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I'm beginning my foray into Team Yankee, and both of my local FLGS said they would be happy to help feed my new obsession, however I was cautioned that (according to them) Battlefont has issues with shipping and getting things in on reasonable time scales. Out of curiosity I ended up on Amazon searching for model kits today and I am shocked at the difference in prices as compared to FLGS. In most cases, I found 40K, AoS, TY, and other game kits for as much as 30% less than what the FLGS or even the company stores charge. I mean, how can I continue to advocate for support of the FLGS and still purchase from these online sellers?

The cost of my TY force is almost 35% LESS if I buy it all on Amazon, with free shipping thanks to my prime subscription. It's enough of a difference that it would allow me to buy far more than I had originally planned for in the beginning. Of course, many will say without supporting the FLGS, we wouldn't have a spot to game, and that is true. But at what point does the benefit of saving outweigh the benefit of the FLGS community?

Depends on your personal situation. I play almost exclusively with people I met at an FLGS. Take away the FLGS and you take away everyone I game with. I buy almost everything at said FLGS to do my part to keep it there. I consider the extra ~10-30% a "fee" to cover the many, many hours I've spent gaming in the store.

I've known a few people who play almost exclusively at home with friends they've known for years before they started gaming. Those guys buy mostly from online sources. They don't gain any added value from an FLGS.

I guess it comes down to how much you value all the extra stuff you get from an FLGS. I value the playing space and community very highly.

I buy mix from flgs and online. Saving matters but want to support where i play as well. Happily i buy enough i'm doing my part supporting flgs anyway.

This is a common thread

I buy all paints, single models, and random single boxes from my old FLGS back where I used to live in College. This is around $100-150 a month to my old store I haven't games at in over 2 years at this point. Why do I buy here? I know the employees, I've painted terrain for the store, and enjoy their inventory and the buying environment. I think I get a 5% discount or so when I gave my email address.

I'd buy online exclusively for all commission projects to save money for the client and I. I do not front the money but I'll direct my friends to a few sites that offer discounts. Warstore and other sites occasionally have some promo codes for discounts if youre buying 4-5k a year from them to lock the solid 25-35% off Citadel or 40%+ PP. I'd still buy paints/brushes/glue/characters from my FLGS.

Spend money where you would like to play or support the local business that caters to you. They let me run demo games and create game nights years ago so I feel obligated to still support them. For clients in another state that have no connection this this store? I doubt the FLGS wants to give me 40% off PP models

I definitely try to give as much as I can to the local stores, but the justified difference in price is hard to make. Especially in an industry that never has any type of sale.

There's some bigger picture issues going on with online sales, that have to do with economy of scale and the distribution chain. Your FLGS's issues with getting product are in no small part a result of distributors ordering less stock by taking control of sales directly. The dark side of it all is that while we're all able to get more for less, the less we're putting in means fewer people can make a living from the industry. Only a few discount stores will profit and since they order less from the companies making games; the barrier to entry for new companies in the industry gets higher too.

That's not to say online sales are bad. It's a relatively new market that largely benefits the consumer. Trying to stop it is like trying to stop digital music. We already seem to be at the tail end of the "discount" period of this migration where "discount" prices have been standard long enough that they've devalued the products and companies have hit the limit on how expensive they can pretend they're worth and need to start putting in MAAPs instead. There's a reason you're really seeing a push for direct sale resin though. Without distribution; most companies can't come close to making plastic reasonable. To that end, GW's archaic online sales model might have just been ahead of the game; or at least, they recognize the need for the FLGS distribution to make order volumes large enough to justify HIPS possible.

Does the FLGS provide you "Value"?

If it does, buy there.



[Rant]

I am a small business and entrepreneur. The deck is stacked against small businesses in the retail environment. Here is why. Once I accidentally got a bill for a large retail competitor of mine. They bought the same stuff as me, but got 20% off everything because of economies of scale. They buy bigger orders at once.

So essentially the volume of small businesses orders subsidizes the larger stores orders, and people expect Mom and Pop shops to somehow compete against this AND be cheaper than large, chain retailers? Ridiculous. No wonder retail and main street business is dying.

I could go on all day, but whatever.... no one cares......

[/end Rant]

My FLGS has a special deal where they stay open saturday nights late from like 6pm to 3 am. There's a bunch of guys who go every week, it's fun and easy to get a game in, and they don't charge. Consequently, I personally buy about everything I can from there because they provide a great extra service to me.

Your mileage may vary, but I appreciate my store enough to pay the premium on models. I wouldn't hold it against those who didn't, however.

