Internet Killed the Local Game Store
It is always amusing to look back at various predictions after the fact and see how they turned out. (As a side note it’s equally amusing to read over game previews where the producers gush about this feature, and that feature, and then when the game comes out you discover not a single thing the producers talked up actually appears in the game.) Whether it’s an end-of-the-world prediction (I seem to recall a movie about Nostradamas with Orson Welles narrating and according to it the world was going to end in 1999…oops!), or simply an end-of-an-era guesstimate, very often dire foresight ends up being no sight at all.
One such prediction that appears silly today is the fact that dot coms were going to wipe out the brick and mortar business. Yeah, like if I’m hungry at 3 in the morning for potatoes au gratin I really want to jump online and order it through a netgrocery store and have it take to whenever they actually deliver when I could simply get into my car, drive the mile to the 24 hour Kroger, and get it right then. Likewise I can’t imagine your newborn turning into a fudge factory and telling your wife that you’re still comparing prices on diapers at Priceline so just use the good guest towels to swaddle him in until you can find someplace with free shipping.
Yet dot coms do seem to be killing off one business, your local neighborhood game store. Here in Atlanta an era ended when a couple weeks ago, Sword of the Phoenix, in business 28 years here, shut their doors for the very last time. The reason? The cost of leasing space constantly goes up and to keep the lights on they have to keep their game prices at retail. In turn a consumer is then presented with a choice of either paying full retail for a game and having it right then, or getting it online at a significant discount. Sure, you’ll have to wait a few days to get it, but a game isn’t a badly needed organ transplant so the wait isn’t going to kill you and you may end up saving a massive amount of money. Heck, often times when I order games online I’ll end up with essentially two games for the price of one game at full retail. You can’t compete with that.
Interestingly there is a place here, Atlanta Games Factory, that is trying to compete with that. They’re a brick and mortar store down near Georgia Tech (being near a nerd school of course grants them a +2 circumstance bonus to drawing in a customer base) that offers a healthy 35% discount off all their boardgames and RPG material. I haven’t made the trip down there yet because of their location (trying to navigate Atlanta highways is akin to being a pilot bombing Hanoi during Vietnam, with the same level of danger, and of course they are located in downtown Atlanta, which is a very grimy, very disgusting city) but will hopefully get down there in the near future. It will be interesting to see if they can pull it off and stay in business with those discounts.
Does the fate of Sword of the Phoenix have to repeat itself though? Ultimately there is no reason why brick and mortar game stores, with their convenience factor, have to go away in the face of online shopping. But they do need to make some changes if they want to keep bringing in the customers. The following are some observations on game stores and ways they could help themselves out. If you’re lucky perhaps your local game store already does most of this.
1. Give us a break off of full retail pricing.
Even if a game store doesn’t discount all their games, all the time, any sort of break would be welcome. Why not have weekly sales? This week all Napoleonic titles are 20% off, next week all Wizard of the Coast supplements are 10% off? Something, anything. If I can walk into a local game store and pick up the third edition of Twilight Imperium for $80, or I could order it online for $51 and pay $5 for shipping, gee, what am I going to do? We can understand if you can’t discount everything, but give us some sort of incentive for walking through your doors. Which sort of ties in with the…
2. Be courteous, and try and make us feel welcome.
If you’re a gamer you’re going to spend quite a bit of money over the course of a year. From new dice, to games, to miniatures, to supplemental books, and more, chances are you could walk into a game store once a week for the year and walk out with something new. And for many people that’s exactly what they do. Yet very often the people who run the game stores are too busy writing up Warhammer fanfic to even acknowledge when someone walks through the door. And for crissakes, if I’m in your store every week buying something, and you’re the same damn person who always rings my order up, do you really have to check my driver’s license when I use by debit card?
A game store isn’t a big, faceless retail corporate entity with a high turnover rate of employees and thousands of customers walking in on a daily basis. They’re small enough, with a stable band of employees and customer base that saying “Hello!” when someone walk in isn’t that monumental of a challenge.
