I’m not surprised. Baby steps, after all. So what are the laws on consumption? Can gamers playing a fascinating boardgame in one of your gaming rooms light up? Or at least consume the trippy gummie bears?
I hope I visit Colorado someday. I will visit your store. You know what would be cool? A Qt3 meetup in your area. That would be a lot of fun.
Consumption is supposed to be done in ‘private’ areas, officially. Really the cops only seem to care about people driving while high or if you are being totally obvious about it.
We actually just had a mini QT3 get together a month or so ago when @jpinard was visiting. @Nightgaunt, myself and Jeff had dinner and played some board games. But yes, now that the store is open - we should have a bigger gathering!
Yes, Mark! Please let us know if you’re ever in the area.
How’s it going @Vesper, 2 weeks in now? Wishing you had opened a Subway instead? ;)
I was just reading a reddit thread titled “How do local game stores make a profit?”, and it seems that idea of renting a room out for store credit is a popular idea in other FLGS!
Ha! I’m enjoying it a lot. It’s keeping me really busy doing re-orders and staying on top of new releases. I have seen similar threads to the one you linked and the overwhelming sentiment is “get players to like your store so they will pay MSRP.” I think that’s the wrong methodology. Stores are competing with Amazon on price and other things that people might spend their disposable income on. I want someone to choose a new game over seeing a movie if money is tight, and I never want them to have an excuse to buy elsewhere. Letting a customer choose Amazon/Miniature Market/etc over you is not sustainable. This is what I see as the problem with most game stores. I’m attempting to build a reputation of having brand new games as cheap as online without waiting for shipping. Oh, and it’s a cool place to hang out too.
THAT BEING SAID… After a great opening day it’s been a bit slow especially on weekdays. I’ve been aggressively advertising on Facebook and it’s starting to pay off. More and more people are coming in daily and we are getting awesome 5 star reviews across the board. I’m also reaching out to local Meetup groups, schools, etc to try to build the customer base. I’m in a better position financially than your typical FLGS owner in that I have a regular full time boring corporate job and savings to keep things going as we build. I’m very optimistic that we will be get our initial build out paid off and profitable within 6 months to a year. I knew that going in and have planned accordingly. So when I see a day that has hardly any sales, yes it’s stressful but I remind myself of the big picture. And then Saturday rolls around and we have an awesome day. Plus I love love love hanging out and talking games with customers or showing them a demo.
Well, it is definitely not a “if you build it they will come” sort of thing, so it sounds like you have the right outlook. With my professional armchair QB skill I would definitely encourage “events” to get people to check you out.
Is your web page up yet?
EDIT: From a Gaming Goat perspective you still don’t exist.
@Vesper Love this thread and love seeing someone following thier dreams! Hopefully someday I am a good enough artist to send you art for you store!
Also I worked in a corporate retail clothing store for a few years as the manager and outside busy holiday times we generally did almost 10 times the business on weekends that we did on week days. I think that might just be kinda normal for retail.
That’s what will make a great store right there, real love for the games from the staff. Still need the business acumen too, of course, but that passion will set you apart from the crowd.
Yes I wish I lived in Denver. I would come over and bother you with questions! (and buy something)
My experience is decades old, but at least during my son’s school days they had gaming clubs and then friends would have their own groups. Hopefully this will be a great resource for steady customers. I wonder if hosting doesn’t work out for some official school clubs that may have to be on campus, perhaps you could bring the gaming to them as a one-off kind of thing?
Tom did a podcast with Vesper on this (and of course other things) a week ago:
Very interesting thread (and podcast.) I live in Rockford which has a Goat about 18 months old. They did a great job taking my and my family’s/friends’ business from Amazon/CoolStuffInc as well as the dingy, unfriendly other game store. Really happy for them every time I walk in and all the tables are full. Hopefully that’s turning into enough sales. I would like to see them do a better job marketing their calendar via an email newsletter and Meetup as they’re a little too Facebook-centric, but I understand most people are there.
I’m sure your one-year anniversary will come quickly!
I didn’t listen to the podcast but I saw a lot of the thread earlier. If he has a mint addition of “the Big Rubble” by Chaosium I may hire a plane over. I loved my old runequest campaign.
You should hit Lost Ark then. Really good game store in Greensboro.
Loved the podcast! Definitely sound like a cool franchise. Hope one opens around here soon and best wishes for yours!
Thanks for asking! We are doing alright. Still building up our customer base and figuring out best ways to market. But we aren’t losing money on the store so that’s more than a lot of stores can say when they start! 😊
We are actually starting to think about starting a second location. I’d like to at some point switch to running it day to day. Every day I’m at the store I’m happy. But my regular job gets in the way of that occurring too much.
That’s good news! Sounds like you’re not able to quit your full-time job quite yet though? Does the store not replace your income, after rent, taxes, etc? Is that your ultimate goal? Thx for sharing!