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hey dakka. Me and the misses are thinking aobut getting a loan to start a our own gaming store.
but as every player knows there a secernt(spelling?) thing that makes and brakes a store.

the reason i,m writing this is what would a gaming store perfect for you?

so far what we have.

possable location: the place is an old closed down small dollar store and

name: Angry hobbit

any ideas and pointer will be welcome

Well the true key to any FLGS is the F. A game store that is not friendly is one I would not want to spend time in.

Most deff. we want to make this a place for gamers by gamers and all that jazz. i want it to have that second home kinda feel.

Then also placement by food centers would be nice. Also minor amounts of employees is nice because you get to know them and its more homey.

good and proper lighting-i hate going into a game store that makes me feel like i should have brought a lantern
don't go overboard with the random crud thats just there to look neat, it just makes places look cluttered and somewhat confusing
cooler of drinks to sell (those glass front sorta ones like they have near registers in walmart and the like)
strategically places glade plug-ins or whatnot to preempt the inevitable old pizza and armpit odor crowd that will shuffle in
this should go without saying, but i've seen it around my area...no creepy curtained off "adult" area, parents don't like it

May I ask where this store will be located? Keep an eye for competition in the area as if there's a store where people already play, it makes it harder for you to draw them in, but at the same time if there is no player base in the area you'll have no business either.

Also, stock far more than just GW and PP. Offer games like Munchkin that non "gamers" are likely to pick up and play.

Offer soda and snacks in store. Be located near at least 1 fast food joint.

Have a good number of tables depending on the space available.This is what justifies you selling things at full retail.

If you can't afford to have a decent sized gaming space, offer products at a steady discount otherwise you will lose out to internet stores.

Lastly, have proper gamer hours. Anything before noon is a waste of money, and if you have regular gamers in to play then I'd say stay open till about 10 or 11pm.

If you MUST be closed for a day a week, make it Monday.

What's your business plan?

aerethan wrote:

If you MUST be closed for a day a week, make it Monday.

I always seem to want to make impulse buys or need stuff on mondays... And the FLGS and GW are clooooooooooosed! OH No!

You need to have some gaming space.
You need to be tolerant of freeloaders that only come to play games.
You need to stay open rather late.
You need to accept that you'll not be making much money the first few years.
You need to have some sort of discount to loyal customers else they'll get their stuff online.
You need to understand your audience: will you cater to older gamers (Flames of War, Warhammer Fantasy, etc) or younger gamers (YuGiOh, etc).
You need to open up in a place that doesn't have many other alternative gaming stores.
You need to choose what to stock. More common games (Magic the Gathering, Warhammer 40k) or rarer games (Infinity, Malifaux).

Some quick notes:

-Make a business plan. No business plan, no loan.
-Loans are tough as hell to get right now.
-Make sure it's something you want to do. If you invision playing games and chatting up customers, go back to kindergarten. It's long work weeks at 70+ hours, lots of stress, and low to zero pay. And that's after you get started, much worse your first year.

Go over to http://www.gsrf.org/index_files/Page451.htm and post your business plan. You'll get feedback that will help you.

Spend time to learn what you need to do. (accounting, inventory control, ordering, customer service, a website, store build out, etc etc etc.) Easier to do it now, than when you open.

As a customer:

1) Stock what I want.

Otherwise, I'll order it myself...and have it delivered straight to my house...at a discount.

2) Introduce me to other players.

If you hook me up with a player base, I'll hook you up with my wallet.

mikhaila wrote:Some quick notes:

-Make a business plan. No business plan, no loan.
-Loans are tough as hell to get right now.
-Make sure it's something you want to do. If you invision playing games and chatting up customers, go back to kindergarten. It's long work weeks at 70+ hours, lots of stress, and low to zero pay. And that's after you get started, much worse your first year.

Go over to http://www.gsrf.org/index_files/Page451.htm and post your business plan. You'll get feedback that will help you.