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
My FLGS has a special deal where they stay open saturday nights late from like 6pm to 3 am. There's a bunch of guys who go every week, it's fun and easy to get a game in, and they don't charge. Consequently, I personally buy about everything I can from there because they provide a great extra service to me.

Your mileage may vary, but I appreciate my store enough to pay the premium on models. I wouldn't hold it against those who didn't, however.

Well, I'm not sure it's an issue of paying a premium. It's an issue of is there a step in this process that is simply an out of date business model that drives up the prices in order to keep itself afloat.

I'll give you an example, a good friend of mine back east is toying around with the idea of opening a game room that doesn't sell any product. In stead, the room is treated like a 24 fitness but for gaming, where you buy a subscription of XXX$ per year and have unlimited 24/7 magnetic door access. His reason for this is that he says product is just too unstable to sell, and he cannot keep up with the online market in terms of deals.

This is also why FLGS like things ilke Magic the Gathering. Because the packs are cheap enough that when people go to game the store has more chance to sell packs to them for convenience and opportunity.

Plus game modes like Booster Draft can easily generate sales on a game night where the store provides the pack and everyone just chips in to play the game.

Even if many of them are buying cards online individually or in packs, the local store can still squeeze some money out of them.


Wargames are a bit different, even more so if the local store hasn't got a building and painting station. Much of the buy, build and paint (which is quite a few hours) is done in isolation away from the store; and the models do need at the very least assembling. Plus the price on them is generally higher so its a lot harder to try and sneak a few extra sales in when people come to play the game.



Personally I agree with the others, where possible its good to support your local store because its providing several key services for you

1) It's advertising gaming in your local area. That means more chance of new people walking in and starting up gaming. The store owner should be constantly working toward trying to get new customers in the door and thus its a great thing to locally have.
Growing clubs is hard, even harder once you leave big gathering spots like schools and universities and enter the job markets where the outreach you've got is often much more niche and (in some lines of work) less diverse.

2) The store might well be a meeting spot for clubs. Even if the store isn't hosting the club on their own turf, it will be a common ground area for the local club(s). In addition its a place to advertise said clubs and get more chance of netting your demographic to join in.

3) If they've the room and the will and the money then its also where you might meet to game regularly. This might be in the form of a club; game nights and even just walk in the door gaming.

4) Guiding newbies. This is something GW stores often do a lo of; but 3rd parties (depending on their priorities and staff) can be another supporter of this. Basically getting someone not just buying into the game, but showing them the ropes and getting them through that first hurdle of building and painting.

My local GW is half a mile from my house and provides a space I use regularly: Monday night is Underworlds night and once a month they host a free Underworlds tournament there. Consequently I buy all my Underworlds stuff from them. The premium I pay versus online competition or buying from overseas and sending via family is more than made up for by the value I get from a game space so close to home. The guys who work there are also great people, so I'm even happier to support them. I also tend to pick up all my GW paint there as well, just because it's convenient.

There is another side to the coin - I won't support a badly run store that is 90% Magic and treats everything else as an afterthought just because they are 'local'.

 Togusa wrote:

I'll give you an example, a good friend of mine back east is toying around with the idea of opening a game room that doesn't sell any product. In stead, the room is treated like a 24 fitness but for gaming, where you buy a subscription of XXX$ per year and have unlimited 24/7 magnetic door access. His reason for this is that he says product is just too unstable to sell, and he cannot keep up with the online market in terms of deals.

There are a growing number of venues around in a similar vein, usually attached to cafes, which helps for the extra cashflow. Ultimately, the brick and mortar store is a dying species, not just for wargaming but for retail in general, and the future for physical venues is in providing service, rather than product. The tricky part is just in making it profitable...

 totalfailure wrote:
There is another side to the coin - I won't support a badly run store that is 90% Magic and treats everything else as an afterthought just because they are 'local'.

Agreed, living, and having run a business, in a town with an unusually high percentage of independent small businesses, there can be a mindset that leans too hard on the concept of supporting a local company to the detriment of offering a diverse and competitive range of products.

There was also, in my case, a sort of circle jerk going on where businesses used other businesses and all over charged each other, so ultimately it all worked out, as long as you were in the bubble, but that's not really relevant to this discussion.

TLDR Some small businesses use "shop local" as an excuse to be lazy.

 Azreal13 wrote:

TLDR Some small businesses use "shop local" as an excuse to be lazy.

Definitely true. On the flip side, I know in incredible number of people who want a store but won't actually pay for anything they want out of it, so I get where both sides of the mindset lie.

 LunarSol wrote:

Definitely true. On the flip side, I know in incredible number of people who want a store but won't actually pay for anything they want out of it, so I get where both sides of the mindset lie.