Hell, if someone feels like they’re walking into the game store equivalent of Cheers then maybe they won’t mind spending full retail. Friendliness and personality can go a long way.
Oh, another aside…I’ve always thought if I would open up a game store (c’mon, every gamer at some point thinks it would be cool to open a game store, just like alcoholics want to open up a bar) I’d make sure the staff would be nothing but hot young spankalicious babes, sorta like the Hooters of game stores. Surely that would increase foot traffic!
3. A demo table is good, but a game space is bad.
At some point, I think around the time when Magic: The Gathering grew in profitability, game stores started opening up space for gamers to play games. In some cases the space dedicated to the actual gamers was more than the actual shelf space for the games the store was trying to sell. While this may seem like a good idea in theory (a place to forge a community and have an instant customer base) the reality is that it is a very, very poor idea.
First off, if people are playing games they’re not spending money. Oh sure, they may buy a Coke or a bag of chips off of you, and maybe sometimes they just have to have that rare BDSM Serra Angel card to win the match, but overall they take up space and contribute nothing to your store. I believe the biological term would be parasite.
Second, they distract the staff from helping out real customers. Instead of being able to easily answer questions someone may have about a potential purchase you, the owner, are caught settling a debate of whether a Khador steamjack is better than a Cygnar one.
Third, it turns your store into a day care. I’ve been in game stores during summer which are filled with scores of under-14 year olds, with the resultant cacophony, and you damn well know they were dropped off as an easy out for mom and pop. That’s not the environment I exactly want to shop in, and I’m betting that’s not an environment most people old enough to drive want to be in.
Fourth, in conjunction with number three and one, most of the people spending all day at your store don’t have money (obviously since if you’re spending all day at a game store you probably don’t have a job…), so why not start catering to people who actually do have money to spend?
Having a table or two to demonstrate new games isn’t a bad idea. Running a tournament isn’t a bad idea. Both of these will expose new games to folks, and will draw people into your store, but no one will overstay their welcome. After all, there’s being friendly and there’s being taken advantage of.
4. Have an interesting selection.
Too many local stores seem to end up having the same product, when a search online reveals there is so much gaming goodness out there it’s almost impossible to even begin to take it all in. Sure, obviously no store can afford to order every single product available in the hope that someone will eventually snag them, but at least try to offer a few hard to find items. Discovery of something new is always a wonderfully intoxicating experience.
Ultimately it all boils down to having good customer service. Make people feel welcome, and provide a decent shopping environment, and people will want to buy from you instead of some faceless online vendor. From my understanding Atlanta Games Factory is such a place, so maybe they will keep on ticking. And who knows, maybe they’ll start to influence some of the other places around here! (Yeah, I’m looking at you War Room…)
-Scott
Current music: 3 Inches of Blood – Advance and Vanquish, Dying Fetus – Destroy the Opposition, Iron Maiden – Seventh Son of a Seventh Son
Current comics: Red Sonja, Common Foe, Deadworld
That’s a good summary of brick & mortar game stores. This morning I was in Media Play (brick & mortar music/book/vid store) and picked up a D&D supplement for 25%. Later today I rolled into my boutique War Room store looking for Iron Heroes - a D&D knockoff with word-of-mouth promise. They had heard of it (Media Play failed their knowledge roll) but didn’t have it in stock. If I can remember to, I’ll probably order off Amazon tonight for 25% off. Otherwise maybe next weekend I’ll go back to the War Room…
Comment by Daeloch — 9/11/2005 @ 8:14 pm
Excellent commentary! As a former retail manager with Best Buy I found myself nodding through a lot of this. Most “Friendly Local Gaming Stores” are anything but friendly.
They are often dark, cramped, unorganized, and staffed by people who fail at social interactions, but pass at being the owner, or knowing the owner.
This is not an environment that makes a person feel welcome to shop about. It’s a cramped space to induce clostrophobia and negative mental connections.
Conversely, the internet offers the comfort of your own (clean or not, you are comfortable at home), and the convenience of a wide selection of options at good prices in exchange for patience.