Spend time to learn what you need to do. (accounting, inventory control, ordering, customer service, a website, store build out, etc etc etc.) Easier to do it now, than when you open.

+1 to the "Long weeks" and "lots of stress" points.

I would also add that it will most likely have an adverse effect on your marrage.

mikhaila wrote:Some quick notes:

-Make a business plan. No business plan, no loan.
-Loans are tough as hell to get right now.
-Make sure it's something you want to do. If you invision playing games and chatting up customers, go back to kindergarten. It's long work weeks at 70+ hours, lots of stress, and low to zero pay. And that's after you get started, much worse your first year.

Go over to http://www.gsrf.org/index_files/Page451.htm and post your business plan. You'll get feedback that will help you.

Spend time to learn what you need to do. (accounting, inventory control, ordering, customer service, a website, store build out, etc etc etc.) Easier to do it now, than when you open.

I agree that you will end up working a crap ton of hours. When I ran an LGS in Mission Viejo called Do Not Pass Go, I worked 12 noon to 9 or 11 every night, 6 nights a week.

I'd add that having a presence in Magic the Gathering is a good way to go as it opens up your customer base a decent bit. Yugio or w/e can go to hell.

well I plan on having the store located in pensacola FL, theres a navy base there, a big one and one thing i know alot of sailors are gamers too. I also want thank every one fot tips and comentary big help.

I was planing on doing a mixed bag of games d20 systems, GW,PP and small sacle games like munchkin

as for customer base mostly older but during the after school hours younger kids.

some computers for WOW and people that need too use army builder for a tourny

one or two confrence room to rent of rthe day for the D&D guys to have a good ol uninterupted sesion.

and the good ol snack shelf and fridg

so tell me what do you think?

Oh and I know the first two to three years you mostly dig your self out of the red. But as a player I've been to alot of sub par stores with total D-bags running the place. so this will be like the the perfect game store for gamers.

Oh and I know the first two to three years you mostly dig your self out of the red. But as a player I've been to alot of sub par stores with total D-bags running the place. so this will be like the the perfect game store for gamers.

Hate to break it to you, but that's the idea every game store owner has had, even the ones run by "total d-bags."

you need a strong emphasis on recruitment and new players. You need strong, STRONG -salespeople-. I'm talking people who greet everyone, talk to them, have a conversation, and find out their wants and needs.

contrary to popular belief, a salesperson is not a parrot that walks up to you and shouts "BUY!? BUY!? BUY!? BUY!?" nor a corporate lackey that simply follows protocol without any soul, nor is it a tree, that simply stands in the store and shifts gently from side to side occasionally in the breeze. NOR is it a shifty underhanded person who pretends to be your friend just to get in your wallet, like some classless chauvinist trying to get into a girl's pants.

A Salesperson is, and needs to be: Wildly enthusiastic, warm and friendly to everyone (even those who hate human contact), good at listening, good at following directions and orders regardless of personal opinion, persistent, unflaggingly positive, and overall a strong presence.

Selling is the act of finding out what people want, explaining that you do indeed have what they want, and then asking them if they would like to buy what they want.

Thrive on rejection. Live for the moments when you get to introduce a player to a game they are going to love for years. Take some traditional sales and business classes, sales is the art of human interaction, and that is true regardless of product.

be aware of the fact that even though you are personally invested in these products, your customers are personally invested in these products, and that ultimately you are running a game store to make a strong, positive environment for a community of players, you are first and foremost a store, and you need to run like one. High quality people will understand, and jerks will not, and they will leave.

On the subject of communities. Make sure yours does not overtake your store. If a fresh faced new user comes in, excited by the cool stuff but without a clue what they're looking at or what they could be getting into, and the initial reaction from those who they are looking at to become their fellow gamers and friends is an evil hiss and a pessimistic dismissal of the un-anointed one, your store will fail, and those players won't have a place to play.