Which comes back to the point above... Those people don't want a store at all. What they want is a venue to play games. That doesn't have to be a store.

In a lot of the world, stores have never really been the primary venue for gaming, just for buying stuff. Most of us play at home or at gaming clubs instead.

 Togusa wrote:

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
My FLGS has a special deal where they stay open saturday nights late from like 6pm to 3 am. There's a bunch of guys who go every week, it's fun and easy to get a game in, and they don't charge. Consequently, I personally buy about everything I can from there because they provide a great extra service to me.

Your mileage may vary, but I appreciate my store enough to pay the premium on models. I wouldn't hold it against those who didn't, however.

Well, I'm not sure it's an issue of paying a premium. It's an issue of is there a step in this process that is simply an out of date business model that drives up the prices in order to keep itself afloat.

I'll give you an example, a good friend of mine back east is toying around with the idea of opening a game room that doesn't sell any product. In stead, the room is treated like a 24 fitness but for gaming, where you buy a subscription of XXX$ per year and have unlimited 24/7 magnetic door access. His reason for this is that he says product is just too unstable to sell, and he cannot keep up with the online market in terms of deals.

Honestly, that's a pretty solid business idea.

 insaniak wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

Definitely true. On the flip side, I know in incredible number of people who want a store but won't actually pay for anything they want out of it, so I get where both sides of the mindset lie.

Which comes back to the point above... Those people don't want a store at all. What they want is a venue to play games. That doesn't have to be a store.

In a lot of the world, stores have never really been the primary venue for gaming, just for buying stuff. Most of us play at home or at gaming clubs instead.

Sure they want a store. They buy stuff all the time. They just want to pay less for it and certainly won't pay club dues or table fees. It's just a little short sighted and while a gym style venue might be the way forward; I think people will just go back to hiding in basements and letting their groups die out without the access to new players. I mean, are we really gaining anything saving 10-15% on purchases and having to pay a monthly fee to play?

 LunarSol wrote:
I mean, are we really gaining anything saving 10-15% on purchases and having to pay a monthly fee to play?

Potentially, yes. Gaming clubs tend to not be tied to specific systems. You gain the freedom to play what you want, rather than just what the store sells. Clubs also often have access to bigger and/or better spaces for gaming than is often available to a store, where the focus has to be on space to sales if they want to stay profitable.

It can take some effort to get a community established, certainly - but it does work, as proven by the rest of the world outside of the US.

Gaming Clubs are great! If you never want to make any money and lose a ton of money! You might make minimal income on vending.... if you own and stock the machines yourself and own the building yourself.

On the other hand, I have not seen a way to make any money on a FLGS unless you have a very active Online store too. However, the margins are very thin. You really need to own a storefront that has apartment space above it that you rent out. There is no clear way to do it on a lease.

I have run the numbers on both sides. Unless you want to run a charity, kill yourself working, and never make any money, neither option works very well.

 Easy E wrote:
Gaming Clubs are great! If you never want to make any money and lose a ton of money!

I think there's some confusion of terms, here.

Gaming 'club' would normally refer to a community organisation that meets for gaming sessions on a regular basis. These are sometimes just a bunch of people getting together at someone's house, or may be a more 'official' style club with an actual organisational board of people running it. These are not usually run to make anyone a profit, and will commonly run out of a hall of some kind that is leased for the session rather than having a full-time venue.

A gaming 'venue' would be more like what you were referring to, where you're essentially setting up a permanent gaming space without the traditional retail space. As I mentioned above, the people who appear to have been successful at this so far have generally the gaming space combined with a cafe, and often have a large focus on boardgames rather than miniatures games specifically. It's clearly possible to make money doing this, because people are doing it... but finding the right location and the exact right mix of services to get people in the door would be key.

These threads pop up every once in a while. I think I posted in an older one.

One thing I have never heard is the comparison of bar/pubs and liquor stores. Yes, buying alcohol at liquor stores is less expensive. However, the bar/pub adds value. Hence many people support pubs.

I feel very much the same way about the FLGS. They add value and hence I am willing to pay more. Would I want to invite a stranger over to my house to play a game? Would I want to host a tournament in my house? Do I enjoy getting out of my house? Do I always want to play with the same old people at my house?

Not a great example. Pubs have been closing at the rate of dozens a month in the UK for some time. With the occasional exception, almost all pubs in the UK are run by a handful of large companies who leverage the economies in the same way a supermarket chain may.

Meanwhile the rules around off licenses, specifically the controls on when alcohol can be sold, have been relaxed meaning supermarkets can now sell their cheap alcohol around the clock.

