many times during my life and the return on investment is hard to make work. Games are expensive for lan's. I can say Reset doesn't do this, they are a console game seller where you can test the games out, (source I use to run the joint).

 

That is all the ramblings I can come up with now.

[Jayne_Cobbb]

No, The rent is the same as when he moved into the new location.

[JMGraham]

The LAN wouldn't be too expensive to startup. A couple of months or so ago, I broke into some guys house (the schmoe had left his garage door opener in his car, and the door from his garage to the house unlocked), and scored some great electronics that I'd donate to the shop. 

[huggies01]

Say that's going to be one familiar cafe.

[smashthedean]

Say that's going to be one familiar cafe.

 

You'll feel right at home.

[sergentzimm]

No, The rent is the same as when he moved into the new location.

That is good news.

[JMGraham]

An example of how useful Black Diamond is: HERE

 

And a good example of why miniature games are a tough proposition.

[Raak]

An example of how useful Black Diamond is: http://blackdiamondgames.blogspot.com/2014/02/miniature-sku-creep-tradecraft.html 

 

And a good example of why miniature games are a tough proposition.

 

Great point and article.

 

The link didn't work for me but then did after I removed the "%C2%A0" it tagged after the .html in the URL

[JMGraham]

Thanks - fixed! (I think)

[Raak]

Thanks - fixed! (I think)

Wow. Just looked at their blog and it's full of win for this thread. 5 VP to Jim! Unfortunately I think it made me think that LCGs & CCGs really are the only profitable model for game stores and that tabletop is almost certain death where retail is concerned. Hmmmm.

[Raak]

Wow. SesrgentZ - No idea you owned a game store. You're in a unique position to offer advice and opinions here my friend and that's awesome!

[JMGraham]

Wow. Just looked at their blog and it's full of win for this thread. 5 VP to Jim! Unfortunately I think it made me think that LCGs & CCGs really are the only profitable model for game stores and that tabletop is almost certain death where retail is concerned. Hmmmm.

Nah, I think over specialization is a bad thing. Tying yourself to a single game and a single game only limits your cross-pollination and all that. It's the same reason GW stores suck. Just because one system generates 50% of your revenue doesn't mean you should stock only that.

[Raak]

Its

 

Just because one system generates 50% of your revenue doesn't mean you should stock only that.

true

[ratrek]

I haven't actually been to DTG so you'll have to correct me if I'm off base in places. My deal these days is business analytics from the Tech side but it means I get to work with lots of industries, including one very, very large gaming company. So various thoughts

 

1: Tracking Sales

Jim's comment about tracking sales is important and dead easy. I suspect that like most SMB's, DTG is probably using Quickbooks. It wouldn't take more then an afternoon to ensure the database is setup correctly to the item codes. This would allow for easy tracking of items sold by categories but also time stamped. Time stamped sales are often important to look at, as they give you a very good indicator on whether one should move dedicated game nights around. If a lot of people are coming in and buying MTG on say Wednesday evening but their total time in the store is under 15 minutes, well, it's time to move MTG night from Monday's to Wednesdays or have a 2nd game night.

 

This is so easy to do, it must be done.

 

2: LAN/XBox space

It doesn't sound like a bad idea on the face of it, presuming there's a business case for the need. If it's more of a build it and they will come thing, well, often they won't. Internet cafe's and the like have a high failure rate. Even with only, say 10PC's, that's a hefty Capital investment outlay which will take a significant time to recoup. Then you've got the fun of Operational expenses in the case of PC maintenance and likely licenses for monthly subscription games. And you'll have be to technically competent enough to segment this network away from your PoS system either via a DMZ or an entirely separate Network and maintain it.

 

I wouldn't touch the PC side of this with a 10 ft pole without a solid business case.

 

The Xbox side might make more sense. Significantly less expensive per unit and you'll likely require less of them. TV's are not inexpensive and if you only start with 1 or 2 of modest size, they could be redeployed as digital signage.

 

3: Stock items, levels and fluidity

This one is really easy. You need more of the things you sell and less of the items you don't to maximize your floor space and profit margins. Tracking ones orders will sort that out for the most part. Offer discounts on items that aren't selling well to get them out of the floor. Taking up space while you wait to achieve you're profit margin is actually more expensive to the store then selling at cost

 

Equally you need a distribution network that does not 1: Rely on a single supplier, 2: Does not introduce currency exchange if you can avoid it, 3: Has quick enough shipping to get custom orders in as quickly as possible. No one likes to wait, especially impulsive gamers.

 

4: Expansion of Systems

In some industries specialization is key. Diluting your product destroys you're market base. To a certain extent, the opposite applies to a gaming store. Effectively the store has to treat it's self more along the lines of a corner store or a magazine shop. Diversity, to a point is key. Having staff that can drive interest in multiple systems only serves the business owner. Often what's seen in non-high priced luxury goods is a shopping model that will show $20 here, $50 there. If that spending is done across multiple systems the shop will typically realize more sales and vastly more profit as the consumer needs to spent more total money to get to the point of satiation across the systems. It also serves the shop better as it means income has less bloating and tends to be more steady thus allowing for more controlling of costs and proper analysis of sales leading to better stocking choices.

 

The shop shouldn't stock the world, but if say GW and MTG is all that's done, there's likely room for expansion without over saturating the offerings or bringing floor space into account.

