Sup , I own WarpCards and I sell magic cards to US and Canada (and soon internationally). What does it take for you guys to buy my stuff? I want to sell you my stuff. Prices are set when cards go in at tcgplayer prices give or take 10%, which is low compared to other retailers. It's cheaper than f2f or scg every time. If it isn't we change the price as soon as its pointed out. We grade super aggressively, our MP is other stores SP. We have had nearly 1000 orders in the 3 months we've been up and had 0 complaints but sales aren't going up.
The economy here is Alberta is shit. The money left when Fort McMurray burned down. This website went up as fast as possible when it was noticed that local sales dropped 85%. Comparatively this is unsustainable. Website is getting worked on every day. People still want to play magic but in free events and stuff since even a $2 entry fee and a pack in to the prize pool would turn away people because that's more than what some people have.
How do I get you to buy my cards?
Oliver Phillips
There's two markets: local and internet. You're doing GREAT price-wise for a local market, but the key there is customer service. You're talking a lot about price but that's not the focus for local markets.
For internet buyers (local or otherwise), you need time to build up brand recognition and trust. More importantly, you'd have to sell stuff at just over cost. Literally. I'm not going to buy a case of booster boxes from you when I can get it elsewhere for $200 to $300 cheaper.
As far as events, Paying for events is good. You can mix it up (e.g. normal $5 events or whatever where your entry adds a pack to the pool on Fridays, free events without the added prize support on another day). The more people are in the store, the more likely they (or someone who sees them playing) will buy something.
Ryan Carter
Local sales are down 85%. That market has sailed. Maybe it will return, maybe not, but online sales are way too important now. The local market is gone, I'm over it. Your note that booster cases being $200 cheaper somewhere else is weird, we have:
So to get boxes between $200 and $300 cheaper means you actually are getting things at distributor prices (typically $109 CAD, or ABOVE the price you're saying you can pay) or less than the lowest possible cost - at which point I would just buy them as an online retailer to resell at lower prices.
Lastly the brand recognition and trust thing is just a wait and see approach I guess unless there's a way to speed that up.
Thomas Moore
>the local market has sailed Well then close down shop and start operating out of your apartment as a 2 man operation because there's no sense having a store front if it's useless.
Also, sue the government for lost revenue or something. Cite Trudeau denying aid from NA firefighting crews to import south africans to fight your fire.
Canada is a sinking ship, bro.
Leo Cooper
We have a storage container set up for 1 section of cards and have 2 office spaces we are going to rent out, all in downtown Edmonton. In the case that we do not recover the local market we move in to those, and the store fronts just become Board Games or Comics or 1 thing in order to not split the market.
Some people underestimate how bad the market is here. The fact that we've already begun looking for office space to go online-only for magic cards should be evidence that it is as bad as everyone says it is.
Could also move to another province but haven't looked in to that.
David Perez
>people underestimate the damage to the economy from the fire I don't think anyone underestimates the effects of huge tracts of land containing homes and businesses being burned to the ground.
I was dead serious when I said look to suing the government for failure to properly deal with the fire. Endangering lives, property, and futures for political statements is pretty insane.
Isaac Lee
>I was dead serious when I said look to suing the government
Oh
Nicholas Nelson
This. If this had happened in America there'd be a race war and a fuckton of lawsuits on the line already. Your lives were endangered so that the "heroes" in photos would be black skinned, and the fuckers blew up an international circus with their payment dispute to boot.
Jayden Collins
What can I do in the short term though to get sales on the website?
Nathaniel Powell
>advertising Enjoy the ban
Jason Murphy
I'd probably buy magic, but I can't justify supporting such a shitty game anymore. Branch out onto other games.
Julian Diaz
>short term >sales >website open packs, sell expensive singles for cheap, crash the collector market
Jonathan Rivera
I'm opening 10 cases of Kaladesh (instead of the normal 1), does that count?
Jason Cook
I can literally hop over onto ebay this very second and buy a whole booster box of SoI, EMN, Con2, hell probably even BFZ and OGW for about $90 USD each, shipped.
There is no reason to buy any higher than that.
Henry Kelly
To get sales you HAVE to sell lower than anyone else anywhere. Hell, this market is already a cut throat one.
A lot of stores profits are made on prerelease and release days, as well as preorder prices on singles. Those sales are literally what keeps most stores afloat until the next one.
Mason Ramirez
If shipping to US was less I'd snap up a few things from your site desu.
Chase Perez
I thought it was disgusting that we told offers of Russian firefighting aid to go fuck itself as a political snub but we brought in South Africans that ultimately fucked us.
