How do gaming stores survive?

[J-H]

D&D 5e PHB at my FLGS.... $49.99 plus tax.
D&D 5e PHB on Amazon.... $22.74

I bought it at the FLGS because they host lots of games, and are the only reason I get to play at all. However, this can't be a sustainable business model.
What is going on with this pricing? Is WOTC screwing over local stores by giving Amazon a discount?

[tyckspoon]

Amazon - or whatever seller put that book up through Amazon - is probably selling much closer to cost than your local game store. Their greater buying power and lower cost-per-unit in assorted other expenses to stock and deliver it lets them get away with thinner per-item margins.

Also, assuming it's actually making money, your local game stop probably doesn't have D&D books as its main thing. Is there a popular collectible game (Magic, other TCGs, miniatures games of some family, etc) that is played there? If so, that's likely to be the shop's main cash flow.. heck, I've once talked to a shop owner whose biggest sales volume was in concessions - selling games and providing playing space were basically an excuse to have people stay around long enough to want to buy a few bottles of Mountain Dew/Coke/Red Bull and some chips or candy bars or something from the shop.

[Gnoman]

Amazon is showing a 50% discount from list price. They can do this because they have low overhead, bulk rates, and they use these hefty discounts to encourage customers to go to them first for online shopping. This means that the margins for any given product is not important to their overall bottom line.

None of those apply to a local store. They run on so thin a margin that they need to maximize all of their products.

[Darth Ultron]

They don't.......

Back during the Silver Age of 3.5 D&D there where dozens upon dozens of game stores (and book stores too). They are mostly all long gone now by 5E. Even Wizards had a store(The Keep: We don't make every game, but we do sell them all).

The average Gaming Store has to spread out their inventory to all sorts of games, plus often comic books and magazines. And maybe even art supplies, t-shirts, movie posters, toys, model trains or anything else that will sell.

For D&D....they only buy one box, maybe half a box...of each book or item. Maybe.

There big draw is getting people to game in the store....and buy the $5 bottles of water.

[J-H]

They do have a large collection of comic books, and some board games. In addition to hosting D&D, they also host mini painting get togethers, board game days, etc.
Water $0.50, snacks $1. No problem spending a few bucks on overpriced food to keep the place open.

[Knaight]

The money is in Magic, with everything else on a side (unless they have food/drinks, in which case it's probably there). That said, they're not getting screwed by WotC here at all, and are probably paying similar prices to Amazon, and just selling at a much higher margin.

[Malifice]

The average FLGS now focusses very heavily on Board games IME. They'll have a section for RPG's as well, but its never only RPGs and it's rarely the case that RPG's are even the main item of stock.

You cant run a store that is 'RPG's only' anymore. The last shop I saw anywhere in the world that only sold RPG's and related stuff closed down in the 90's, and I doubt any survived past the turn of the century.

[Erloas]

I've never seen a store survive on RPGs only.

Amazon and your FLGS probably pay the same price for the book. Pre-internet most general goods had about a 40% mark-up, what the store charges versus what they buy it for from the distributor. Since Walmart and Amazon decided they can make more by moving more products at a lower mark-up they've forced prices down, but your small businesses almost have to make that same 40% mark-up still because they don't, and can't, move enough products to survive any other way. There are some companies that can set a "you can't sell this product for less than X," and that X is usually less than MSRP but not 5-10% over wholesale either. Most RPG companies don't have that pull (WotC seems to with Magic cards though).

So yeah, most FLGS survive on a few almost full price sales of things people buy from them just to support them, MtG cards, and more and more are selling food, renting tables, and renting or loaning out board games to get people to buy the food or rent the tables.

[Douche]

Amazon is showing a 50% discount from list price. They can do this because they have low overhead, bulk rates, and they use these hefty discounts to encourage customers to go to them first for online shopping. This means that the margins for any given product is not important to their overall bottom line.

None of those apply to a local store. They run on so thin a margin that they need to maximize all of their products.

Can’t game stores buy the book from Amazon then and resell it for like $10 extra then?

Idk how resale works tbh if that’s legal or whatever

[aaron819]

RPGs aren't their main thing, or they wouldn't survive. Minis and trading cards are where the money comes from.

[Gnoman]

Can’t game stores buy the book from Amazon then and resell it for like $10 extra then?

Idk how resale works tbh if that’s legal or whatever

You misunderstand the issue. The price on Amazon is probably higher than the wholesale cost that the store pays. The issue is that Amazon sells thousands of the things, and the store sells a few dozen. Amazon also sells tens of thousands of other products, and the store only sells a hundred or so.

If Amazon only makes a dollar per book, that isn't a big deal. It is still a profit, and you are likely to buy something else while you're there. It else you're likely to go to Amazon first next time you want to buy something.

If the store only makes five or six dollars per book, it is effectively a loss, because they can't survive on that small a profit margin, and they would have to replace it with a more profitable product.

[denthor]

Your local game store pays taxes. Amazon does not. The government at all levels is making winners we are all losers.

[Max_Killjoy]

D&D 5e PHB at my FLGS.... $49.99 plus tax.
D&D 5e PHB on Amazon.... $22.74

I bought it at the FLGS because they host lots of games, and are the only reason I get to play at all. However, this can't be a sustainable business model.
What is going on with this pricing? Is WOTC screwing over local stores by giving Amazon a discount?

Amazon is getting their copies direct, rather than through a predatory distribution company.

[OverLordOcelot]

I've never seen a store survive on RPGs only.

I agree, in the 'old days' you'd have a store that sold RPGs in addition to more general hobby stuff, or RPGs plus wargames plus simple board games, or RPGs plus comic books. After the 90s, I don't think I've seen a gaming store that didn't have a significant amount of MTG or Yu-Gi-O or some other CCG, which I've always heard is the highest profit gaming item. The stores near me that provide gaming space make money on that too - some charge rent for the space and all of them sell concessions which is a lot of money. One sells beer and has a beer tap with a half dozen different ones, which has got to be like printing money for them.

