[Musings of a Game Store Owner} More Reality

So Bushcraft did it again- he asked questions, and I'm answering.

How has your experience with distributors forcing your store to stock certain items, dedicate specific frontage of shelf space, etc...? I won't name names, but you know the kinds of folks I mean. 

These guys?

There's only one company that has any sort of stock requirement, and the requirement is in exchange for a discount with them.  This particular company DOES have specific requirements for displaying parts of their line; and my opinion on that is mixed. The plus is that they provide lovely racks and such for the display. The minus is that the FLGS has to pay for the lovely racks, and those things are NOT cheap. I'm not always sure the stock requirement balances out the discount, but it's part of doing business.




Have you ever considered offering services beyond retail, for example some painting/modelling classes?

We've tried classes off and on with mixed results. I think if our store was bigger, we could dedicate space to something like that with less concern for breakage or disrupting other patrons and it might go over better. I also think a dedicated "time" for classes would help a lot. At the moment, we just throw them in whenever we feel like it, and we haven't really cultivated a brand as "experts" with that sort of thing.

If we were to offer classes, I think we would do something a little different, with each of our staffers offering a class or ongoing series of classes on a topic that matches their knowledge base. For example, I am much more into writing and networking than modeling, and offering a class on painting tiny dudesmen would be a disservice to my customers. My son would be great at offering a class on putting dudesmen together (he's fantastic at modeling and converting), and one of our other staffers would be great for a class on CCG's like M:tG and so on. I'd want to know that there was a base for something like this, but it's something to think about.

What about tournaments and organized events?

We do these all the time. We set aside Saturdays for tournaments and special events,  and we've had great luck with that approach. One of our more popular Saturday activities is "Damn It, I Bought This Game And I Am Going To Play It Day", which brings out some fabulous games and even more fun times.

We have special roleplaying days on Saturday at least once every 2 months or so (Free RPG Day, "dry runs" for the local convention, demos of lesser-known games, one-offs for local authors, etc) as well as events for games like Android: Netrunner, Star Wars' X Wing, and a miniatures tournament or two.

Because our focus is a community and family environment, we make a concentrated effort to bring in a variety of games for the diverse folks that enjoy our hobby. It's been working out so far, and we want to keep with that approach.

What successful "nontraditional" approaches have you seen work successfully (or fail)? For example, my FLGS outside Ft. Bragg is fortuitously located next to a bingo hall and they rent it out for peanuts from 10-4 on Saturdays as a game room. Cover charge is a 200 cent donation to the local SPCA, which has started the local nerd slang of meeting up to "feed the puppies" being a euphemism for Saturday gaming.

Something a guy we know does is offer "Magic Camp" for kids 8 or 9+ in the summer. It's roughly a week long of class from like 10-12 or something, where he teaches the basics of Magic to younger kids for a set fee. He provides basic cards and snacks and instruction, and he gets paid and is generating a stream of future customers to continue bringing revenue to his store.

We do something called "Afterdraft", which is for the folks that play MtG. After we do our booster draft on Friday, we do another draft. You buy 3 packs for the draft, and they all have to be different, with one pack for prize. It has to be different from all the rest of the packs as well. For a while we had a GREAT selection of older Magic sets, and we would see Odyssey, Tempest and Dark Ascension in one guy's pool and Ice Age, Mirage and M12 in another's. This is a ridiculously STUPIDLY SILLY draft, with a lot of guys bringing packs they won from other tournaments (including foreign language) and crazy antics ensue. It's also pretty lucrative, with 8-12 guys buying older, crazy packs just for shits & giggles.

We've seen a lot of variations of "pay to play", and in our area, they have all failed. Many of these variations were combined with bad management and even worse accommodations, but we have decided that asking our customers to pay for space in our store isn't something we're going to do on a regular basis.

Of course, people pay to play in tournaments or special events to help support prizes.  But regular, everyday gaming? We have no interest in charging. It just doesn't work in this area.

And of course, there was the last pot shot about beer.

It would be great to offer beer at the store. We'd love it, and we know we could make a killing while doing it. We've joked about doing an adults only afterdraft with beer, and it's fun until you look at the headaches that go with a liquor license.

The buzzkill is that having a liquor license means a MUCH higher level of accountability and oversight, a lot more regulations and a lot more trouble. If even ONE guy is "overserved", it could kill our business (and our family livelihood) forever. If even ONE guy is underage and we serve, same story. The amount of training and insurance required is insane, and we'd have to fire our son - he's not old enough to serve.

Lastly, we want our store to be welcoming. We want everyone to feel they can come in and not be accosted, treated like an outsider or badly in any way. It's an unfortunate fact that alcohol can and does bring out the worst in people, and we don't want to intentionally create a situation where we bring out jerk behavior. We have to put out enough interpersonal fires as it is, and liquor of any kind would just make that worse. We don't the headache (or the hangover, LOL).