What is the FLGS owner to do then? How can he succeed? How can he compete?
1. Staff it with friendly “people” people who can speak to someone genuinely about the games. If you stack the deck with hotties, you get bonus points.
2. Train that staff such that they can adeptly talk about every game you carry. They do not have to know the secret ninja stealth strategy for a game, but they best know how it works, what you need to play it, and what products are coming out soon that go with it.
3. Demonstrate the games! As suggested. Not the mainlinge games that most gamers know (D&D, MtG, Pokemon, Yu-gi-oh!, Warhammer, *Clix, etc.) but the other games that are out there like Pirates, Clout (coming soon!), GURPS, Brawl, and the likes of that. Why? Because the purpose of a demo is to generate interest in a product that your customers do not currently have. It encourages them to try something new, enjoy it, and then to buy it. Just like the old ladies in the grocery store on weekends… do they offer samples of Ritz crackers with Cheeze-Whiz on top? NO! Why? Because the vast majority of us know what that is going to be like and grandma is not going to influence us. Instead they offer us a sample of the latest Nabisco cookies, and give us a coupon for that first purchase! Note that last little incentive, give them something new, and then give them a discount if they buy it now. Have a sign up over your demo table reading “Try NEW GAME XZY and get 10% off your first purchase!” This gets more people to at least play the demo, and increases the odds that they will buy the core game at a discount just to have it. Also, staff your ringer (best people person) at this table during peak hours. It’s key.
4. Serve the Community. I’ll differ in that I find great value in giving space to those 14 year old kids who need day care. Agreed, they do not have a lot of money, but giving them space to play, and controlling that play atmosphere by seperating it from retail land, is a great way to trap what money they do have, and also taps into the more than three digit budget from Mom & Dad for birthday’s and Christmas. Between these gift occasions, and the ten to twenty bucks a week you will average from each kid, you are talking about something on the level of 1K per kid… plus you have their loyalty when they do get a job and suddenly have $100 a week to waste. You may capture 40 - 50% of that weekly, and you want it.
5. Have a frequent buyer/discount program! Give discounts to those who shop with you on a regular basis. You can’t compete with the net and pay the bills, but you can compete. Further, use this program to get a little basic customer info (Name, age & email) so you can build a mailing list and send people coupons and stuff like that. Reward them for their loyalty.
6. HOST BIG EVENTS! Weekly. The big games need a capable event every single week. Hire someone to handle this as their main job. Train them so they can serve as the ‘official’ when the events are on. Make sure that there are other people working during the events who will help normal customers. This will draw lots of people in if you do it well, and will ensure that you are the spot for mainline purchases of things that churn fast like booster packs and that sort of stuff.
7. host smaller events. Pick any recent game that is just released, or has not taken off, but has no stigma (”That’s been out for years and nobody plays it, it must suck.”) and run a second event at the same time (if possible) that anyone can get into, cheaply or free if possible. You have the BIG EVENT drawing people in, have the small event occupy them while they are spending idle time. Give everyone who tries the small event a discount on the purchase of the core materials for that smaller game and encourage them to come back and play more. This is essentially a fancy demo for a smaller game. By generating some excitement and buzz around it, paired with a discount (use a loss leader if necessary), you get people to buy it. Once people have it, others will have interest (word of mouth) and you can generate local buzz around the game and draw people into buying more of that game as well.
7. Sheesh, I’m at 7, best stop now I’m ranting. Sorry!
Suffice to say, the typical FLGS does not have enough business acumen to run as a business. Which is why most of them linger near the point of extinction, or just plain die after two years.
Comment by Grimwell — 9/21/2005 @ 10:24 am
Yup, I nearly cried when I heard SotP shuttered. Can’t believe all the drooling I did at their painted miniatures, back in the day. I don’t game much at all, anymore, but that place was…the best.
As for the ‘net killing the FLGS, well, yeah, thank God I don’t do retail.
Comment by Bleeker Savage — 10/9/2005 @ 6:21 pm