Modern stores are also generally nice spaces to be in - I haven't run into any of the 'dingy store with an odd smell and hostile owner' that used to be the stereotype. This means that non-grognards are willing to come in to play - and I suspect that more casual players are more willing to impulse buy a book they want rather than order it through Amazon.

[Beleriphon]

Wizards also supports the local store by having store only products, like special edition books. I have two copies of Volo's Guide to Monsters, one from Amazon I ordered and the special one my wife got me for my birthday. The Amazon copy is my peruse and abuse book, the other one... lets say me and Gollum have something in common.

[zlefin]

it should also be noted that many stores don't survive; stores die all the time for one reason or another.

[geppetto]

Part of it is that Amazon gets huge tax breaks that your local brick and mortar store doesnt, because lobbyists. That by itself can lower their cost of business 20-30%. They also use some items as loss leaders to get you to get order more stuff they do profit on. For instance the PHB might be low but I bet the other books arent discounted nearly as much. They figure if you buy the PHB you might also want to get other books down the line.

[Calthropstu]

I notice a lot of people mentioning Magic, but there's other cash cows that the game store I frequent uses.

Board games and miniature war games. They don't stock a single M:TG card, not even packs. They sell massive amounts of Warhammer et al minis as well as numerous board games. They DO sell Keyforge, which they literally can't keep in stock and run weekly tournaments. But they sell a lot of other stuff as well with 5e and PF taking a large section of the store, then miniature war games and board games taking up 2/3 of the store.

They also make a lot of money on dice. Snacks have been mentioned, and that is the primary support I give my game store nowadays.

[Erloas]

I notice a lot of people mentioning Magic, but there's other cash cows that the game store I frequent uses.

Board games and miniature war games. They don't stock a single M:TG card, not even packs. They sell massive amounts of Warhammer et al minis as well as numerous board games. They DO sell Keyforge, which they literally can't keep in stock and run weekly tournaments. But they sell a lot of other stuff as well with 5e and PF taking a large section of the store, then miniature war games and board games taking up 2/3 of the store.

They also make a lot of money on dice. Snacks have been mentioned, and that is the primary support I give my game store nowadays.

I've only seen one store that didn't have CCGs as a main point, and frankly it shocked me. While wargames can be good money, they can also be very inconsistent. You might get a few players that are always buying new armies, but you get plenty of others who get one army and play it for years and don't have to, or need to, expand it after a fairly short period of time. The other main thing is that while Amazon is a bad place to buy miniatures, you can easily find other places to get them for less than a local store can sell them for, and it is really easy to justify the shipping when you're making fewer big orders and nothing you buy today is going to be on the table today.

The other big issue with wargames is the critical mass of players at a store to get new players in. You can easily entice a new player to start magic with a $15 draft, or a $10 starter deck and build from there. But even getting someone to enjoy a demo game of a wargame and then let them see the $100 entry cost to get even the most basic start of an army and you'll loose a lot of people.

Clearly wargames do sustain themselves, but it just seems like outside of a unique group, you've got to have a fairly large population to even think about it.

In my brother's store (ran for about 8 years, closed and switched to being an Escape Room a few years ago) wargames helped, board games were ok (very inconsistent selling), but it was Magic that keep the doors open.
You could sell $40 worth of magic cards to someone over a fairly short period of time even if that same person wouldn't even look at a wargame once they saw that a unit cost $40.

[LordEntrails]

Game stores survive by building a community and finding things that their unique community is willing to spend money on. Most often those are things like providing play spaces for card games like Magic, and selling those cards, play spaces for miniatures wargaming, and selling those minis, proving classes and an environment people can paint their wargaming figures at, and the supplies to paint them.

Many gamers are not willing to spend an extra $5 on a book, but they will go hang out at a place they feel comfortable at and spend $15 on snacks and drinks. Some will pay to rent tables, or play in a game.

The game stores that still exist survive by finding a product or service people are willing to pay for, and providing it at profit.

---

To expand on the cost/overhead/profit other people mentioned.

Amazon can afford to sell a book at a $1 profit because;
- they rent/own/lease low cost property
- they have the volume and systems in place that a single employee can fullfill 200 orders per shift
- ... and other things that allow them to benefit from economy of scale (reduced shipping rates with carriers or setup their own delivery services, shipping costs per cargo container or semi-tractor trailer, ...)

You FLGS can not afford such margins because;
- they have to rent high cost retail space in a nice shopping complex that is centralized in urban centers
- Their employees are propbably busy is they complete 20 sales in a shift
- They have to pay shipping per book or box, they are not order semi's worth of materials.

[Mr Beer]

Amazon also seem to run on a model of growing their business at the expense of profit margin. So they have vast revenues but a comparatively small percentage of that is net income. That policy would translate to low prices.

[Anonymouswizard]

My FLGS is one of those that manages to survive with literally no event hosting space. Now I live in London and know of two stores, one of which is quite a bit away from central and thus hosts games. I've been there exactly once, because it was on my way.

The other one, called Orcs Nest, is in central London, maybe ten minutes walk from Trafalgar Square. It's a tiny place, the store itself is two floors that are maybe a few metres square, with a till area on ground be, wall shelves, and two freestanding shelf units per floor. It's all utterly packed with games, from board games to minis to RPGs, with maybe a little bit of TCG stuff.

It survives due to convinient placement, being well known (ask almost anybody in London who's into gaming about it and they'll have at least been there), and selling games most other physical stores don't. But part of his they keep open is knowledgeable staff, I can't count the number of times I've seen non gamers in there trying to buy presents

[Mechalich]

Local gaming stores are a low-margin business with extremely high failure rates. Much like local restaurants or coffee shops, the majority do not survive over the long term. They also tend to be labors of love by a single founder or very small staff and rely on said staff putting in an absurd number of weekly hours in order to conserve payroll. Stores like this are also heavily location-based. If the store can manage to more or less monopolize the local market for a game with high dollar inputs - in the US MtG is the clear winner, since a significant minority of players buy multiple boxes on a roughly quarterly basis when new sets are released and pay tournament fees multiple times per week - they don't actually need a particularly large clientele. This is similar to other highly specialized hobby shops that cater to a very small customer base but extract an extremely high dollar/year value out of each customer.