Know your products, and make sure your staff does too. At least at a basic level. You might carry damn near every hobby known to man (every pen and paper RPG ever professionally printed, 6 or 7 different wargaming systems and a myriad of card games, tradeable and otherwise), but if a potential customer walks in and asks about something you sell, with the response of "... I 'unno *shrugs* " and then silence, you are screwing yourself.

As others have said. Expect it to be hard. Expect to have sand kicked in your face. Expect the be treated by garbage by players who are bitter, or who buy everything online and use up all your space. Expect the worst of humans.

But! Fear not, for it is, for all that, extremely rewarding work. If you can do it, and do it well, maintain a positive store environment, where newbies are welcomed with open arms by staff and gaming groups alike, where all are welcome and cliquey divisive groups are purged by the emperor's wrath, where marketing and media (social or otherwise) are used effectively to spread the word and keep fresh faces flowing through the doors, there is a golden prize at the end of the tunnel. A happy, productive, sustained source of income where going to work every day is a pleasure.

#1 rule to keep in mind: A business is a collection of people. Recruit, train, and grow a small elite cadre of people, and that effort will pay dividends beyond anything else you could possibly do to help your business succeed.
Never take your people for granted, or accept low quality people, or let them drag you down. Find the talent, grow the talent, reward the talent, and treat them well.

Nothing else will compare in importance to that.

Might need to work on the name a little as well, could run into some issues using hobbit in it.

I will mention things that the FLGS that I frequent has done right:

Hold as many Magic The Gathering events as you can, especially the ones where the players have to buy cards to participate, I'm sure the profit per pack of cards is low, but the constant buying of cards helps a lot.

Someone mentioned it before, but be near food, the local store here has a pizza joint, a cuban food joint that just opened (and offers discounts to the players) a Dairy queen, 7-11 and a few other places as well. They have no problem with bringing your own food in, but they also have a fridge full of soda, ice cream, candy and other stuff, again, you don't make a lot per item, but it all adds up.

Have ample space for gaming, my store has about 40% of the space for retail, about 55% for gaming, and a little painting room in the back. When buying tables or building tables, remember that magic players can easily play on larger gaming tables that also support Warhammer 40k, Warhammer Fantasy, and Warmachines, but those wargame players cannot play on a standard size table that magic players can. The way my flgs has set up has 7 warhammer tables that are approx 4x7, painted green with tons of available terrain for people to play with. There are also about 10 smaller tables for the rpg/magic players, so that even if there is a magic tournament or a small RTT, both sets of players can play without evicting the other group.

1 - find a store front with cheap rent. The neighborhood needs to be safe & there needs to be lots of free parking. Location is secondary - gamers will come find you.

2 - Careful with the loan, payments will be a stone around your neck for years. No bank is going to give you a signature loan for a store, which leave a 2nd mortgage on your house or credit cards. The first could cost you your house, the second is easier to do than you think. Get 2-3 credit cards with introductory rates. As you start to carry a balance, you will be flooded with applications for new cards - hop from card to card as the int rate changes. Just be sure to always pay on time or you're SOL.

3- selling computer time is a good way to set up a high margin business. Do you understand computers? They will break and you'll be the one to fix them. My experience with computer networks is over a decade old - would kids still pay for computer time when they could just play on their phone?

4- Find a high margin business to supplement the game store. The margin on GW stinks & you'll lose all of the large dollar sales to online stores. Can you paint figs, cast resin bases, make terrain, buy/sell collectables? Find a product that makes you unique - this is the hard part because you'll need to be smarter than everyone else to make it work.

There are a few things you will need IMO.

1- Staff has to be friendly and KNOWLEDGEABLE. You need people who are good at talking to your customer's and who people actually like to see. I know where I go the people are awesome. They all know their stuff and are actually fun people to talk to.

2- You will need a full event calendar. Keep the events going all the time. Magic is the easiest one here I think. Magic tournaments bring in a lot of people. Also make sure you schedule game nights for 40k, fantasy and warmachine.