British culture has increasingly altered to a night out either being drinking at home with friends, or drinking at home first before then heading out to a club later on in the evening. Precisely because it is so much cheaper than drinking in pubs.

So the comparison is valid, but not necessarily for the reasons you think, and the successes in both cases are almost invariably those that break from the paradigm and offer something different, rather than stick to a 20th century idea of how these businesses are supposed to work.

As ever when this thread pops up, it all comes down to value. You don't owe your LFGS anything and it's up to them to provide value for their services. It's also just simple economics that if nobody supports the LFGS it will close and that venue will not be available for the services it provides. For me, that means LFGS should be looking to generate revenues from the things they can offer that you can't get online. Small fees for using their gaming tables is one possibility and one of the ones close to me will host things like painting or terrain-making masterclasses for small fees, which generates extra income for them. Food and drink is also essential as a way of brining in more money.

But if you can find the same product elsewhere for 35% less? That's the sort of numbers that would make me go online. 10-15% and I'd probably not be too bothered as the convenience of getting the stuff there and then is enough to outweigh the small bump in cost. It's worth pointing out, as others have, that this problem is not exclusive to the gaming sector. Retail In general is struggling because of online businesses undercutting them. In many cases that's not necessarily a bad thing - businesses have no inherent right to exist just because they previously used to be profitable. If you just want a new washing machine and its cheaper online, a bricks and mortar retail store isn't really giving you much extra benefit just by letting you see the appliance in person. If retailers can't find a way to add value to their offering that's on them.

The UK may be slightly different to the US as far as attitudes to the FLGS go though. We seem to have many, many more clubs that are completely independent of stores in the UK. It's actually fairly rare to find a store in the UK that has enough space to host a gaming club of any real size - many of them are small, perhaps with one or two tables at most. Gaming is more often done at clubs using rented halls and other buildings, where the club doesn't exist to make profit. It means the gaming ecosystem as a whole is nowhere near as reliant on the existence of stores as it is in some other countries.

Not sure how the FLGS here does it. My guess is that they heavily support Magic, and miniature wargamers and boardgamers benefit, since a game store can't have (sell) Magic tournaments *every* open hour.

The gaming hobby has become expensive (you noticed?) and that's why the OLGS and Amazon gets business. It's not until you have small purchases, such as individual paints, booster packs, and snacks, that a game store's convenience outweighs online savings.

Essentially, a game store has to provide -- and be paid for -- something that an online store cannot. That's why Magic is so successful, but that success is dependent on the product's sales model. WotC definitely makes an effort to sell product through retail stores through tournaments, and has enough money for the overhead to support this.

I'm not sure how GW does this, since I haven't really been paying attention. But I do know they do limit how much of a discount an online store can provide, and, at least at one time, didn't allow online stores to show pictures of product. They don't have as much leverage over Amazon, of course.

My guess is that this is only possible when the product line is its standard, and some game hobbies, such as boardgames, can't accomplish this.

Agreed that, in the UK, gaming clubs (that meet in a school hall, church hall, community centre etc) are much more popular and FLGS less so as places to actually game. Most stores don't have the space.

The exceptions have been big 'venues' (like Dark Sphere, Firestorm or BIG) which have enough tables to run pretty large tournaments every weekend PLUS magic tournaments and also a large store (and probably also run an online store). They tend to have a similar discount online as in store, which suggests that either they're big enough operations to absorb the cost of the brick and mortar store, or that they treat the store as, essentially, an extended warehouse cost.

The other big trend (which I think is the case in the US too) has been towards board game cafes. There are loads of these who function mostly as a small cafe/bar but with gaming as a draw, but there are a few places (Bad Moon, Warboar) which have been set up as a hybrid of the two - a nice gaming cafe environment with a store attached AND space for wargaming tables. The sales from the shop (or online) and the business from the bar run the venue with a bonus from the captive audience of a wargaming tournament.

I think boardgame cafes are a reflection of the fact that on the highstreet food outlets are about the only thing that appears to be surviving well in general (though even some of them are folding up too with the insane rent and rates). It's just not very profitable for many hobby style shops to survive let alone start out on the highstreet these days. Even GW has had to move many of their stores onto the fringes of the main highstreet regions whereas back in the day they'd have 4 or so staff and be right in the middle or at least a very solid location.

I've seen a lot of games stores in the UK even in pretty big and affluent and student filled places which have tiny shops and very little room to put stuff on show - some hardly have room for more than one or two people to chat or play cards let alone a table for a wargame.

 insaniak wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
Gaming Clubs are great! If you never want to make any money and lose a ton of money!

