Great article. Well worth your time. I visit Complete In Box a couple times a month if possible as his stock changes regularly for used games. Spenser’s a cool dude with a cool store. Free play arcade games too which is pretty nifty. Maybe one of these places is near you?
As for the costs, it’s still in line with how it worked years ago when I was at Electronics Boutique and later in video rental where we bought games for rental purposes. There’s just no profit in new games. Used games are keeping all these stores open. Take them away and you have far fewer games sold IMO. Far fewer NEW ones. People are always converting their collections and their finished games into new (or new to them but used…) ones. These stores are a sign of a still healthy industry.
There’s an amazing independent video game store across the street from me. I purposely avoid them because I’d be broke otherwise, bit I suppose I should visit them more often.
The article is a really good read for people that keep saying things like “Why can’t a good local business outdo Gamestop?” whenever people whine about how much Gamesotp sucks, etc.
[quote]
“I don’t think this industry, in retail, is left in 10 years,” he says. “… No, not in the least bit. I mean, there will be some collectibles, but paying two employees who work full time and paying a few thousand in rent, nah. No way. Not a chance.”[/quote]
Yeah I love the little game shops around Seattle but it’s hard to go in there, partly because I feel at least some small obligation as a hobbyist to buy something to support them and then partly just because I’m such a collector, they’re just treasure troves. But I’d definitely miss them if they were gone.
Also, I love that even in an article about indie game stores, Battleborn gets thrown to the wolves.
[quote]
“In the case of Battleborn … within a week it had dropped 10 bucks so there goes our entire profit,” says Edgar Garcia at World 8 in Los Angeles, Calif. “So we’re trying to break even, but then the reviews come out or Overwatch gets more praise and then it gets dropped another 10 bucks and now we’re losing 10 bucks every time we sell a copy.”[/quote]
It is so nice to see those places ran by people filled with passion.
In France, those stores disappeared almost entirely, I’d say a bit over 10 years ago. All my Neogeo culture in the 90s was because of the time spent with such place’s clerks, hanging around for hours playing fighting games none of us could afford. Made quite a few friends there too, a couple of which I still frequent to this day. It was a shortlived golden age, in the 16bits days.
Now all that seems left in the Paris area are a very few stores that focus on goodies and the occasional fishing of the nostalgic videogaming whales.
I have been the spectator of what I assume is their extinction in the recent years in Japan as well, although the local places were very remote from the social gathering of game addicts I knew in France anyway. It was still exciting to scour them, especially before they decided to basically throw the boxes away to save space.
I love that the article mentions services: having an electronic-savy dude close by was (is?) such a boon with those finnicky hardwares.
I don’t always buy stuff when I go in because I have a rather extensive collection already but when I do it’s usually a significant purchase. The thing that these independents do better than Gamestop is they service the retro and even the less retro game sales with quailty product. They don’t have much disc-only stuff and often refuse to take it from people coming in. I like that because I’m assured of getting a complete or nearly complete game when I buy used.
The guy who buys from Amazon to re-sell using the Prime Discount… I’m wondering why more stores aren’t doing that? Provided you keep it reasonable, you could probably pull that off. It just goes to show you what sort of amazing discounts Amazon gets for its volume wholesale buys though. They probably still make anywhere from $2 to $5 per sale even with that 20% discount.
That bit was amusing, guy just buys one copy of each new game. “OK well, there goes my one copy of that game, now I’m all sold out!” I guess his clientele must be accustomed to the policy, but there must be a mad rush for new copies of popular games.
Maybe, or he just has that one sitting there for awhile because most people go to Gamestop but then come trade in at his store for something else that some other dude traded in. It’s a good way to say you’re carrying new games at least, and for some people that’s all it takes for them to frequent your store.
Complete In Box definitely takes it easy on new stuff. I don’t think they’re bringing in high volumes of new product most times, which makes sense because you really don’t want to get caught out with the duds. That’s ok though. I don’t go there for new games 99% of the time. I go there to buy what others have traded in. :)
We’ve got a chain of used-game shops in the midwest called Disc Replay, and they seem to do decently well (certainly well enough to have stores in four states, anyway!), but they also deal in general used electronics, CDs, DVDs, Blu-Rays, retro-game-playing boxes like the SupaBoy and RetroN lines, new peripherals for current consoles, aftermarket cables and controllers for various older consoles, and general nerd stuff (I saw the Harry Potter deckbuilding game in our local store last time I was in there). Sadly, even that’s probably not enough to sustain that sort of business much longer than just doing retro games, as the march toward an all-digital future is much faster for music and movies than for games, and any business dealing in used electronics has to compete with pawn shops and eBay, which aren’t going anywhere.
Pawn shops have a stigma attached and eBay is a pita for a lot of folks. As long as these stores stay focused on the people coming through the door and treating them right, I think they’ll last until we’re all forced to buy digital only and even then there will be a long tail of retro for awhile.
What struck me most in the article is how little people who own these stores are actually making from them. Reading through the section where they went over expenses versus revenue, some of these stores are only making $1200-$1500 a month in profit. That means if you are the full-time owner of the store, you’re making less than $20K a year from your business. That’s below the poverty level in many areas. I get that the allure isn’t the money, it’s doing what you love and being surrounded by your hobby every day, but holy crap…
I’d love to see a similar article on board/card/minis gaming stores. When Magic the Gathering was all the rage, there were several of those in my area. Now the few that are left seem to have merged with (or were always part of) comic book stores. It makes me wonder if the key to some limited success might not lie in combining everything, comics, games, video games and related geek merchandise all into one shop, with a heavy online (Ebay/Amazon) presence to augment your storefront.
I am amazed people are making ANY profit to be honest. Making a grand and a half a month seems amazingly good for what I had assumed was just a dead business model. More power to them. I believe boardgame, MTG & mini’s shops do better but like you I would love to see some insights.
I participated in that thread … 7 years ago, and it started 13 years ago. As Awesome as @Noun’s story was, I’d enjoy seeing something from someone still in the industry today. So much has changed since 2004.
