Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Due to the complete dearth of a decent FLGS in our immediate area (the last one having just closed its door and moved far, far away ), a friend and I briefly mused on the idea of setting up our own store. Having found a decent spot and put a simple business plan together, we are both utterly stumped at how an FLGS can make any money or indeed stay in business

Can anyone please enlighten us?

We had to make some assumptions when it came to the Trade Price offered by GW on their products (we assumed 30% lower than RRRP since other FLGS regularly offer 25% off) but even assuming this discount and a fairly unsustainable turnover (over 20,000 GBP per month) we still could not get the figures to work out.

MTG is the big money maker for most shops. Even a fishing bait store and yoga studio in my area host Friday night magic. Good luck if you don't plan on hosting magic events

What Chute said.

Miniature games are great for starting up armies, but once you have your army paid and built, you don't necessarily are steadily buying new models.

Magic and the other CCGs are great sources of income due to the fact that the players continuously have to buy new packs of cards every week or so.

As said, MtG. Which is why I personally feel that the FLGS is going to go away eventually, and the gaming club is going to return to replace it. A club has you pay dues or similar to rent a space for play, so it's much more of a social event than going to a store that needs you to buy things there to stay open. I just don't get why people don't seem to realize that

Magic is the big thing, but you also need to consider that simply undercutting the market isn't enough. Gamers will feel a loyalty to their FLGS to continue repaying the Friendliness, and an extra 5% off might encourage some sales but you certainly won't make friends with your competitors nor will you make friend with their loyal followers, as you'll probably need recommendations from your competitors. As in, "sorry, we don't have a gaming table/that product, but Iapedus around the corner is a good shout and a good guy."

For an FLGS to succeed, based on what I've seen online, there is 4 elements.

F: Friendly. You need to have the positive outgoing and welcoming atmosphere that encourages people to come in. This is the big thing about GW stores, their sales staff are too pushy and it makes people not want to go for risk of being pressured into "buy something or get out." Get to know your customers by name, preference, etc. This is both good for business, but the best way to be a salesman is to sell people something they actually want.
Example of GW employee:
"Why don't you pick up this awesomely powerful £50 Centurion squad?" "Uh, sure..."
Vs
"I noticed you like heavy firepower, here's the new Centurions, *shows rules.* Or, if you don't like that, because I noticed you like tanks, why not try a Predator?" "Gee thanks, I'll get the Predator, its exactly my thing!"

L: Local. No point opening a store 4 miles from the nearest civilisation. Put it somewhere that people can get to, with convenient/cheap parking or public transport nearby.

G: Gaming. Offer tables for free, or organise pay per person events, or something that's not just a store front to sell stuff to the person. See GW stores in F. As mentioned, MTG is going to be your golden goose. 40k and other tabletops take up more space, but don't throw out the idea of tables in favour of card gaming spaces just to get more people in. This undermines Friendly. Also, put a dedicated schedule in place for each game to avoid friction between groups. The last thing you need is to have all the Magic players leave because the 40k players are getting all the space and time. Set out designated days for each type of thing, from Wargaming, cards, painting, etc. Make sure to have at least two of whatever's popular each week. Thursday might net you 10 MTG players, but there might be another 5 who can't make a Thursday but can do Tuesday, so if you keep Thursday as the only MTG night, you will lose 5 customers. Put a booking system in place to avoid unnecessary competition over space. I recommend that you only accept bookings for space in a space 3 days to 1 day before (So a Thursday would require a booking between Sunday and Wednesday, otherwise its open gaming), or for several weeks in advance. On top of this, get to know your customers, kinda similar to Friendly. If you keep getting a call from Bob, who's 12 and nice guy and can only get down from 7pm to 9pm on a Monday, and has missed out 6 weeks in a row because of early bookings, put him as first priority for that slot for the next week. Or the same guy phones up 4pm every Tuesday as soon as the window opens to book the only 40k 6x6 table, one week just say "Sorry, table's already booked." Sure, its "cheating" but its stops monopolisation by a select few, maximises your customer base and sales and generally makes everyone more content that they actually will get a time to game.


