The Perfect Gaming Store

I was going to do a post about some of the new blogs I've started reading in the last year, but an interesting post popped up on one of them, so I'll do this piecemeal

As a gnome guy, I obviously follow Jim 'The Gnome Guy" Stanton's twin blogs, Gnome Wars and The Stout Smurf.  His friends back home in Connecticut are hardcore 40k guys and prodigious bloggers Fritz 40K and Jawaballs.  I'm not much of a 40k guy, but their usual analysis of troop types, army construction, and tournament play are written in such a way that a guy who hasn't played since 2nd Edition was new can follow it.  Plus they get big kudos for their WarTV experiment.

In the link to Jawaballs' blog above he gives his opinion of the perfect store, and plenty of people chimed in as how to fine tune it.  As a prominent 40k player he does a fine job giving this fantasy all ideals of a 40k catering store, and a load of headaches for the store owner and "other" gamers.

As a man who still has a standing offer to open up a game store anywhere in Eastern PA, let's see if I can do this eloquently.

Games Workshop's target demographic for their core products is under 16, ergo Jawaballs and his crew are quality old guard players at the store, welcoming the noobs in, giving them a standard of excellence, both in play and behavior.   The noobs mom's and dad's with the credit cards are far keener on spending retail for the item than the guys who were once noobs many moons ago and wised up after college loans, mortgages, and wives.  I keep the noobs coming in and cultivating previous crops, I develop a solid customer base.

That being said, a heavy discount program is suicide to all but the stores with the highest volumes to begin with.  Throw me a 10% special order discount to ease the pain of not having it stock, and a 20-25% for big event pre-orders, and I'll be faithful customer.  I hated "Magic Semi-Pro Player," the guy who uses your facilities, only beats up on kids in tournaments, and bragged about getting a box of the latest cards from some website for a buck over my cost.   e wouldn't even budge when you offered ten bucks over cost to pre-order the new set. Sorry, I want a store, not a front for the mob's money laundering deals.  And unless GW is on one of it's store-friendly quarters with retailers, the retail discount structure with great discounts equates to a $5 profit on a land raider or an over budget order to keep those precious empty spots of the shelf refilled.

Not that I've said that, what's on ViscountEric's perfect store list?

• Location, location: easy to find, easy to park.  Dreamscape Comics old Easton, PA location was a leasing nightmare, but logistically perfect.  Right off US 22 in a small shopping center, with the storefront facing the other main road (PA 248).  There were more than 100,000 people within five miles of the store, and two high schools less than a five minute walk.  Despite no gaming space, stingy discounts, and sword fights with poster tubes breaking out when a certain individual worked Saturdays, the store not only performed well, increase its inventory, and turn a profit, but completely supported the second store location.  
• "An Immense and Diverse Selection":   This can go overboard quickly (see: Dreamscape Comics, Bethlehem, PA) but a well stocked core inventory allows development of new lines without worrying if the latest rpg or minis line is going to prevent the utilities from being paid.  I'm amazed that stores only do the extremes when it comes to inventory.  They either  never have a sale, thus keeping that copy of Spell Law III a permanent fixture on the shelf, or they blow out the inventory at such ridiculously low prices that they're making pennies on the dollar, even if they paid an employee for the time to sell the items on eBay.  If I walk into your store and I see just D&D/Pathfinder/Warhammer/Warmachine and tables, I'm walking the hell out.  Show me you actually look at the monthly solicitations from your distributor rather than asking for 2 of every WotC product,  and I'll stick around and talk to you.   Speaking of which...
• Staff:  The heck with being friendly and knowledgeable to me, I may (and sometimes do) know more about things than you do.  Staff handling of women, both gamer and mom's with gaming kids is almost as critical as making sure the Jim, your resident GURPS guru, comes in wearing deodorant and not his hot pink camo jogging shorts with the hole in the crotch.  If you can convince a parent to bring their child back to the store, you have more time to convert the child. 
• Game Store - The Flamethrower:  I want a store with lots of in store promotion.   I follow The Encounter in Allentown, PA's Facebook page, and besides sales, I normally only see promotions for Cash Magic tournaments.  That's great, but I see more promotions of different products attracting different gamers from Pop's Culture Shoppe in tiny Wellsboro, PA.  Playing/promoting different games attracts different crowds, and word of mouth/social media expands better than just playing boring old Magic... again.

Get those puppies down, and be local? I'll be a customer for life.  The rest of it is just seasoning to taste.

And by Crom, no freakin' XBoxes in the store... ever.  Forever-ever. Amen.