Prior to Amazon it was possible for a gaming store to have obsessive book-buying clients in the same way they currently have obsessive MtG or wargame clients. In fact, catering to such clients - voracious GMs with disposable income was a huge part of the 1990s business model of most RPG companies, particularly TSR and White-Wolf, both of whom churned out splatbooks at an insane pace (TSR ultimately churned out too many that no one wanted to buy and ended up in bankruptcy as a result) in the hopes of finding the rare customer who just absolutely had to have all the books. Amazon, combined with the proliferation of pdf versions of titles (both legitimate and otherwise), killed the RPG book market by destroying the price point of 'all the books.'

[BWR]

Pure RPG stores don't exist in my neck of the woods. The purer they were, more RPG and board/card game, the less well they did. We have one Games Workshop store which has survived, but of the four or so various gaming stores, only one survived and thrived. It did so by selling everything geek, not just games. Comics, SF&F books and movies (when people bought such things physically), manga and anime. In recent years they've focused more on other stuff, like nerdy Lego, clothes and apparel, geeky knick-knacks like keychains and pins and buttons, imported Japanese snacks, models, coloring books, and more. The actual RPG part of the store is a rather modest shelf without a lot of variety. Compared to the tons of stuff they used to have right around the 3.0 boom, things have gone downhill for RPGs in stores.
RPGs don't keep them afloat, it's the tournaments for CCGs that do.

You have people like me who will happily pay a little extra to support the store I enjoy browsing through instead of ordering online, but I suspect I'm in the minority.

[Malphegor]

Yeah, niche hobby shops tend to die easily around my way too. We've lost the owner of the one that's been in my city for years and years (rates on the high street have been going up too much for him to realistically continue), and there's a new guy who's bought the place but it's clear the interest is moving from general gaming to mostly 40k because that's what the owner is interested in (the old guy was more into airfix models and terrain).


Meanwhile there's this national chain shop that's opened and while it does sell the kind of things I want due to their bigger buying power, it's at a high markup, similar to Amazon, maybe £10 more in most cases. It's clear the main seller at the chain is anime models and magic cards.

To be entirely honest, it feels like we're getting a repeat of what happened to music and record shops in my area.

You have small stores that sell things with more variety (flipping through a stack of rpgs, finding some weird d20 product like that bible adventures book for random example) for a modest profit being outcompeted by these massive chains who are more expensive but have high quantities of recently-released stock, whilst all are being crushed by the mammoth that is the internet sales.

I've generally found that in both music and gaming, you get a better experience out of the smaller shop because the guy running it has been running it for years, and knows stuff, like what glue works with what kind of material, for example, or what THAC0 was.

[J-H]

Sure enough, my FLGS just posted a non-sanctioned Magic tournament for later this month. I think they are having 1-2 per month.

It opened in November...town of 3400 but we draw people from up to 45 minutes away. The only people I've seen working there so far are the owner, his wife, and his teenage son.

I do hope they make it.

I did not know they made a Bible d20 product. I am interested in that for mixing fun and homeschooling in a few years.

[Jophiel]

My FLGS seems to survive on a mixture of M:tG cards, board games, an escape room and a, uh, attitude that's gotten considerably more mercenary or desperate depending on charitable you feel. They have nice rooms you can play in for a fee, which is fine, but the owner has started charging DMs (they used to play for free since they were bringing in the rest), you're not allowed any outside food/drink and can only order from a select list of places they have arrangements with, you're expected to have bought your Player's Handbook from them and not elsewhere, people get hassled if they're playing for a few weeks without popping for some other purchases (dice, minis, books) and other stuff. I still see a couple groups on their Meetup but most of the people I know have since fled for other places. These days I game at a local comic store that sells some RPG stuff but is mainly a Comics 'n Cards operation. I do try to buy a drink, maybe a snack, and buy my kid a new comic book each time I'm there since they don't charge players. Sometimes I'll get a mini but, jokes aside, there's an upper limit to how many dice sets, books and minis I need.

[Erloas]

Local gaming stores are a low-margin business with extremely high failure rates.They're a high margin, low volume, business.


Meanwhile there's this national chain shop that's opened and while it does sell the kind of things I want due to their bigger buying power, it's at a high markup, similar to Amazon, maybe £10 more in most cases.

...

You have small stores that sell things with more variety (flipping through a stack of rpgs, finding some weird d20 product like that bible adventures book for random example) for a modest profit being outcompeted by these massive chains who are more expensive but have high quantities of recently-released stock, whilst all are being crushed by the mammoth that is the internet sales.
That doesn't make any sense. All the bigger stores have a lower mark-up, Amazon tends to be the lowest (Or used to be, not so much any more. Most big retailers have matched them, although some things on Amazon, from 3rd party sellers mostly, are really high but that is a different issue) Unless the UK is the opposite of the US in terms of small business versus Amazon, but that wouldn't make any sense...
Although there are, or at least were, plenty of chain stores that were always just straight MSRP, in which case a small shop probably would beat them by a little bit, but it seems like store selling at straight MSRP has been killed off by the internet already.



Sure enough, my FLGS just posted a non-sanctioned Magic tournament for later this month. I think they are having 1-2 per month.

It opened in November...town of 3400 but we draw people from up to 45 minutes away. The only people I've seen working there so far are the owner, his wife, and his teenage son.

I do hope they make it.

I did not know they made a Bible d20 product. I am interested in that for mixing fun and homeschooling in a few years.
3400 is... really unlikely to survive. Unless you're using the size of the town ignoring the actual area. I've seen so many people claim their from a small town when they're just in a suburb of a large city. So yeah, 45 minutes away could be almost no other people to millions more, depending where you're at. My brother's shop covered about 35-40k people, which seems like about as small as could really make it. Granted if the area you're in has low business rent keeping it open won't be too hard, but making enough money to survive on can still be an issue.
The most common thing we've found (going to trade shows and researching it before and talking to other owners afterwards) is that making enough money to keep a store open isn't too hard, making enough to pay anyone to be there is much harder, and most owners seem to survive on other jobs with the store being just love. Eventually the long hours for no money stops being worth it.