S: Store. You need to sell stuff and make a profit. You'll need to negotiate rates and fees and everything with each supplier. As mentioned, MTG is your golden goose, get that in as players need new cards every week. Don't just think about the product itself, think about accessories. Card protectors for card games like yugioh or MTG or pokemon. Painting and modelling for models like 40k. If you want 40k you'll need to negotiate with GW. Go for the 30% if you want, but remember that the 30 will come out of your cut, not theirs. Also, the more diverse AND extensive your product range, the more business. Its all well and good to have Magic and 40k, but there's better business to be had also selling stuff like Yugioh, malifaux, Warmahordes and others besides, as you can then maximise the amount of those accessory items like protectors and paints that you sell, and purchase in larger quantities and get cheap (as bought in bulk).

If I were to open a store, I would not bother with miniatures you have to paint. It'd be board games, x-wing type games, magic the gathering (the main concentration), whatever yugioh type game is popular with younger kids these days and general geek culture collectables.

I would never discount and would concentrate on community building through organized play. I would also take advantage of the little known psychological thing that when you ask someone to help you they like you more and I'd be asking anyone who was even semi regular to help with things like moving tables or TOing the organized play or anything needed to making hosted gaming go more smoothly.

But since there already is a local store exactly like that, I'd have to go elsewhere as I don't think I could compete with the guy when it comes to community building and sales.

You certainly don't want to get caught up on in a price war - other stores may have a better distributor discount due to size. Focus on adding value. You can always try and match the usual 10% off RRP but you don't need to go crazy - the people that are drawn in by your mega cheap mini's will jump to the next place that is cheapest at the time.

How do FLGS make money and stay in business?

With great difficulty.

Don't open a store unless you know a lot about how to run a business and have done your research, including why the other stores have closed down and/or moved away.

Opening a store simply because you like games and it seems like it would be a cool idea is actually a terrible idea that will lose you a ton of money, cause a great deal of stress - because owning/running a business is 24/7, not 9-5 - and burn lots and lots of your time..

I manage The Games Den, a Boardgames FLGS in Leamington Spa. It's basically a two-man-band, the owner/boss and I.

How do we make money?

Well - Magic the Gathering is a big draw. We hold Drafts on Thursday and Sunday, and FnM every Friday. We have a play space, we sell snacks and drinks (probably our second biggest seller after Magic), and we open 6 days a week.

We have an event every night we're open: Tuesdays is casual board gaming (and soon a DnD campaign), Wednesday is RPG night (DM's drink for free), Thursday is Netrunner, more board games, and Thursday Night Magic Draft, Friday is Friday Night Magic , Saturday is tournament day (X-Wing, Armada, Netrunner, Ivor the Engine, Game of Thrones card game, Yu-Gi-Oh!, a different tournament every week), Sunday we have another DnD campaign and another draft.

We're busy every afternoon and evening, we have regulars already, and we benefit from our location - near a train station, slap bang in the middle of Student Land (Warwick University has a lot of students living in Leamington Spa).

We also offer 5% discounts to Games Denizens, people who buy six- or twelve-month memberships so they don't have to pay the £2 per person table charge (we discount for groups and families), and most importantly?

We're friendly and we provide a service as well as a safe place to play. We don't allow swearing and we encourage children and families in. It's a successful formula so far, but we did only open at the end of May.

Teach your customers new games from time to time, develop interest, move on to another. But find what they like, and give them options. Lots of guys will try multiple systems. I've seen it work to grow a tiny ass store into a big one.

 Iapedus wrote:
Due to the complete dearth of a decent FLGS in our immediate area (the last one having just closed its door and moved far, far away ), a friend and I briefly mused on the idea of setting up our own store. Having found a decent spot and put a simple business plan together, we are both utterly stumped at how an FLGS can make any money or indeed stay in business

Can anyone please enlighten us?

We had to make some assumptions when it came to the Trade Price offered by GW on their products (we assumed 30% lower than RRRP since other FLGS regularly offer 25% off) but even assuming this discount and a fairly unsustainable turnover (over 20,000 GBP per month) we still could not get the figures to work out.

Well OP, the mistake you made here was drawing up a business plan. Many stores would hailmarycharge into opening, then eventually run up enough debts that they have to close down .

Otherwise you need to sell products that you can resell to the same customers (Magic!) or be aggressive in your recruitment (IIRC GW reckons the average new 'hobbiest' drops £500 in their first year, which sounds like a lot but is 'only' £40 a month).