I think there's some confusion of terms, here.

Gaming 'club' would normally refer to a community organisation that meets for gaming sessions on a regular basis. These are sometimes just a bunch of people getting together at someone's house, or may be a more 'official' style club with an actual organisational board of people running it. These are not usually run to make anyone a profit, and will commonly run out of a hall of some kind that is leased for the session rather than having a full-time venue.

A gaming 'venue' would be more like what you were referring to, where you're essentially setting up a permanent gaming space without the traditional retail space. As I mentioned above, the people who appear to have been successful at this so far have generally the gaming space combined with a cafe, and often have a large focus on boardgames rather than miniatures games specifically. It's clearly possible to make money doing this, because people are doing it... but finding the right location and the exact right mix of services to get people in the door would be key.

Nope, I know exactly what you mean.

Keep in mind, I have experience running brick and mortar retail and cafes BUT mostly in smaller towns and rural areas. Cities may be able to support this better than suburban, ex-burbs , and rural areas. You really have to run the demographics and the numbers. I recommend you run very conservative numbers in your business plan and realize that food has a very thin margin, but drinks can potentially have a good margin.

Here are some things I advise people who want to start a business. Success in small business comes from the following.....

1. Your ability to build relationships. Small business is all about relationships with your community and customers.
2. Your ability to absorb losses. If you can not lose tons of money for years at a time, then you might make it past 5 years.
3. Your ability to learn new skills and work 60+ hours, 365 days a year. Then you might make it 5 years.
4. Your family and friends ability to never see you again, except in the context of the business.
5. Your ability to makes sales is nothing, it is profit margin that matters.
6. Most businesses fail before the 5 year mark because the owners can no longer keep up the pace and are tired, broke, and angry at the world.
7. If you are doing something you love..... guess what..... it is now work. You may not love it anymore.

Despite all this, if she still NEEDS to do this good luck to your friend. It is a tough row to hoe being a small business.

The exceptions have been big 'venues' (like Dark Sphere, Firestorm or BIG) which have enough tables to run pretty large tournaments every weekend PLUS magic tournaments and also a large store (and probably also run an online store). They tend to have a similar discount online as in store, which suggests that either they're big enough operations to absorb the cost of the brick and mortar store, or that they treat the store as, essentially, an extended warehouse cost.

Yeah, this is how you make it work IMO, at least as more than a lifestyle business.

I think people will travel if you can create the destination, but creating the destination requires either enormous up front investment, or a sustained period of healthy growth from a small start up. Neither of which is easy. So it's the players who with good luck, smart management or likely a combination of both that have been able to establish themselves are now so far ahead of the game it would take something almost unprecedented to disrupt the market, whereas the leaders can just continue to consolidate their lead from a position of relative security.

It's the age-old discussion. What do you get from your store - do you even use it?

I've rarely used a gaming store as my source of gaming...I prefer bigger/nicer tables with a relaxed atmosphere, etc. So, I game at my house or a buddy's house. There's no rush, no crowd, no risk of random children grabbing your stuff. So, end result, I don't "use" a hobby or game store. There are two here at the moment. One is a long-time store, very large, and they charger over MSRP on everything in the store. They are placed in a crappy strip mall so they must have very cheap rent to stay afloat. They've been around forever and have maybe one or two actual employees. I don't go there due to the usual hangers-on (a group of literally knitting hobby-wives and some stinky people) and the prices.

The other shop is three minutes from my house, but generally doesn't cater to wargaming and were smart enough to heavily stick to Magic, and RP groups on the weekends. I visited this shop in its former location and helped them set it up and run small games, etc. It was previously run by friends of mine. They don't carry much that I would buy, so I see little reason to go in there.

If I am visiting a store that I appreciate, I will often just buy token stuff, a couple of snacks, a soda, a blister or a set of dice ($5-15 per visit). As much as I like a person or store....25-30% is nothing to scoff out when you're laying out big money.

A good example was when the HH boxes came out, my local store asked if I wanted a pre-order. It was $162 ($150+tax). It was available online with an eBay sale for $108 shipped. Now, It wasn't that I wouldn't like to give the store $162. I didn't believe the box contents were worth $162. at $108 the price of the models became waaaaay more reasonable. The store had little to no way to match that. That's not a few extra bucks, that's a massive difference. The store in question later started offering 10% off which was the right move for a while (before they moved locations and dumped the wargaming mostly).

So if I hang out in a store or game in a store, I'll definitely throw a handful of bucks each time I visit, but for large purchases it's unlikely to win me over. I'd have a different tune if I knew the store for 10-15-20 years, and it was part of my life consistently.