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My first piece of advice is that $10-15k won't even come close to what you need to open a store. I'm close with several shop owners and we've talked a lot about what they did to open the store and get it going just because I was curious. The ones that are successful spent $40-50k opening the store. They also said you need to have enough money in the bank to pay a years worth of bills because it could be that long before the store is turning enough profit to pay your bills. They spent most of their profit the first year improving the store, building the customer base and hiring good help.

To answer your main question, Birmingham metro area has just shy of 1 million people. We have a GW and 5 FLGS that all do pretty well. Excelsior told me they survive mostly on comic sales but also do WMH, 40k, x wing, etc. CJs survives on MTG sales. Legion survives on board games, RPGs and comics. The GW is the only store in the area that survives on just tabletop wargames but surviving is all its doing. After 3 management changes in the past year, myself and the other regulars that were big spenders have started going elsewhere. You need to stock a little bit of everything at the beginning and see what your customer base goes for. We have shops right down the street from each other that all carry MTG, comics and 40k but one shop does 90% of their business on MTG and the other does 90% of their business on comics.

 Vanguard-13 wrote:
Semi-off topic. But are there any hobby shops that will let a person "borrow" a unit or army in the store? [...] I'm curious if anyone has ever seen this done.

Not seen it done, but seen it discussed, at least. Someone had a plan for a 'rental army' gaming space a while back, if memory serves, but it's not quite what you're talking about. More common, as I understand it, is a store owner/employee loaning out a personal unit for trial. Some stores maintain 'store use' starter armies for the purpose of running demo games to try to attract customers to new/different ranges. Again, though, it seems to be individual owner/employee efforts, not really part of the overall business plan.

Boxed starter sets tend to sell reasonably well (entry point for new players, cheap filler/springboard for new faction collections for veterans) and provide the best bang for your buck, in terms of model count, and getting a player to buy into a whole new system means more profit than convincing him to buy a new unit or two. If the store stocks several ranges and has employees that know all of their available systems, opening up a starter box from each range (most of the 'big boys' have one) and painting it up for display and demos in the store isn't a bad idea. Doing up one or more of every new model released and stocked, however, seems like a massive time and money sink, as well as a waste of precious storage space.

 mechanicalhorizon wrote:
Isn't it risky to start just about any retail business that isn't "service based" these days?

I can't remember the last time I went into a game store to buy anything. It's not that I don't want to, they just never have what I need so I usually wind up buying it online anyway.

I thought that most retail stores (and game stores) were disappearing because of online sales.

Yes, the trick is how to make your retail store into a service provider.

There are five main retail motivators.....

1. Save money
2. Save Time
3. Convenience
4. Security
5. Community/Status

Obviously, no Brick and Mortar store can undersell an Online one due to costs. So you can never beat the Online guys on price. As a side note, you should never compete in business on price. Someone can always do it cheaper.

That means you have to try to beat Online Stores on the other four. The only Retail motivator that the Online guys have a problem with is the Community/Status one. That is where a Retail Store has to excel.

I would say they can have some problems with time/convenience. If i can walk into a store and walk out with a product I want, that is a big plus, rather than waiting for it to ship. Impulse buys are a thing.

That said it is tough to compete with the online retailers in general.

I am looking at opening a gaming "cafe", that serves Beer, Coffee drinks, Food, Snacks, as well as selling minor amounts of product. This product will likely be Warhammer/MTG as specialist games do terrible here, even Privateer Press does not sell well due to online prices being so much cheaper.

We are planning on 80% of our revenue off Food/Drink sales combined with membership fees.

My town has 3 colleges and 1 university and a huge amount of gamers which consist mostly of Magic and Warhammer, none of our FLGS gives a discount on product, so we are thinking of offer 20% gaming product with the membership or 10% without.

We have the numbers looking good but it all hinges on location, rent, and getting WOTC on board which is pretty hard when Alcohol is involved.

It is fun and exciting but we still may not pull the trigger.

Just out of curiousity, have you checked into the Health Department/Dept of Ag (Depends on who the regulating agency is in your state) Regs on your idea?

Sometimes, the things they require just to serve can be... pricey. Places that use to meet them may have been grandfathered in and new ownership would be forced to upgrade to whatever the "new" standard was. Just somethign to consider with the "Cafe" idea.... which I like.