I'll add that a fair number of them also effectively subsidise the store with web sales,

although of course if your web sales are too effective they hurt the in store business which is why general gaming, tournaments, painting, demos, a good atmosphere (and food/drink depending on you local setup) are essential to keep people actually using the store

Paints what gets me through the door. I won't necessarily manage to just buy paint though....

Mtg is your core seller, holding tournaments also can benefit you.

If there are no stores close you can sell food and drink at a moderate profit just don't price gouge or you'll generate ill will.

Don't over stock on items that will drive you out of business.

Have a loyalty scheme.

A game store owner told me that running a game store was a great way to make a small fortune.

The problem is, you have to start with a LARGE fortune...

An old saying: The way to make a small fortune running a FLGS is to start with a large fortune.

Thanks for the replies everybody, some great stuff here!

I hadn't really considered MTG as a revenue stream, so I'll have to do some research and see how popular it is in the local area. Primarily we would want it to be a miniatures store, stocking GW / Bolt Action / the FFG games / Infinity / Warmahordes / Spartan games / Gundam and the hobby stuff to go with it (paint, etc). We would also look to stock some board games (i.e. the FFG ones related to the miniature games) so CCGs would also be a logical step from there. Diversity is going to be the key to survival, but we need to be wary of becoming too unfocused in what we offer.

I have worked in retail and run my own business before, so have a good idea of how much hard work is required and how much you have to deal with other than just the hobby related stuff, but as it is we are still stuck at the business plan level and if we don't get past that it wont happen.

The hardest part of getting the figures to work is knowing what the discount rate from the game manufacturers actually is. They wont give you the information until you have a store, but we are not going to open a store unless we have a solid plan, which requires a rough idea of what the rate is. We have based our assumption of 30% on the fact that people such as Wayland Games and Frontline Gaming regularly offer 25% off GW prices, and must be making at least 5% for themselves? Does anyone have any idea what kind of discount off RRRP these guys usually offer?

Know your games, your suppliers, and your customer base.

CCGs (Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Pokemon) are huge, but Conquest does fairly well in areas, as did Netrunner, Heroclix, and other games.

Collectible games are always going to bring in more money than games like D&D or Warhammer 40k, but you're going to find that customers who are made to feel welcome for their other games are going to be willing to spend more money to support you.

My local game store is 5 minutes away, but they don't have the friendliest environment and they don't make everyone feel super welcome. I do my business at a second store that's a 45 minute drive, but bends over backwards to make 40k and D&D players feel welcome, while still managing to run competitive events for their moneymakers like the card games.

 Iapedus wrote:
I hadn't really considered MTG as a revenue stream, so I'll have to do some research and see how popular it is in the local area.

Honestly, this strongly suggests that you haven't done anywhere near enough research to be thinking about running a store. It's pretty common knowledge that MTG is a huge revenue source for game stores, I can't imagine doing even the most superficial search for information on running a store without encountering this fact.

Primarily we would want it to be a miniatures store, stocking GW / Bolt Action / the FFG games / Infinity / Warmahordes / Spartan games / Gundam and the hobby stuff to go with it (paint, etc).

Forget it. MTG is what makes you money, all that other stuff is just a nice side business. I don't care what your interests are, you sell MTG and you have some game tables available for Friday Night Magic at minimum. If you don't want to deal with MTG (and other CCGs) then don't go anywhere near the idea of a game store.

I've also worked in the game industry and for several game stores. Here's what I have seen as store killers:

Bad Location. You need someplace kids can go to, near schools/colleges and buslines, or near some place mom and dad won't mind going to while Timmy games.

Dirtiness and disorganization. Obvious, but you would be suprised at how many game stores are dumps.

Friendliness has been mentioned before. There's a local store that is extremely well stocked...and the gaming group is hostile to 40K. Too expensive, bad rules blah blah blah. You need to head this off at once and make everyone welcome to game in your store.