My FLGS seems to survive on a mixture of M:tG cards, board games, an escape room and a, uh, attitude that's gotten considerably more mercenary or desperate depending on charitable you feel. They have nice rooms you can play in for a fee, which is fine, but the owner has started charging DMs (they used to play for free since they were bringing in the rest), you're not allowed any outside food/drink and can only order from a select list of places they have arrangements with, you're expected to have bought your Player's Handbook from them and not elsewhere, people get hassled if they're playing for a few weeks without popping for some other purchases (dice, minis, books) and other stuff. I still see a couple groups on their Meetup but most of the people I know have since fled for other places. These days I game at a local comic store that sells some RPG stuff but is mainly a Comics 'n Cards operation. I do try to buy a drink, maybe a snack, and buy my kid a new comic book each time I'm there since they don't charge players. Sometimes I'll get a mini but, jokes aside, there's an upper limit to how many dice sets, books and minis I need.

It is really hard as an owner to have people come in all the time and then show up with something new and you know they bought it from Amazon. Or you're trying to supplement the gaming part with things like drinks and someone comes in with a case of coke, gives it to their fellow players, and you're there as an owner with people in your store for hours and you're not even making a few dollars off them. If you've got regular customers and you'll see at most a few dollars from them for a drink or snack, then even though bringing in a snack feels like nothing to the player, it is everything to the owner.
It is why CCGs are so vital too, picking up a pack of cards is small enough people will do it all the time, and there are no similar purchases for other types of games.

I can see how it doesn't feel very friendly, but they're just trying to find any way to survive. Those are all trends you're seeing nation wide, because those are the sorts of things all game stores have started to adopt because the only stores surviving are surviving that way. A $40 book every few months isn't going to keep a store open unless they have a huge customer base. They need to find ways to make smaller, but steady, income off of a wider range of people.

[Mr Beer]

I can see how it doesn't feel very friendly, but they're just trying to find any way to survive. Those are all trends you're seeing nation wide, because those are the sorts of things all game stores have started to adopt because the only stores surviving are surviving that way.

Yeah that's fine but if you rent the space for a fee and have food + drink locked down, you can't go hassling people to make additional in-store purchases. I mean, you can...but I wouldn't because if you did that to me, I'd go somewhere else.

[Jophiel]

Yeah that's fine but if you rent the space for a fee and have food + drink locked down, you can't go hassling people to make additional in-store purchases. I mean, you can...but I wouldn't because if you did that to me, I'd go somewhere else.
Pretty much. If I'm paying just to be there, my obligation to buy things has ended as far as I'm concerned. That's what the door charge was for. I'd even question if it is helping them survive since they've dropped to one or two games a week if Meetup is any indication. I guess maybe now they use that space for their escape rooms.

I don't even have a personal grudge, I just don't play there now because the games have almost all moved elsewhere and no one who left has any interest in returning and going through the hassle.

[Mr Beer]

Yeah I wouldn't have a grudge either, like you I'd just stop going. That's what I do with just about any business that does something I don't like. Usually there's plenty of other options out there.

[Erloas]

Yeah that's fine but if you rent the space for a fee and have food + drink locked down, you can't go hassling people to make additional in-store purchases. I mean, you can...but I wouldn't because if you did that to me, I'd go somewhere else.

It is most definitely a challenge. And the general idea versus the very specific implementation, customer base, and competition, will have a large impact on how well it works. It is really easy to do poorly, or misjudge what a fair price would be. You can't just charge for space, you've also got to have a reason for your space to be worth the cost instead of people just going to their house or a library.

Also much like a MTG draft tournament, the entry cost is literally the cost of the packs for each player, I've also seen things where it might cost to get a table for an RPG, but each player at the table gets a candy bar or soda, so the $5 for the table gets $5 worth of products for the people at the table (but it doesn't seem like that, it seems like you get a free drink with your game, so it makes it seem better).

No matter what else is done though, having an owner and employees that the players like is vital.

[Gnoman]

On this tangent, I've often considered the possibility of copying the "private club" model for a gaming space. Charge membership fees to cover operating costs, sell snacks/drinks/consumable supplies at cost, and have a communal fund to purchase new products.


It is an interesting thought experiment, at the very least.

[J-H]

Our town of 3400 is at a tri-county border. Depending on who you ask, the actual population served is up to 20-25k. We also draw people from 3 county seats that may total another few tens of thousands. One of the guys at the last game I was at drove 45 minutes to get there, which is a full county away.

[Mutant Donkey]

My personal theory is that Magic the Gathering coupled with Friday night magic keeps the stores alive (and the occasional comic but sales are down right now I think).
I'm normally the only person I see buying board games at any of these places.

[Jophiel]

I've also seen things where it might cost to get a table for an RPG, but each player at the table gets a candy bar or soda, so the $5 for the table gets $5 worth of products for the people at the table (but it doesn't seem like that, it seems like you get a free drink with your game, so it makes it seem better).
In this particular case, you paid $6 per person just to have the room. Which in of itself was fine with me -- six dollars once a week or every two weeks to have a semi-private space away from family distractions or having to entertain in the home is a good deal. It was the other stuff that eventually compounded it, especially the pressure to buy product.

Anyway, I don't think the owner is a terrible guy or anything, I just presented it for the OP's question of what gaming shops are doing to survive. I get that the owner needs to make money but, in this case, I think he calculated poorly; whatever the profit is on a 20oz of Mountain Dew, was it worth losing $30-$40 in cash for the table (plus any connected purchases) when the group decides to start going someplace else?

[Jay R]

"Infrequently."