3- Gaming space. Make sure you have a good space set aside for the gaming. The best places have it seperate from the store. My FLGS has half the store sectioned off behind a partition for gaming space.

4- Team up with local clubs. Is there an anime club around town? Invite them to do some shows at your store. Invite local gaming groups to use your space for DnD or Pathfinder.

5- Bulliten Board- Put up a bulletin board for gamers. Let them buy/sell trade their used gaming stuffs or find others to play with through said board.

No lould heavy metal music and good ventilation. And at least some who knows the rules to every game you sell.

I recomend a Lolaty scheme for customers that frequently shop there. Where will this store be located ? I want to know.

RanTheCid wrote:1 - find a store front with cheap rent. The neighborhood needs to be safe & there needs to be lots of free parking. Location is secondary - gamers will come find you.

2 - Careful with the loan, payments will be a stone around your neck for years. No bank is going to give you a signature loan for a store, which leave a 2nd mortgage on your house or credit cards. The first could cost you your house, the second is easier to do than you think. Get 2-3 credit cards with introductory rates. As you start to carry a balance, you will be flooded with applications for new cards - hop from card to card as the int rate changes. Just be sure to always pay on time or you're SOL.

3- selling computer time is a good way to set up a high margin business. Do you understand computers? They will break and you'll be the one to fix them. My experience with computer networks is over a decade old - would kids still pay for computer time when they could just play on their phone?

4- Find a high margin business to supplement the game store. The margin on GW stinks & you'll lose all of the large dollar sales to online stores. Can you paint figs, cast resin bases, make terrain, buy/sell collectables? Find a product that makes you unique - this is the hard part because you'll need to be smarter than everyone else to make it work.

Some good and bad points. 1) Location does matter. If you try to only sell to existing gamers, you'll never grow, and likely decay. And many gamers won't find you. Cheap is good. Free parking is good. Safe neighborhood is good. Unfortunately the parking and quality of neighborhood work against finding something cheap.

2) Loan will indeed need backing, probably the second mortgage. I know several stores that have opened on credit cards. Trickier, but easier to get in this economy. And too high a loan will become the stone around your neck, absolutely.

3) Agreed. It's why I don't have computers in my shop. Can't fix my own.

4) GW is a 45% margin, actually average for the industry. You'll lose some of the high dollar sales. Less and less as you provide more and more for your customers. I sell over 10 grand a month in GW at full margin. Sometimes a lot more. Do it right and GW is a backbone of your store. One way to make your store unique is quality. Whatever you do, do it well, whether that's service, gaming area, or selection. Do lots of things well, and you sell a lot more stuff and survive. Neil at the Warstore does well because of his customer service, not his discount. Everyone on line discounts.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Melchiour wrote:There are a few things you will need IMO.

1- Staff has to be friendly and KNOWLEDGEABLE. You need people who are good at talking to your customer's and who people actually like to see. I know where I go the people are awesome. They all know their stuff and are actually fun people to talk to.

2- You will need a full event calendar. Keep the events going all the time. Magic is the easiest one here I think. Magic tournaments bring in a lot of people. Also make sure you schedule game nights for 40k, fantasy and warmachine.

3- Gaming space. Make sure you have a good space set aside for the gaming. The best places have it seperate from the store. My FLGS has half the store sectioned off behind a partition for gaming space.

4- Team up with local clubs. Is there an anime club around town? Invite them to do some shows at your store. Invite local gaming groups to use your space for DnD or Pathfinder.

5- Bulliten Board- Put up a bulletin board for gamers. Let them buy/sell trade their used gaming stuffs or find others to play with through said board.

All good points, although I prefer my gaming space inside the store where I can more easily interact with customers, rather than a totally separate area.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
name: Angry hobbit

Need a better name.