Lack of stock. No one wants to go to a store and find out they are always out of a product. Remember the rule of 3 or 4...you buy something at a 40% discount. once you sell it 3 or 4 times, all sales of that product will be a profit. So figure out that carrying 4 Tactical Marines is good, carrying a complete Romanian Army for Flames of War is bad. I stopped shopping the local FLGS when I needed something right away because I couldn't count on them carrying the product, and I'd head over to the more distant GW store. Let me clarify...carry the key full range, and all the paints and hobby supplies, and get restock asap. Its ok not to carry Romanians, or Sisters of Battle etc., those won't be the big sellers for you and will suck up overhead.

Stay open a little later than normal. I don't get the game stores that open at 11 or noon ( I know, some malls require you to have certain hours) and are empty for 2-3 hours, and then close at 9. If I get off work at 5, take an hour to get to the store and get food, I'm only going to have time to get 1 game of 40K in, if I'm lucky. Same with DnD. A good session of DnD requires about 4 hours of game time. The FLG near me closes at 8 on Saturdays.....boggles my mind.

This might seem like odd advice...but don't hire gamers. Hire real workers and train them. Gamers won't be the salespeople that you need or want. Gamers will want to play games and talk shop, not run demos, upsell, or provide great customer service. If you can find a gamer who can do that, great. But most game store employees are gamers, and are failures at the employee part.

Promote, promote, promote. Invite people to come back. Say Hey, see you at the megabattle on Saturday! You won't believe the difference that makes. I've seen game stores that didn't do that, and they were empty. The ones that did got business.


Remember that your main competition isn't the store down the street or across town. It's the interent with guys selling 25-30% off. Gamers never show their store loyalty. Find a way for them to shop in your store.

Good post above.

The other thing is the store needs to be inviting. So many gaming stores with poor lighting and windows blocked by product and posters. This is not inviting.

Furthermore, a dark store will fail to showcase any minis or games you have set up. It will also invalidate any painting area you have set aside. Proper lighting (and even better, daylight) will enhance the mood of your customers, making them happier at your store (more likely to return, as well as more likely to make a purchase on any individual visit).

From several previous conversations with FLGS people:

1) Card Games- MTG, Pokemon, Yugioh, or whatever else is popular. Honestly, these are what will pay your bills.

2) Board Games- Boardgames are the second best way to pay your bills. Becoming known as a good place to find interesting board games helps draw in the non-gamer crowd. Offering up rental copies can get people to come to your store where they will hopefully buy stuff.

3) Vending machines/Snacks- Gaming is thirsty work, and some source of refreshing beverages will pay for itself, and help keep customers happy.

You will stock stuff like 40k mostly to give let yourself buy product at wholesale costs.

Generally FLGS don't really make money. Most owners will operate at something close to subsistence levels. The issue is you open a FLGS because you have a passion for gaming. And that makes for a very poor business person in most instances. It is so easy to end up with a store that stocks only what the owner likes.

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:
You will stock stuff like 40k mostly to give let yourself buy product at wholesale costs.

Don't forget drawing in new MTG customers. It's ok if 40k only makes you a small profit if some of those 40k players are buying MTG stuff since they're already in your store for 40k night.

Is your flag right? Are you in Hong Kong?

Don't tell me Fun Altiers closed!

Magic: the cash cow.

Or drugs.

Probably soaked into the cards.

 Gen.Steiner wrote:
I manage The Games Den, a Boardgames FLGS in Leamington Spa. It's basically a two-man-band, the owner/boss and I.

You need to advertise more! I would not have found you existed had I not happend to see this thread on the front page, and then click on it, which I almost never do. People in Banbury need to know you exist. At the moment gamers there are all going to Gameskeeper or Meeples in Oxford, which whilst they are good shops are a PITA to get to as parking in Oxford is hell.

I'll definatly be comming in for a visit next time I'm up in Leamington to go to the garage or Lockwoods.

 chromedog wrote:
Magic: the cash cow.

Or drugs.

Probably soaked into the cards.

That would explain so much...

I'd really reconsider selling GW stuff they will force mandatory sales on you making you stock the new stuff before you can buy what you want, they won't easily refund stuff that's not selling and they won't let you have any kind of sale to clear stuff that's not moving.

And if you should do well they'll open a store nearby and screw you over on new releases so people go to them.

GW is scummy to flgs owners.

Or at least start with their new starter games, the one with the 4th edition orks and marines.

Didn't they just open a store in Hong Kong?