Granted, I could not have seen the South Africans going on fucking strike when they got here; and they were extremely inexpensive. Russians wouldn't have fucked us though; I see no reason why firefighting of all things is goddamn politicized.
Dylan Carter
>selling at $107
I buy my booster boxes at my local store in a pretty small city of $200,000. I buy there because they sell them at $90, and because I want to support them. But if I get things for wildly cheaper online, I don't buy from them. $90 is a pretty good price that I could only improve upon a little. But I don't buy their gaming rule books because I get them for $20 less online.
Hunter Foster
>$200,000 fuck, the population is 200k is what I mean.
Colton White
For what it matters I'm glad to know you exist as an online store and I will take some time in the next week to browse your store as you're closer and apparently cheaper than Face to Face.
I just want to comment, it's fucking ridiculous that Magic singles are as expensive as they are. I used to be fine paying because it was a wonderful game. But it's been getting worse and I see no effort from Wizards to fix it. It's not your fault that the environment is like this and you invested in this business. But I seriously think Wizards has fucked the brick and mortars so hard it's not even funny. That they've allowed Walmart and EB Games to sell product just fucking cuts into the brick and mortars so hard and they force the brick and mortars to host events at often a crippling loss. I wouldn't dispute the losses from online sales, but when you fuck the walk-in traffic by making it convenient to buy your shit at Walmart that is just too much.
Good luck.
Jackson Walker
>announcing
user, I
Luis Walker
But it's often not convenient to buy from big name stores as they sell close to MSRP. Fatpacks at about $42 and such.
LGS still get to sell fatpacks for like $36-$40 depending on where you are. And big name stores rarely have booster boxes. So you'd still need to go to an lgs for that.
Jonathan Rivera
I don't think you fully grasp why the right is gaining so much worldwide support.
Shit exactly like this, as the right has been telling the left for decades would happen, is happening.
So of course, it's time for the pendulum to swing right, only this time it's going to swing harder than ever.
Brayden Young
Of course it is convenient to buy at big box stores, they're in the store anyways, might as well buy.
The big box store sits at a very special part of the market. They're too poor to drop all the money on a booster box but they crave instant gratification and are too stupid to make the good decision to get it cheaper at the LGS so they buy at Walmart. A little fat pack or intro deck wouldn't hurt, a booster pack wouldn't hurt. This is how they justify shit.
Sure, some people satisfy their little addiction at the LGS, but some just get their shit at Walmart. Wizards knows they can make extra money here and there's really nothing wrong with that; some of it is sales they otherwise would not get; but that small percentage you'd get by forcing people to go to your LGS helps the LGS a LOT whereas Walmart couldn't give a shit and neither should Wizards care about their bottom line. It could be children, parents, or adults who just should know fucking better.
Because there is an opportunity cost to supporting Walmart. Your fucking LGSs that do all your marketing go fucking under.
Mason Butler
While I know that the pendulum is going to swing to the right and fucking crash through the barrier that represents "reason" and I know why support is growing, I don't see how telling the Russians to go fuck themselves is an act of left-wing failure. I'd love to know why you think that.
It's simply we wanted to put the screws to the Russians, and I think that is completely filthy, political but NOT partisan. Every other PM would have done the same douchebag thing Trudeau did.
Adrian James
Come to Ontario.
I live in a small city of under 100k people, and every single card shop does booming business. My flgs, which is the only store for hundreds of km in most directions, does extremely well because they're honest. What sells them products are drafts. If you aren't running drafts, you're losing money, and if you can't support drafts where you are, you're double losing money. Your rent out west is stupidly high, where I am $350 a month will get you a store in the middle of downtown.
The problem is just in time inventory. A lot of places want to do that so they don't have to dedicate a lot of retail space to unsellable items, and if you have a few different stores, you can spread your inventory around, and order once you run out of particularly popular things. By making it look like you have less stock then you do, in person, your product becomes more scarce, and thus more valuable.
The other option is to gouge the shit out of the local traders. Give them 40% cash, and 50% trade in, play the market, and own the local supply of all the staples you can get your hands on. This will drive sales, even if they're out of rotation, because EDH players such as myself love to spend money on janky bullshit. You could even offer loyalty incetives if you want to be really nice (for example, with each booster box someone orders, throw in a $5 card from another set that you acquired for $2.50, or throw in an extra pack or two).
Canada is a shithole right now for young workers, and as a result, any industry targeting young people will be down. I'm just pissed off at so many things with my country I couldn't possibly list them all in this format. I just wish people would employ reasonable workers in entry level positions, rather than making every entry level position require 3-5 years experience because some MBA thinks that's a good idea.