-You need the word GAME in the name of your store.
-Don't use a word like hobbit, could cause a world of hurt at some point.

mikhaila wrote:

RanTheCid wrote:1 - find a store front with cheap rent. The neighborhood needs to be safe & there needs to be lots of free parking. Location is secondary - gamers will come find you.

Some good and bad points. 1) Location does matter. If you try to only sell to existing gamers, you'll never grow, and likely decay. And many gamers won't find you. Cheap is good. Free parking is good. Safe neighborhood is good. Unfortunately the parking and quality of neighborhood work against finding something cheap.

True - everything is a compromise of some sort. To be more specific, I recommend looking for older strip malls in better places. Rents are cheaper and the space will have already been finished by the previous tenant. New strip malls will want double the rent and a percent of sales.

One of the more interesting (and successful) ways of bringing business to a game store is to set up a kiosk (those little stands that sell sunglasses and the like) in the local mall. Stock the kiosk with basic inventory and send the serious buyers to the main store. Rents on these stands are cheap in the spring and summer - and crazy expensive at Christmas time. Be sure you are renting month to month. When we did this, the mall was happy to let us out of the contract in the fall for a store with higher incomes.

A couple of points:

1) I agree with Mikhaila: Angry Hobbit is a bad official name, both becasue you're not advertising your store's main interest area (My flgs doesn't have the word Game in it, so it was months before I knew it was the only GW supplier in town), as well as inviting possible lawsuits or similar ugliness form the Tolkein Foundation (Since iirc the term "hobbit" is copyrighted, which is why WOTC uses "halfling" instead). Maybe use that as a name for a certian Tournament you host (or a nickname for elementary school MtG players that are sore losers... ) instead.

2) Computer time. I like your idea of computers, but you'll need to keep on top of them. Have them angled and close enough that the guy manning the counter will be able to watch to make sure Little Johnny is actually making an army list, and not surfing BarelyLegalXXX18.com.
I'd also suggest a minor charge for use of the computers for an MMORPG (Say $5 for an hour or two or whatever) since that would tie up a computer for a long period of time, possibly causing issues if other people need to use them. To that effect, I'd say keep at least one computer as an Army-List-Only (No MMORPGs) so someone can always make a list.

3) Test games. Dear God, you MUST have a test version of every board/card game on your shelves, or be willing to crack the shrinkwrap and play one with a customer. The indie-boardgame catalog is huge, and after a game or two, everything on the shelves will look the same to the casual customer.
Make sure your employees are familiar (at least roughly) with the gameplay and/or feel of each of the games, so they can reccomend ones to customers based on their preferences ("Oh, you like turn-based games, need one for a party for 4+ people, and would like a building/strategy aspect? Well, I can reccomend Citadels or Dominion off the top of my head...").

4) Try to encourage/hire employees so that you have a variety of opinions. If you're trying to sell GW/PP miniatures, the last thing you want is for an employee to say "Oh, well the Tyranids/Cryx aren't anywhere near as fun to play as Space Marines/Khador," especially since that might alienate someone who was dead-set on said army. Plus, this will help encourage more purchases based on employee reccomendations, creating a dialogue of "Oh, well I'm not real familiar with how the SM Librarian runs in a mechanized army since mine use drop pods, but Bill over here runs a similar army, and could give you great advice" as opposed to "Librarians? Never used them 'cause they suck." I know it's impossible to cover every angle, but the more you cover, the better your chances of getting a loyal (and spendthrifty) customer.

5) Sales, combo-deals, tournaments, demonstrations. Never let your store have a dull day, or especially a dull week. The people above have reccomended you stock MtG for the elementary age groups that will be playing; Will you have a tournament or MtG event starting at 4 or 4:30 (~1 hour after elementary gets out in my hometown) every day, or at the very least once a week?
Keep a roster board, and allow for long-term achievement recognition. Winning a tournament is fun, but seeing that I'm 2 short of getting 3 tournament wins in a row ("Free booster pack!") or breaking the undefeated record set by John Doe last year is a whole lot more enticing than winning a one-off game. Same goes for GW, PP, and maybe the more popular indie games.

