Bookmarked. Everything looks amazing!
Congratulations! I really hope this works out for you.
On a side note, there’s a gaming and comic book store in Copenhagen called Faraos Cigarer (named after a Tintin comic), which must have been around for 15 or 20 years. I’ve shopped there occasionally in the past, and they’ve always had a bunch of events: comic book signings, larp events, p&p nights, figure painting instructions, regular tabletop evenings, you name it.
It used to be just one store, but then, maybe 10 years ago, they opened another, very close by, so that one specialized in comics and one in games. Then they opened another, right in between the two other stores, which seems to specialize in US and Japanese comics, as well as comic related paraphernalia.
I visited just last week and noticed that they’ve opened yet another store, which specializes in European comics. The game store still seems to get the most business, though, and it had a long line of people queuing outside for some event.
Anyway, it seems to me that if any kind of brick and mortar store can compete with online retailers, it’s this kind of store, as long as it keeps engaging its customers and manages to build a community around itself. If you can do that, I think you’re going to be alright. :)
edit: The pictures are great. Please post more, especially once the store opens.
Store looks amazing, but I’d like to discourage you from the flickering lightbulbs. Sounds cool in theory, but some of us find flickering lights rather uncomfortable. Not in the area, unfortunately, but I can’t be the only one like that.
They actually don’t “flicker”. It’s a bunch of colored LEDs that rotate around in a pattern to simulate candle/lamp-light. Thanks for the insight though.
Yeah, the way most of the local games stores operate for things like X-wing is one of two main ways
A buy in that is either used for prize money (as store credit), and the buy in can be as store purchases. So if you, for example, bought a game, that covers your league fee. Portland Game Store has a $10 fee, which is waived if you spend $40 in store. At the end of the league season then league fees are divided out as prize money. I won last month, so got $42 in store credit. Other winners got lower amounts.
Or direct buy, but you get store credit 1:1. So $5 league fee, but you get that much store credit added.
It works for me, and definitely encourages buy local. It definitely seems to work out for their benefit.
While the per player amount seems high, it’s a great idea. It definitely wouldn’t work for a weekly D&D group, that’ll get pricey in a hurry!
But it’s a great model, and good looking too. Hope things continue going well for you @Vesper
So true, but for someone who decided to do a “buy the books” moment, he just earned his party a cool room to game in that weekend.
I am a little surprised by the person cost. Does it assume more people, higher likelihood of damage?
Will take you up on the online shopping. Always trying to find new and interesting games to keep my children engaged in non electronic time sinks. Nothing better then supporting folks like you as opposed to the big online stores.
I was gonna buy my nephew and my son games for Christmas…in fact, I backed a Kickstarter for them… and after it closed I read an update about how the game won’t be finished until next August. So I need to get games for this Christmas. I’m happy to order the games from you and pay for shipping. I will be in touch via PM.
I’m so stoked and happy for you, @Vesper!
And that private gaming room looks deceptively simply-designed, and yet is outstandingly gorgeous! Beautifully designed! I can definitely see people fighting to get that room. You should have two of them. I wish I had a room in my house that looked that nice. Extremely atmospheric.
Did you design that room yourself, or was it a design supplied by the main office?
Either way, I can’t get over how awesome it looks.
We are the only store to have the private rooms and it was purely an idea conceived by my wife and I. We originally were looking at photorealistic wallpaper for the look but our contractors came up with the idea of doing it for-reals with lumber and textured paint. The franchise has guidance on the main retail area, but anything extra we want to do is purely up to us.
The property we picked out had 2 offices that we are turning into these themed rooms. And we do have 2 of them! The other one just isn’t done yet- it’s going to look like a castle dining room. Not quite as fancy as we are using stone-patterned wallpaper instead of lumber on the walls, but it’ll still have cool lighting and lots of themeing.
The other thing we are doing that no other store has is that we installed a soda fountain. We got custom mugs made with the store logo and are selling them for $15 a pop. The first 100 mugs sold get unlimited soda for life. After that mugs will get you unlimited soda for a year (maybe - still crunching numbers on that idea).
Thanks for all of the compliments everyone!
That is a great incentive. It would keep me coming back, if for nothing else other than to refill my mug.
I love the castle dining room idea, too. Will you let gaming groups bring in food?
Everything about this thread is awesome. Great job following your dream, and an amazing execution of a concept.
This is my new favorite thread. So happy that the grand opening went well and totally agree that the private gaming room looks amazing! One of these days I’m going to redo my home office to have a similar medieval tavern style look, though I may have to get divorced first as the wife is not a fan. ;-)
Love all the pictures, thanks for posting them and please continue to do so. Congrats to you and your wife on living the dream, and on all that hard work paying off in such a gorgeous retail space. I have to admit though, the soda fountain picture makes me uneasy…all I can see when I look at it is some little kid running up and pushing the lever spilling soda all over the floor or spraying it all over the display to the left. I’m a little OCD like that…I know, I’m fun at parties.
Seriously though, this is awesome. Congrats @Vesper!!!
While I hear his plan and can’t but think it’s a great idea. This is partly because most of the game stores I frequent here in Portland have beer taps. So you get used to the idea quickly.
Oh it’s absolutely a great idea for the store…it’s just the placement of the soda fountain so close to the product displays sets off my “potential kid catastrophe” alarm. I’ve raised three kids, my alarm is well honed. =)
If it were me…I’d mount a piece of clear plastic to the left side of the fountain to act as a splatter shield, just to be safe.
You’re doing such a great job incentivising repeat customers, i’m tres impressed here.
If i may, you might want to think about decorating the other room in some kind of Warhammer-y future-y… thing, to catch that crowd. Maybe some kind of cyberpunk neo-Tokyo thing with neon tube lights? Not full grim dark anyway.
Wish i lived nearby enough to drop in!
Hmm beer taps in a gaming store … that’s serious.
It’s in Colorado. Might as well sell weed, too. Beer…weed – go the full monty.
Sadly, Colorado doesn’t let weed & anything else mix. There’s even a couple of social clubs now where you can smoke/consume but they can’t sell it there. Meanwhile I hear that in Vegas you can get weed delivered.