[Feralgeist]

The places in my town sell everything they can but their main cash grabbers are card packs, figs, paints and events. They hold CCG tournaments with a buy-in and final prize where you purchase boosters etc so everyone gets a random start.
They hold wargame nights where people will often impulse buy figurines to boost their army before a match.

They also do alot of workshop nights for various games to entice newcomers and draw business and have a different game theme every night with free demos to anyone who rocks up. The fun their customers are having does amazing things to motivate new people because they all want what they see. A group of people having a good time with games & camraderie

IMO game shops thrive on community support, the more successful ones anyway. They build a place to belong for the people that need a space to game.

[LordEntrails]

On this tangent, I've often considered the possibility of copying the "private club" model for a gaming space. Charge membership fees to cover operating costs, sell snacks/drinks/consumable supplies at cost, and have a communal fund to purchase new products.

It is an interesting thought experiment, at the very least.
My brother and I have talked about the stores near us. What surprises us, or think would help them is to put storage lockers under the tables. Let people rent them, or even given them complementary, if they play there enough. This is similar to the private clud idea, I mena if your books and mini's are stored somewhere so you don't have to drag around all your gaming stuff, and if you can get reasonable priced drinks and snacks, having to pay to play or store stuff or even a membership fee would be fine with us.


Our town of 3400 is at a tri-county border. Depending on who you ask, the actual population served is up to 20-25k. We also draw people from 3 county seats that may total another few tens of thousands. One of the guys at the last game I was at drove 45 minutes to get there, which is a full county away.
45 minutes is half way across the city I live in, assuming it's not rush hour. It's how far I drove (through suburban/urban) to get to high school :) But it only matters what people are willing and expecting. An hour drive from my grandmother's to my Aunt's house was something you planned for days in advance for (and if you missed the shortcut that saved a minute, oh boy!)

[Erloas]

On this tangent, I've often considered the possibility of copying the "private club" model for a gaming space. Charge membership fees to cover operating costs, sell snacks/drinks/consumable supplies at cost, and have a communal fund to purchase new products.
Most suppliers won't let you do that. The whole "lets start a gaming store to get all our supplies really cheap" has been tried a lot. Granted if you're a small enough they aren't going to check into things nears as closely. I'm pretty sure my brother had to give suppliers pictures of his shop, or something similar, to prove it was real.
The main issue though is finding enough people to buy in to cover the costs. Retail space tends to be pretty expensive, if rent and utilities are $600 a month (and that is on the low end from what I've seen, but given how much real estate costs can vary it is hard to say for any given area) and you charge $15 a month that means you need 40 people before you even break even on cost and you are working for free. 40 regular customers is also a lot for a niche such as a gaming store. Considering that the $10-15 a month model for MMOs/games has been shown to not work very well, and you have to say "is visiting this shop a better value than Netflix?" It isn't going to take long before someone realizes they've got to average spending around $40 a month on gaming before they're saving anything. Most people don't regularly spend that much. Then you consider how much of your customer base is young and has very random income, or older and a lot of different things to worry about that club dues aren't going to be high on their list (social clubs in general are struggling to get and retain new members). You're also going to loose all of the gift purchases, and will have a hard time recruiting new people that don't already know what it is you do and sell (in which case they're probably playing some place else). And of course you'll have someone that comes in, gets a month, makes a big purchase, and then you never see again.


My brother and I have talked about the stores near us. What surprises us, or think would help them is to put storage lockers under the tables. Let people rent them, or even given them complementary, if they play there enough. This is similar to the private clud idea, I mena if your books and mini's are stored somewhere so you don't have to drag around all your gaming stuff, and if you can get reasonable priced drinks and snacks, having to pay to play or store stuff or even a membership fee would be fine with us.My brother did this too. Helped for some players for sure so they didn't have to haul stuff around, but they also ended up with a lot of stuff in storage that they couldn't do anything with. (While a storage company can get away with it, if a game store cleared out someone's stuff the social backlash will be huge). Usually space is a premium too, but not always. Good idea for sure, but it is one small idea, of many, that can be done to help.

[Gnoman]

Most suppliers won't let you do that. The whole "lets start a gaming store to get all our supplies really cheap" has been tried a lot. Granted if you're a small enough they aren't going to check into things nears as closely. I'm pretty sure my brother had to give suppliers pictures of his shop, or something similar, to prove it was real.

You misunderstand the idea I'm going for. The club I am envisioning isn't a store of any sort - all products would be bought through a local store or Amazon (for products the local store can't get) with communal funds, with a small selection of things (primarily consumables] resold at cost.

The primary goal would be to have a controlled gaming space, an easy hangout, and a wider selection of the more niche games on the ”We only need one copy" principle.

As I said, it is mostly a thought experiment. I don't come close to having the funding to establish such a thing, and haven't even looked into the economics of it.

[Calthropstu]

I've only seen one store that didn't have CCGs as a main point, and frankly it shocked me. While wargames can be good money, they can also be very inconsistent. You might get a few players that are always buying new armies, but you get plenty of others who get one army and play it for years and don't have to, or need to, expand it after a fairly short period of time. The other main thing is that while Amazon is a bad place to buy miniatures, you can easily find other places to get them for less than a local store can sell them for, and it is really easy to justify the shipping when you're making fewer big orders and nothing you buy today is going to be on the table today.

The other big issue with wargames is the critical mass of players at a store to get new players in. You can easily entice a new player to start magic with a $15 draft, or a $10 starter deck and build from there. But even getting someone to enjoy a demo game of a wargame and then let them see the $100 entry cost to get even the most basic start of an army and you'll loose a lot of people.

Clearly wargames do sustain themselves, but it just seems like outside of a unique group, you've got to have a fairly large population to even think about it.

In my brother's store (ran for about 8 years, closed and switched to being an Escape Room a few years ago) wargames helped, board games were ok (very inconsistent selling), but it was Magic that keep the doors open.
You could sell $40 worth of magic cards to someone over a fairly short period of time even if that same person wouldn't even look at a wargame once they saw that a unit cost $40.

