Would it be a death knell for an LGS to offer a wider selection of tabletop RPGs...

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?

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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.

MTG is a reliable and profitable revenue stream. In a Industry, for lack of better term, that generally has poor profitability on sales of items and unreliable sales MTG provides a strong constant.

The community or game might not be something you wish to associate with, but as a business MTG provides really the only thing you HAVE to have: Sales. You can have fantastic community in other games and they might be able to sustain you, but if you choose not to sell to or maintain a MTG Community you will have financial hardships. Unless you do the cafe-store thing, which I personally haven't seen yet.

In my opinion, you need MTG. There is a community that exists already, they will buy your product, and they will come to the shop. Some of them will migrate to other games, some will stay with MTG. People will see your store is active, and they will come as well. Just be sure to cultivate other communities as well.

and all of this makes me sad. I kind of hate how magic so utterly dominates

SO long as it's not introduced en masse and to the exclusion of other more reliable hobbies I can't imagine it would do too much damage. A wee box here or there to test the waters.

Offering more stuff might work, but why would any business stop moving its most profitable products? And if they did, how would it be advantageous?

In the olden days (1990s) when I worked in a tabletop game shop RPGs and Warhammer earned thier keep sales wise. I can't fault owners from promoting Magic it would be nice for more variety even if it was another CCG.

That should be a hint, friendo. bricks and mortar shops only work if they're places to meet people for sex. so the answer is to sell games workshop and anal lube

The LGS near me sold three things: Magic, Yu-gi-oh, and Vanguard. They got rid of the Vanguard. They went out of business. Magic isn't the only big moneymaker, just the usual one.

No pokemon?
Kids love that shit and their parents are more than willing to spend if you demonstrate you can keep everyone out of trouble.

Rpg books that aren't d&d just eat up shelf space and even d&d isn't very good. The margins suck on rpgs as well. I say this from experience.

Out of curiosity, OP. Why WOULDN'T you want to sell Magic? It's a guaranteed cash stream if you get a base of regulars built up so I'm curious why you would be against it right out the gate

The only reason i always see on these threads is usually the OP is actually trying to open a personal gaming clubhouse, not a shop/store.

Yeah a club is a very different thing from a store. Actually doing a store right requires a lot of discipline and thought and someone who starts off with 'no mtg' and 'a variety of rpgs' is clueless.

See that's what I was figuring.

I actually just came across a new LGS in the next town over and the dude has TONS of wargaming stuff. 40k, AoS, Infinity, Warmahordes, Malifaux you name it. And I talked to the owner because he saw me looking at Malifaux stuff and I've never seen anyone around this area carry it but he plays and apparently his store has a huge group who plays, so I get the feeling he might be doing the same thing and basically making a clubhouse to play with his buddies. That said he had a ton of Magic cards and runs FNM, plus Pokémon tourneys for kids and some other assorted stuff in addition the the tabletop events. It's in kind of an odd location so hopefully he stays afloat by pushing the CCGs

You are looking at things backwards.
The success of the LGS in gathering a TCG community is the reason why he can afford to have his personal clubhouse, not the other way around.

It's better to die selling RPGs than to live hosting Magic.

the CCG crowd is fucking atrocious.

Best bet is just set up a cafe (snacks, sandwiches, fancy coffee drinks) with a beer license (craft beers) and stock a few really popular board games for purhcasing. Charge a nominal fee for table space or renting from your library but NEVER expect to make the bulk of your money off selling games. Appealing to people lifestylist hipsters is the only way you can survive without chaining yourself to FNM kids.

Honestly the mtg crowd is ok, but when you get to the yugioh and pokemon crowds you get a mass of unaccompanied children and thieves(not mutually exclusive). Still if you want to have a bookshelf with traveller and your own indie darling you have to pay for it with something else.

Yes. Recently, a community member tried to do just that, stating that the LGS owner didn't care about anyone but the 40k players and he was going to make a store that was better.

So, he made a fair few mistakes, but relevant to this topic, he didn't even really keep to the "I'm gonna make the store good for RPGs" thing going for long. Economic reality: RPGs don't sell well. Only one book is needed per 5+ players, and they only come out every few months. Board games do sell pretty well, but not enough to pay rent on their own. Competitive games have constantly changing metas that get people to buy more stuff. You can't run a store without them.

>selling RPGs
You mean D&D

FLGS should do RPGs on order, although they should definitely have at least one night where they play non-DnD-alikes.

RPG nights tend to draw only enough for 1-2 tables at best. You really arent going to be able to be picky.

Is this not a common thing? I mean, just for reference, I've annotated my FLGS's schedule for this month. First two weeks are relatively empty due to new year.