I'd like to address the issue of our store name once more, perhaps with some finality. Do not get us wrong, we very much appreciate all the advice we have been given. But for many reasons, both personal and practical, we are committed to the name The Wyvern's Tale.
Practically speaking, The Wyvern's Tale is the legal name of our LLC. Changing it now would not be easy, and a DBA is also out of the question at the moment. We have too many connections already established with this name.
One reason that I, personally, like the name is that I tire of game stores that are "______ Games", or some variant of that. Perhaps it gets a point across, but we want to get another point across. That we are not just a business providing a product. We are a place, a location, a destination, for people to come together and share their love of games, to play games, and to meet new gamers. A sense of community is very important to us, and the people in the local community we have spoken with thus far have all been very happy with the name. The wyvern has a long history in heraldry and European myth. As a seller of traditional games, we want a symbol of tradition.
The sense of community (and our lack of websales) is one of the reasons that SEO is barely in the margins of our concerns. We want to network locally, and we want word of mouth. We already have a dedicated following, as the previous store (Blitzkrieg Games) is being very cooperative and telling everyone all about the new operation. Even though we are not yet open, we host a weekly board game night at a local cafe. Gamers will find us, and once they do, we think they'll love our sense of atmosphere.
And as for non-gamer types, not being interested in a store with our off-the-wall name? Well, that may be a concern for many places, but not for Asheville. We are a tourist town, well-known for our "eccentricities". The tourists love to come and explore our specialty shops. Many businesses in our town have names like Cosmic Visions, Karma Sonics, and Vintage Moon. We once had a game store by the name of The Sword and Grail, and it was well-loved by all. We firmly believe our name is an attraction, not a deterrent. We will be on a high street with lots of foot traffic. We believe that when people see "The Wyvern's Tale", hand painted on a wooden sign, emblazoned with a wyvern, even if they're not gamers, they'll want to come in and see what it's all about.
An optimized name may be very marketable, but we believe that more marketable than an optimized name is a location that is dripping with amazing atmosphere, that people see and want to tell everyone they know about, and that starts with the sign outside.
Lastly, we love the play on words with tail/tale.
Again, we do not want at all to seem unappreciative, we are very grateful, for everything that has been done here. But I felt like we had to make a case for our name.
Edit: sorry about all those smilies, don't know how that happened.