Like I said, they diversified. War games is their number one. Next is board games which is number 2. They do have SOME ccgs (munchkin, warhammer, netrunner, keyforge) but it's not even top 5. The fact that both adventurers league and pfs meet there drives rpg sales as well.

[oxybe]

Magic, boardgames, comics, warhammet and some TTRPG stuff.

I would say ours is a bit of an outlier: the owner was successful enough to open 3 stores in different towns

[zlefin]

You misunderstand the idea I'm going for. The club I am envisioning isn't a store of any sort - all products would be bought through a local store or Amazon (for products the local store can't get) with communal funds, with a small selection of things (primarily consumables] resold at cost.

The primary goal would be to have a controlled gaming space, an easy hangout, and a wider selection of the more niche games on the ”We only need one copy" principle.

As I said, it is mostly a thought experiment. I don't come close to having the funding to establish such a thing, and haven't even looked into the economics of it.

this sounds like something that would be technically run as a cooperative.
or maybe just a generic non-profit org (or just something like the gaming clubs often found at colleges)

[J-H]

I found out that the guy who owns/run this one has a day job that lets him work from home...so he's usually working from home in the store. Long hours.

I haven't seen any Warhammer in the store, so no wargames in sight. Lots of comics, board games, and some cards.

[JMS]

Well, in our town, we have two colleges, so we keep a store afloat, but they do sell a lot of MTG. Recently upsized though, moving into where the art store was, which also upsized (I think? hard to tell). Of course, we do have a student body of 5,000 or so, in a town of 20,000.

[Calthropstu]

Well, in our town, we have two colleges, so we keep a store afloat, but they do sell a lot of MTG. Recently upsized though, moving into where the art store was, which also upsized (I think? hard to tell). Of course, we do have a student body of 5,000 or so, in a town of 20,000.

The game store I go to is across the street from the Glendale ASU campus. ASU is pretty big, in a city of 1.5 mil. On topic, I recently asked the store what kept the store open, and the answer was unhesitant: Warhammer 40k. Supposedly their 40k sales comprise half their total sales.

[Jophiel]

Now that you mention it, I'm more surprised that those Warhammer stores exist. It's such a niche product that you wouldn't think there's enough people buying to keep the store afloat and, as noted upthread, some of those people buy one army to last them years.

On the other hand, a jar of Nuln Oil cost me eight bucks so maybe I cracked the secret.

[Mr Beer]

From what I've seen, WH works on a model where they continually rewrite rules and issue grotesquely overpowered new units (which get nerfed next edition) in order to encourage continual purchases.

I think cheap ubiquitous 3D printers might cause their business model problems but the tech available to the general public is way behind their production values so probably not a huge problem for the next 10 years at least.

[Floret]

From what I've seen, WH works on a model where they continually rewrite rules and issue grotesquely overpowered new units (which get nerfed next edition) in order to encourage continual purchases.

I think cheap ubiquitous 3D printers might cause their business model problems but the tech available to the general public is way behind their production values so probably not a huge problem for the next 10 years at least.

As a Warhammer Gamer:

Nah, the new models are rarely consistently overpowered. Yes, the rules change every now and then and they do sell you the books, and the updated rules.

You do underestimate the profit margin the models are sold at, and probably also just how many people are actually playing them (And overestimate how many people say "okay, this army is done, I need nothing else". Almost everyone coming in that has gamed for more than half a year has multiple projects.)

On top of that, the stores rotate through quite an amount of paints and brushes, and position themselves as a hobby space, with events, games, etc.

But seriously, "biggest modelling company worldwide" just goes a damn long way. They don't have the monopoly on the wargaming market that they used to, but... they're doing pretty alright for themselves.

[DeTess]

There's two gaming sores in my city, which is a university town with a total population of 100,000 or so. One has his business split about 50/50, with half being board-games, warhammer stuff and some ttrpg books, while the other half is a more general toy-store featuring everything you'd expect, like lego and dolls and stuff. It doesn't really have much in the way of hobby-support, like gaming-tables or whatever, but the staff knows their stuff with regards to boardgames and the like. I suspect the general toy-store stuff is what keeps them afloat.

The other store is almost exclusively mtg. They've got a sizeable play area (capacity of about 80 players), run all the sanctioned events, sell all the cards, including buying and selling singles. They probably remain afloat because their location is also the warehouse for their online-store, and the staff handles online orders and stuff whenever there's no one buying stuff on location. Apart from tournaments it's rare for mkre than 2 people to be in there at once to buy stuff, so it's generally very quiet. Tournaments are awesome and busy though.

There was a third one with wargaming tables, regular warhammer events and a mix of warhammer, ttrpgs and LARP-stuff, but they only lasted for a year or so.

[Telwar]

I stopped by a little store after work this week that had a tiny shelf of RPG stuff, a couple of shelves of board games, a couple of shelves of X-Wing minis, and yards of table space for Magic etc. It was pretty clear they lived off of Magic.

My primary FLGS is much more board games and FLGs, but it's also an accounting gimmick (being the tiniest store of the chain), per the people at the store, at least.

[DuctTapeKatar]

I think that part of what makes the FLGS stay alive is that they are friendly and local. You can do D&D and other games online, but everyone knows that the best way to play the game is around a table and not at the computer. Even if you play somewhere else, a game store like that provides not only a face, but a sense of community that an online monopoly like Amazon cannot provide. I also think that the more niche and specific aspects of role-playing games and the like make some items harder to get, meaning that smaller companies with the right connections can get access to more unique materials, though it could be a matter of time before Amazon starts to buy those out as well.

I work at JC Penny's currently, and our biggest concern at the moment is how we can compete against Amazon, and I don't think we can in the long run. The Kohl's neighboring us just died, and even though we are doing well for now, the sheer amount of stuff they can put out at cheaper prices will kill anyone trying to compete with them. Amazon is starting to become a rather nasty entity in the business world, and I'm not sure if we need to start wiping the dust off of those anti-trust laws we made back in the days of Big-sticks and presidents with awesome facial hair.