A couple minor things:
--Bitz Bins: Add a bit, take a bit. Something like this would be awesome, and I honestly wish any FLGS I'd been to had this. "Stock" it with spare bits from the sprues for demo armies, and allow people to take bits in exchange for equal number of bits. Something like this will encourage cool conversions, as well as allow a bit of flexibility for people getting unit boxes ("Oh, you need a SM Chapter Master? Well, maybe you can swap some of your extra Devestator weapons for a cape and a sword to stick on a Seargant or something")
--Open Late, Close Late: I'd guess you'd probably not have too many customers before 10-11AM, but you'll have gamers wanting to go until 11-midnight, so I'd suggest setting a close time of 11PM, or 10 with a once-a-week or whatever Up-All-Night events where you have stuff going until midnight or 1AM. Plus, if you're stocking munchies, people would probably be more willing to stay in-store and get it then try and find a nearby food place that's not closed that late.
--The Unmentionables. Even though you may hate Pokemon/Yugioh/My Little Pony, stock the cards. I've spoken with some store owners that say those have some amazingly awesome profit margins compared to stuff like GW's box sets, and just because you stock the cards doesn't mean you're required to host events for them
--Advertise. When you have a big sale or event, advertise it. Most people won't know about the existence of your shop, so the opportunity for them to both explore as well as see big events/great prices will entice them into looking further at your store rather than walk right by.

Hope these help, and good luck!

One of the local gaming stores I goto has Pokeman events. The people spend mad amounts of cash at those events. I have never understood why, but apparantly card games are very profitable if you get a good following and tournment group going. He has made severaly comments "the reason the Warmachine / Hordes players have a shop, is the pokeman players."

I'd google / start going around the area scoping for competition and try to net search if there is are local gaming groups out of people's houses. Might help you establish a area. Be careful with computers for wow... 1-2 virus's will set you back several thousand dollars very quickly.

guys thanks so much for all the help oh and i like the bitz box idea.

yeah and the wife wasnt feeling the name either so I'll work on that when the time comes.

Right now I've gone back to school for some business management classes, and after those we will be geting rolling. But right now were mostly geting our business plan together, and grasping the in and outs of owning a store.

as for staff it would be me the misses and a few close people i know that have a good game knowlage and i trust enough not too steal me blind

A bit of help may be if you call the owners of GMI games in Riverside California. It's owned by a couple and ran mostly by Catherine. She would be the person to talk to about how to maintain a store and a marriage at the same time. I'm sure she has a wealth of knowledge of the business as they've been around for years and seem to be doing well.

njpc wrote:One of the local gaming stores I goto has Pokeman events. The people spend mad amounts of cash at those events. I have never understood why, but apparantly card games are very profitable if you get a good following and tournment group going. He has made severaly comments "the reason the Warmachine / Hordes players have a shop, is the pokeman players."

The margins aren't quite as much (30% or so on Magic and Pokemon, if memory serves), but they make up for it in sheer volume. On a good day, Friday Night Magic can pull in fifty or so customers, and a considerable amount of card gamers will buy entire cases in one go. That doesn't even begin to cover the ridiculous margins on singles, assuming you flip them fast enough.

I'd personally avoid the computers. They're a hell of an investment (you're probably looking at a minimum of $600 per for adequate gaming rigs, not including software), and your payout will be minimal. The margins on software are godawful, you'll get stock well after the name brand stores, and you won't be able to afford to offer any discounts to make you competitive with Game Stop or Best Buy (god forbid you throw Steam into the equation).

I agree to avoid a gaming computer. Having a community pc for army builder and such is fine as any cheap pc will handle it.

And if you have the community for it, Friday Night Magic is big money. Last time I was at GMI was on a Friday night and it was packed in there. At least 100 people, all of whom spent at least $10 to play.