Would it be a death knell for an LGS to offer a wider selection of tabletop RPGs, rather than to focus on Magic the Gathering as a money maker?
By this I mean not hosting Friday Night Magic or any tournaments, and just having that time for tabletop game nights?
image unfamiliar
I have a loosely put together plan...
-school it up at community college for 2-4 years to get a business degree
-work a smalltime job to build up capital and establish credit
-take out a loan to start business
-hire whatever friend that's down on his luck and pay him a dollar above minimum wage, but mostly run the store myself
I know that everything about my post shows that I don't know what I'm doing, because I don't, but my city has only had 2 LGS' in the past two decades, and they both closed up shop.
Uh
Consider this: if you get a decent mtg scene going at your store, you will have people regularly coming in and buying shit. People will always need more packs, more singles, and more tournaments.
The tabletop you're talking about is a lot more sporadic one-time purchases. It lacks the inherent regular crowd of a ccg or something.
Especially since Amazon is a thing, you need to kinda sell the fact that buying from you is supporting the lgs. This is easier if you have a regular crowd who give a shit about you and your shop than the occasional buyer.
Mtg is the most lucrative nerd hobby. Im friends with the son of the owner of my lgs and they've dropped games workshop products before they would even think about dropping magic. To put it bluntly everything you're doing is a loss from your mtg career to draw in more customers, even selling comics.
This.
You don't need to be a business expert to be able to tell that is a bad idea. Just consider for a few seconds how often and how much your average CCG player spends on their hobby compared to your average roleplayer.
As someone with a business degree I can tell you one thing they have you do is a business plan. That's what you take to the bank to show them you can pay them back.
A big thing is profit margins. CCGs have a low wholesale cost, and a huge mark up, and a big profit margin. Basically Magic, and forces of Will keep the store open at my FLGS plus snack and drink sales.
When I did a business plan for a store I added a case for making sandwiches and a blender for smoothies and a cooler for Soda.
From the math I did I needed to sell 5 boxes of booster packs, and 30 sandwiches a month in order to make payroll, rent, insurance, loan payment.
That was assuming no miniature or rpg book sales. Employees were incentivize to shop at the store with a discount of 15% and a meal program that gave them a free sandwich and soda combo a day.
MTG is pretty much the only thing that keeps LGSs alive. You gotta deal with the magic if you want a store with other things.
It's basic economies, mang. Magic sells, so they sell magic. If you want other stuff in stores, buy it and get friends to buy it through other retailers
>not hosting Friday Night Magic
This would be suicide.
>or any tournaments
This would be a kind of critical suicide where you not only kill yourself, but also anyone adjacent to you.
The non-MTG way forward seems to be boardgame cafes/bars and their target demo is completely incompatible with the Friday night magic armpit stink crowd.