[LordCdrMilitant]

D&D 5e PHB at my FLGS.... $49.99 plus tax.
D&D 5e PHB on Amazon.... $22.74

I bought it at the FLGS because they host lots of games, and are the only reason I get to play at all. However, this can't be a sustainable business model.
What is going on with this pricing? Is WOTC screwing over local stores by giving Amazon a discount?

The answer, as I understand from chitchatting with the folks who run my FLGS, is yes, sort of. Apparently, until recently, MtG cards were cheaper the more you bought of them and had no fixed minimum price, which made it very difficult for the store to compete with online retailers and people just buying pallets of cards for dirt cheap and reselling them for far less than the store could sell packs for.

That said, many companies enforce a minimum value you can sell their product [new] for, in part to help protect the stores from undercutting by large online distributors. Games Workshop does this at 15% under MSRP, I think, and apparently has a sufficiently scary goon squad of lawyers to enforce it.

I think both my FLGS's makes most of their profit from sale of 40k minis. Their MtG customer base is larger, but apparently they don't spend as much money on the store as us 40k players with poor impulse control and deep pockets; and the store was at one time losing money from hosting MtG events [though they've fixed this with policy changes].

Also, I think that RPGs probably make up a tiny portion of the FLGS' revenue. Miniature Wargaming seems to be at the top, followed by CCG's. While the store hosts Adventurers' League, it doesn't charge a entry fee like Magic and 40k league and tournaments, and RPG players aren't continuously buying miniatures.


From what I've seen, WH works on a model where they continually rewrite rules and issue grotesquely overpowered new units (which get nerfed next edition) in order to encourage continual purchases.

I think cheap ubiquitous 3D printers might cause their business model problems but the tech available to the general public is way behind their production values so probably not a huge problem for the next 10 years at least.

This isn't really true. In fact, most of the new units in the last 2 years have been dead on arrival due to their badness, and GW's general lack of understanding of how their game works.

That said, we buy lots of models, largely because we can. "My collection is complete; I don't want anything else," said no one ever. I'm sitting surrounded by four 40k armies, a bunch of Flames of War tanks, 4 Dropzone Commander starter sets, and who knows what else miniatures related.


I think that part of what makes the FLGS stay alive is that they are friendly and local. You can do D&D and other games online, but everyone knows that the best way to play the game is around a table and not at the computer. Even if you play somewhere else, a game store like that provides not only a face, but a sense of community that an online monopoly like Amazon cannot provide. I also think that the more niche and specific aspects of role-playing games and the like make some items harder to get, meaning that smaller companies with the right connections can get access to more unique materials, though it could be a matter of time before Amazon starts to buy those out as well.

I work at JC Penny's currently, and our biggest concern at the moment is how we can compete against Amazon, and I don't think we can in the long run. The Kohl's neighboring us just died, and even though we are doing well for now, the sheer amount of stuff they can put out at cheaper prices will kill anyone trying to compete with them. Amazon is starting to become a rather nasty entity in the business world, and I'm not sure if we need to start wiping the dust off of those anti-trust laws we made back in the days of Big-sticks and presidents with awesome facial hair.

Yeah. Amazon is pretty terrifying.

I'm not an expert in business logistics, but I think that's part of the point of the Amazon Drones, to drive out of business brick-and-mortar stores by allowing them to bring you products on the same time frame as popping down to the store. I doubt they're really profiting off the drones.

[LordEntrails]

I'm not an expert in business logistics, but I think that's part of the point of the Amazon Drones, to drive out of business brick-and-mortar stores by allowing them to bring you products on the same time frame as popping down to the store. I doubt they're really profiting off the drones.
It's not just the drones. With Prime I've had items delivered to my door in 2 hours. Same day is not uncommon either. They do it with big data predictive analysis. 'This zip code, zone or delivery area typically orders 3 of these items every day, so we will put 4 of them on the vehicle that delivers to that area.' It only works in areas that have a high enough concentration of predictable Amazon purchases. But when it works it is really nice for the customer.

[Max_Killjoy]

It's not just the drones. With Prime I've had items delivered to my door in 2 hours. Same day is not uncommon either. They do it with big data predictive analysis. 'This zip code, zone or delivery area typically orders 3 of these items every day, so we will put 4 of them on the vehicle that delivers to that area.' It only works in areas that have a high enough concentration of predictable Amazon purchases. But when it works it is really nice for the customer.

It takes a large densely populated area and a very common item to make this work.

[CharonsHelper]

My personal theory is that Magic the Gathering coupled with Friday night magic keeps the stores alive (and the occasional comic but sales are down right now I think).
I'm normally the only person I see buying board games at any of these places.

I've read that the turn rate for board games is pretty low (2-3x per year), but it also doesn't require any support like CCGs & minis do, but CCGs and/or minis are most stores' bread & butter.

[kyoryu]

M:tG, boardgames, and minis games.

RPGs do not make significant amounts of money.

[LordCdrMilitant]

Amazon tries to make rapid delivery to as many places as they can; that's sort of the point of the drones. I'm almost certain the whole endeavor is running a loss. I think they're trying to deprive brick-and-mortar stores of their get-it-now advantage. Operating the drones requires more warehouses and more operating costs, which is almost certainly more money out than the products they sell through the drones will bring in. But, if they can drive out of business brick-and-mortar stores, they're in a net better position for the sale of the rest of their normally-delivered stock. And the most vulnerable are small stores that sell niche items, like our FLGS's.



One thing that somewhat puzzles me is that one the stores has a whole rack full of D&D minis, which makes me wonder if they sell a lot of them, or if the demand for them is that high at all. I rarely ever see GM's actually using minis in the first place, and even more rarely using the minis for the actual unit they represent. I guess players could be buying them as dolls for their PC's, but I at least don't go through that many PC's per year to warrant a rack as large as any of the miniatures games sections.




I did not know they made a Bible d20 product. I am interested in that for mixing fun and homeschooling in a few years.

I must have missed this on the first pass. This, in more ways than one, kind of concerns/scares me.

