Oi

I now run an FLGS. Focus is on the card and board games.

Wat do?

See if you can get your friends that are in to Veeky Forums to check it out?

Already done. Pretty nice. Wat next?

Go bankrupt because everyone buys online.

A lot of shops make a lot of money selling food/snacks/drinks too. Then your costumers don't have to leave to get more gamer fuel and you make a little extra money per person.

Half of our sales are as an online hub. All items in the shop are in the markets online that cater to them. Not going broke and profits are rising, Next?

We got a full range of snacks and soda. I joke that we're basically a convenience store with games.

Get vending machines to sell drinks and snacks.

Also where is this shop there's no good game stores where i live

What events does the store run?

Very nice. Do you have side rooms for games or is everything done in a single area?

Do you sell enough in the actual store to justify the effort of running a brick and mortar shop as well or is it just a personal goal? Genuinely curious.

Replace the contents of every single box you sell with dragon dildos. Carefully reseal, act confused and surprised if any come back asking for refunds.

Set up a local tournament. Make a leaderboard if some sort. MTG, AoS and W40k are all competitive games, and their players usually enjoy knowing how they stack up against others in the area.

What other stores are there in your location? Figure out what they don't offer that people want and then do that. Also if there is a college nearby maybe pass out flyers or something there

Sell out to mtg because cardboard rules the masses and they just leave the rpg books to rot I hate texas I want to die

Fliers*

Like, a freaking TON of card tournaments because no one has catered to it in a decade. The occasional video game tournament. And people are always coming in to do their own video games and tabletop things.

Also start selling those retarded Pop! figs

Sadly, all in one room until we move into a bigger place. It's a big room but we're getting popular so... gotta move.

Make sure you add you Business to Google maps, yelp, Facebook, ect. And put up some kind of meet and greet game things on Meetup. Hunt through Facebook pages and ask your costumers, find local game groups and PERSONALLY invite them to come hang out.

Not only is enough sold in store to keep the store open by itself, but when people buy packs that are randomly opened they will sometimes sell the cards to us for in store credit and those cards go online. We profit from the pack sold and then profit from the card whether bought online or at the shop. And that's just the cards by themselves.

Oh no, no falling for that again!

The only other store focuses comic books. They dropped their game focus years ago. We've tried to ally with them since we want to do the business they don't want, but they've acted grumpy as if were competition. We don't sell comics, they don't sell games, I'm not seeing the issue...

You're, "competition," in that they're a, "geek shop," that's run by someone that probably just thinks of it as a way to make money. You're soaking up some of their geeks, so you're the enemy as far as they're concerned.

Probably... but it'd be nice if the pizza shop understood that we sell fries and not pizza and called off this stupid war.

What do they do that impacts your building?

Walk in, ask to speak to the owner. Explain, calmly, that there's not any overlap between your shops. They sell comics, not games; you sell games, not comics. Stress that you are not the enemy, and you're not looking to take their primary business source away; you want the people they can't sell to, because they aren't selling what those people want.

Use that analogy if you feel like it, it might help them get it through their head.

It's as said,
Geeks only have so much money, if they buy you're fow, MTG, pokemon, yu-gi-oh, sw destiny, or whatever the latest money pit is, they won't have money for comics, or GF, or food.

How much overlap is there between comics and tcgs though?

Technically they don't do anything that hurts us financially. But since they cater to a different area of the 'geek' culture and there is some overlap it'd be nice if they were willing to work with us. As it stands, we direct people to them for all their comic needs, but nobody ever says they directed anyone to us for their games. Since comics are shrinking their business is shrinking and they actually need our help but they refused, which is sad. I hope they come around and work with us.

Not a huge amount, but enough that even though we're a game shop we're directing people to the comic shop at least once daily.

Do you recommend others try opening their own?
I'm thinking of opening a card shop in an area that that has no MtG stores, at least according to WotC store finder, so I feel competition is pretty weak.
My main thing is that it's going to be a board game store with a nice cafe/bistro attached. I hope to get people into the store by hosting gaming Meetups/MtG events, and then make most of my money by selling them food.

If you start out completely awful at something you'll never be great at it.

Once you set up a large enough fund and loyal consumer base, start selling paints and models

Establish a "cutoff point" and make sure your employees know about it. FLGSs have a very bad habit of letting unacceptable behaviors fly if the offending customer spends more money. I totally understand WHY they do that (it's a niche market and some of the worst people are also those that spend all their neetbucks/mom's money at the store and are responsible for a hefty chunk of the store's income), but if you let it go too far, you will end up losing customers because no one will want to play at or visit your store. Draw a reasonable line and don't let anyone cross it unless they personally are keeping the store afloat and putting your kids through college.

Learn to hate Amazon to the very depths of your soul.

Keep telling yourself that, user.

This is very important. The staff at my FLGS is very friendly, best buds with all the players, but as players we know what lines not to cross, and because of that they are able to cater to a lot of different crowds, including young kids that will grow up to spend their entire allowance at the store.
At the same time the customers aren't afraid to tell the FLGS staff when they are doing shit wrong. This means that the players get a better experience and the FLGS makes more money..
Try and get your players involved. Don't just run big tournaments, where you have a 20$ entrance fee and big prizes. Test and try different things out. If there is a new game system or format you want to try, do a trial with a core group of people without any monetary prize, or a 1$ entrance fee with a prize of a single paint brush or something. Then, when shit goes wrong, you don't have a bunch of angry and dissatisfied customers.

Try and do things to get people to hang out there even if they don't have a game planned. Put a painting table in if you have space. I prefer to paint at my FLGS since it helps me concentrate and for the company, and as a result I'm more likely to spontaneously buy paint or models that I really don't need. I'll also buy food and drinks, and if anyone wants to come in for a pick up game there will almost always be people there.

Set up an active community, and reach out on social media. My FLGS has a storefront facebook page, which they use to do things like sales, major tournaments, annoucements, new merchandise, all that fun stuff. Then there are several more pages for things like magic, or warhammer, or RPGs. That lets the players reach out and organize things, or get in a quick game.

Try and also get some partnerships going with some nearby restaurants. Having a good relationship with delivery pizza is always good. You send customers over to them, they keep your customers happy and maybe try to send customers to you.

We got tournaments of all sizes and prefer a classy level of behavior. Customer feedback is polled often. Personally working on an RPG library type deal for the store myself.

That feels like a SU reference...

No. Fuck that. START STOCKING COMICS.

Well it's not a JoJo reference.

Why? I mean, sure, they basically tried something like that against us when they began spending thousands on cards and tournaments without any plan to sell and lost out big, further hurting their dwindling business just to spite us and actually helping grow ours by adding more cards to the market...

...but it's a dick move...

That's fucked up, bro.

This isn't Bob, is it?

This is your in, I think. Ask if you can get some business cards or fliers from them and do an exchange. You send comics people to them, they send tcg people to you. It's free advertising for them so if they aren't interested they're just butts

>what should I do Veeky Forums
>Except everything is fine

I think you just made this thread to brag and talk about your store that may or may not exist

That's ok

Kinda, but always good to double check and poll opinions. Wat do was more of a "What do you think i should do" or "What would you do in this situation" not a "Oh no what do I do because I don;t know" type of thing because I certainly didn't jump in blind.

Not every "what should I do" or "what should be done" is a cry for help.

What's your weekly event schedule like?

...Ally with an actual pizza shop. Or a food truck. Offer to let him set up in a convenient location on big game nights for a cut of his sales.

Not a bad plan, make sure you've got a nice space and that you actually sell games. Get on that WotC ricklestick. I would preferentially go to your place for prereleases because coffee.