 

5: Create more incidental purchases

You know how GW always tries to upsell you with some extra paint or whatever on the way out? They do this because it works. However it also pee's off a lot of veteran gamers. There's another way to get extra purchases from them and that's through incidentals.

 

Examples of incidentals would include

1: Have tournament winnings doled out as store credit. The customer often spends significantly more then that. I imagine this is already done

 

2: Go along the lines of the bar example above but without needing a license. Sell bottled water, pop and candy bars. They can all be purchased via Costco or the like easy enough and even if they're marked up 3 times the cost they will be purchased overtime, have a long enough expiry date not to be worried about them and can likely generate more profit margin per square foot of floor space they use then the miniatures themselves.

 

3: As mentioned many times, a rental fee to play that can be used as store credit. That has the potential to generate a great deal of extra sales IF you don't allow people to stack the credit up to kingdom come. Make them cash it out every so often so you still break even if not make profit on what they purchase with the credit plus the balance of new money.

 

Sorry for the ramble guys. Things like stores in trouble can often be saved or turned profitable through a couple easy changes. Figured I'd throw some ideas out to help.

[sergentzimm]

Wow. SesrgentZ - No idea you owned a game store. You're in a unique position to offer advice and opinions here my friend and that's awesome!

Yeah it was a quick one that didn't end well, but not for lack of business. More of the experience comes from seeing the good and the bad stores in my times. 

[generalripphook]

We could always change the wya we have entry fees for events.....instead of a $10 entry fee we could always say buy something worth at least $10 from DTG's inventory.

 

Similarly he could always sell some parts of the window as ad space.

 

Personally i have been directing all of the people i have gotten into gaming to DTG. I always order and buy 40k things through him...sure there is the convinience of buying something at home online but id rather order it from him and show my support there.

[Munkie]

Yeah I recently bought a B-Wing at Barnes and Noble with a gift card I got for Christmas and felt terrible about it. It took me two trips there just to convince myself it was silly not to, I'll just by a second one when Nathaniel finally gets it in. I was finally getting over my guilt when Jon went and dropped this bombshell on us!

 

Personally, I think best scenario (short of the status quo) is some sort of monthly dues or pay-to-play at DTG. I don't have a lot of expendable cash, but at the end of the day I'd rather preserve that space and will toss in a little extra cash to do it. We're not gonna get a better game room than that, and we owe it to ourselves to keep it around.

[Fix]

 

Personally, I think best scenario (short of the status quo) is some sort of monthly dues or pay-to-play at DTG. I don't have a lot of expendable cash, but at the end of the day I'd rather preserve that space and will toss in a little extra cash to do it. We're not gonna get a better game room than that, and we owe it to ourselves to keep it around.

 

I'm pretty sure this is right, and our best bet is to massage and gameify what we get for our membership, how it can be enforced, the proper way to guilt trip people who are freeloading the system while giving them a bye for introductions, etc.

 

I guess the starting question is to figure out what people are willing to pay for the privilege of the space as is and see if we can't figure out a reasonable monthly, weekly, and per-visit cost to play.

 

To start off, I'd be willing to say five bucks a week, for $20-25 in store credit a month.  This is, to be honest, probably lowballing given our number and the amount we need to hit, but I expect that regular purchasing and overage will make up for the gap.

[huggies01]

Important to remember if Jon is saying what I heard, than he isn't losing money from us, he just isn't making as much profit as he needs to off of us. We do still buy models and supplement the retail. We aren't making as much money as mtg obviously but by eliminating the amount of profit that we produce in a hope for potentially gaining a new clientel to quote Kevin is a bit risky. I mean what amount of revenue would he lose by shutting it down. More importantly, loyal concerned gamers and most importantly the Bellingham webmasters who are a dedicated community to getting new gamers started in not only warhammer but almost every game out there. Just because you aren't physically seeing a mass of sales from the store doesn't meant that those people aren't still supporting it. Kinda deceptive really. If this isn't the case then maggots must be able to apparate because I have never seen a fly lay an egg. 

[huggies01]

"Warhamsters" - auto correct.

[JMGraham]

What Ratrek said about needing more than one distributor is so very spot on. When you can't stock EVERYTHING (and no one can), special orders need to be fast and seamless. If one distributor is out, have a back up or it could be a lost sale.

 

I'm down with dues, if that's what it takes. Enforcing it will be such a pain, though. Glen will have to do the lions share. It was a disaster when Stacy got us to try and enforce dues.

[Jayne_Cobbb]

What Ratrek said about needing more than one distributor is so very spot on. When you can't stock EVERYTHING (and no one can), special orders need to be fast and seamless. If one distributor is out, have a back up or it could be a lost sale.

 

I'm down with dues, if that's what it takes. Enforcing it will be such a pain, though. Glen will have to do the lions share. It was a disaster when Stacy got us to try and enforce dues.

 

Dues with rewards might have a line to sign up though!

 

 

[TW_Haines]

Has DTG thought about moving the GW stuff to the back room walls? if it will fit. This will free up space in the front of the house and also make impulse buys for GW stock. Im more apt to buy that shiny as its killing me on the table if its right there bagging me. Also dues may be in order, Just understand that if the dues are to high he will loose people.

 

As for internet cafe ideas, I dont know if theres a market for that or not.

[JMGraham]

I think one of the problems with stock in the back room is that it would be too hard for employees to monitor for shoplifters. Plus, all of the stock is along the walls, so it's not like it takes up floorspace.