Ordinarily, I'd say that what doesn't hurt other people shouldn't concern me, but I am at least worried for kids' sakes, if not surprised.

[J-H]

Eh, I looked it up and it doesn't look that good. Some cultural exploration stuff, but nothing that can't be copied by checking some books out from the library...assuming that libraries still have books a few years from now. Whenever I tour a library at a university for a move, it seems like everyone's doing stuff on the computers and nobody's reading actual physical books any more. :(

[Erloas]

One thing that somewhat puzzles me is that one the stores has a whole rack full of D&D minis, which makes me wonder if they sell a lot of them, or if the demand for them is that high at all. I rarely ever see GM's actually using minis in the first place, and even more rarely using the minis for the actual unit they represent. I guess players could be buying them as dolls for their PC's, but I at least don't go through that many PC's per year to warrant a rack as large as any of the miniatures games sections.
Well two parts to that, if someone wants a miniature for their game you've pretty much got to have it in stock if you hope to sell it. "I can order it" doesn't really work any more since every player can just go home and order it themselves too.
There are also a lot of people that are just into the hobby side of it. Those are the people that just buy the models to paint and aren't really going to ever play with them. That goes for wargame models as well. At one point GW tried to claim they weren't a game company because most of their models were purchased by painters/modelers rather than people actually wanting to play the game (everything thinks that was BS, but there is a sizable number of just collectors)

There is also a good possibility that they bought into something where they just got that many models. Just like model paints, when you start out (as a store) you buy the "complete collect" and replace them as they sell. Especially likely if they were Bones models, as Reaper's kickstarters have often had retailer options and they came with a huge number of different models.

[CharonsHelper]

M:tG, boardgames, and minis games.

RPGs do not make significant amounts of money.

True - but spine out they take up very little square footage. That's the main bonus of TTRPGs to such a store.

Minis take up a bunch of square footage, and CCGs require labor support to maximize. (Though I've read that virtually any game store's most productive area is the one square foot where the latest MTG boosters are.) A half dozen shelves of RPGs will do okay and take up minimal space. Though interestingly - while the more indie RPGs & splats won't sell terribly well themselves, them being on the shelves makes the mainstays (D&D core books / Shadowrun core etc.) sell much better. From what I've read - that's especially true of selling modules. They don't do very well, but you know that when someone buys a module, their buddies who they run it for are much more likely to be the core (and dice/accessories etc.).

You can find a bunch of first-hand info here - https://www.rpg.net/columns/list-column.phtml?colname=businessofgamingretail


At one point GW tried to claim they weren't a game company because most of their models were purchased by painters/modelers rather than people actually wanting to play the game (everything thinks that was BS, but there is a sizable number of just collectors)


Wasn't that basically just their excuse for having terribly balanced rules? I played GW stuff for years and bought several armies - but I got freakin' tired of the blatant power creep, and the fact that every new edition would invalidate half of the current armies/units - making them terrible until their new book came out.

Balance doesn't need to be perfect when you have a decent chunk of asymmetry - but the later editions of WFB & 40k were pretty bad. (Back in 3rd & 4th 40k the balance was actually pretty decent - largely because they actually scrapped all the old codexes when 3rd came out & 4th was mostly just rules tweaks rather than the major overhaul that later editions were - almost a 3.0 to 3.5 equivalent. Same with 6th to 7th WFB - while 8th totally scrapped major aspects - such as nerfing fear to make undead armies instantly horrible.)

[J-H]

That rpg.net column link is great. I enjoy reading about how businesses can be successful, analytics, sales, etc... yeah, I'm in sales :)

I will send it to my FLGS.

[Floret]

Wasn't that basically just their excuse for having terribly balanced rules?


By all accounts, the company heads did actually, truly believe that. They also ignored social media and the fact they suddenly had actual competition in their buiseness decisions. They ran it like a model company, and that just didn't. Work. To put it mildly, they didn't know what they were doing and it showed.

New management improved things massively, and with the 8th edition 40k (And AoS 1st) wiping the slate clean of codices again, as well as doing regular updates, balance fixes and rules changes they have gotten a lot better than in the days you're describing. Mind you, they still want all your money, and charge for some of these updates, but the current, official stance is that they care about balance (no matter how **** they might be at it from time to time), and are very much a game company.

[Jophiel]

One thing that somewhat puzzles me is that one the stores has a whole rack full of D&D minis, which makes me wonder if they sell a lot of them, or if the demand for them is that high at all. I rarely ever see GM's actually using minis in the first place, and even more rarely using the minis for the actual unit they represent. I guess players could be buying them as dolls for their PC's, but I at least don't go through that many PC's per year to warrant a rack as large as any of the miniatures games sections.
Obviously my anecdote ain't data but I see a good number of these being sold during game nights at the store. It's not uncommon for me to see someone buy a whole brick of the prepainted D&D minis in those blind-buy boxes and the individual Reaper Bones seem to do brisk trade as well.

It's almost always the Bones as individuals though because I rarely see places selling anything else. I guess the cheap Bones have a price point to make them worth stocking versus $8 metal figures. And if the store doesn't host games, there's likely a lot less being sold.

[Psyren]

How do gaming stores survive?

A lot of them don't. The ones that do usually do something other than TTRPGs, whether that be TCGs, board games, concessions etc.

Rough answer but it's the honest one.

[username1]

I was under the impression the major events they have pull in people, this is why there are 10+ events a week at game stores in my area.

[2D8HP]

I spend a lot of money at my FLGS (about $250 this week) and I try to boycott online as much as possible.

So the way for a FLGS to survive is to be near me, my latest purchase was a new edition of the Prince Valiant "Storytelling Game" by Greg Stafford, and I've bought a lot of Lamentations of the Flame Princess and D&D stuff this month.

[Tanarii]

Pretty much all the ones that survive in (large American city where I live) do so by being situated right across from a large community college or university campus.

Which also makes them incredibly useful if you want to host your own open table campaign. If you ever had a hankering to run either a common megadungeon or west marches, that's how you do it.