Bookstore treats D&D books like Playboy

[nakia]

In my understanding, shrinkage doesn't get covered by insurance. At least, none of the stores I've worked at (Barnes and Noble and FLGS) have used insurance to offset shrinkage. At the FLGS, we could write off up to X amount of dollars per year as loss due to shrinkage. It was a very small operation, with no real inventory control, so he always just wrote off the maximum amount.

At the Barnes and Noble I worked at shrinkage directly affected the stores bottom line, which affected the pay rates of employees as well as amount and type of product we carried. The formula was something like gross sales -- shrinkage = net sales. Those net sales numbers were what the company looked at when determining staffing needs, product ordering, etc. So if shrinkage was high, our net sales were lower, which meant the odds of me getting a raise were lower AND it was more difficult to hire new people. Fewer employees meant my job got harder.

The moral is even theft from the "big bad bookstore" makes the lives of the poor saps who work there more difficult. And it makes it harder to get the product.

Working in retail makes you hate people.

 

[Ashrum the Black]

Nakia wrote:
Working in retail makes you hate people.

Man, it took working retail for you? I thought it just took driving through rush hour traffic to do that.

-Ashrum

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Working in retail makes you hate people.

Quoted for truth.

I've never wanted so much to do harm to the body public as when I worked service industry.

--fje

 

[Chaldfont]

It may not be gamers stealing the books. My best friend works at our public library. He says game books, books on witchcraft, and especially certain DVDs (like "Queer as Folk" and "Sex in the City") get stolen all the time by what he calls "religious fundies". Apparently there is a regular group that steals that stuff just to keep them out of the collection.

 

[Joshua Randall]

This is why, in my store, shoplifters get shot on sight. By my specially trained ill-tempered mutant sharks with frickin' lasers on their frickin' heads.

But seriously... stealing stuff sucks.

 

[Magestrike]

More Theft

I know with our store that we have a certain percentage that we are supposed to be under as far as shrinkage. If we are over that number, then the store manager and the assistant get written up, and possibly more based on how bad the number was. I know of store managers that have gotten fired because their shrink number was really bad, although looking at the actual percents, you would think it made that much difference.

Like last time this happened, the goal was under 4% and the store's number came back at 6.6%. Difference of only 2.6%, but it made all the difference when you figure that meant 2.6% of the total store sales was shrink. That store manager got written up and then fired when her magazine shrink number came back horrible two months in a row.

It is getting to the point in our store that I am losing the fight most of the time to order more RPG stuff for the store. The reason we have what we do, which is more than most bookstores, is because I order it for the store so we will have it and can sell it. If it keeps getting stolen, we cant sell it, so we wont carry it. Makes perfect sense from a business standpoint. If 25% of our total store shrink is coming from a section the we have because I order stuff to fill it, whats the need of ordering it just to lose it and risk my job as the assistant?

As far as other sections go in our store, besides RPG, the next biggest shrink areas are magazines, performing arts, and yes as others have said, religion.

I just dunno.

 

[Quickbeam]

It just seems like there are other ways to deal with theft prevention - ones that don't involve basically losing your customers. That rather defeats the purpose of having the books in the first place. Sure, they are safe from theft. They are also safe from purchase. That's a losing proposition - at least with theft, you are fully covered by insurance. If the books don't sell, you are out of luck.

I don't disagree at all. I've just heard about several stores (in Michigan and across the country) that have resorted to this tactic as a theft deterrent measure. If the books are being stolen one can surmise that the product is reasonably popular, and placing them out of view would have some potential negative impact on sales. But I'd bet that a popular product is one that most people will ask for if they cannot locate it themselves, thus minimizing the sales decrease somewhat. I'd also wager that filing claims over stolen merchandise is a pain in the rear, and this may be more about keeping the wrong type of person out of their store.

That said, it could just be a poor decision on product placement which has nothing to do with theft at all.

And thanks - I like to take pride in coming up with good taglines, no matter what the thread.

Sparty On!!

 

[Raven Crowking]

Again, go back to the original post.

There's a local bookstore here that, for whatever reason, has moved all of its D&D books to 'behind the counter' - behind the cash register. They still have them, but now you can no longer look at them unless you go up to the register and ask for them. I can only speculate why they did this (trouble with theft by kids??) but from a practical standpoint, since this pretty much precludes browsing them, I no longer go to that bookstore for gaming books, even though they have them. (Ok, so I order from Amazon most of the time anyway, but still).

Altazar admits generally buying from Amazon, and going to that store not for puchase (which he can still do) but for browsing (which is now pretty much precluded). If most of the rpg book "customers" in the store follow the same example, then theft is hardly necessary to make the store move the books.

Let us assume, for a moment, that the store is in business to make money, and is not a lending library. The store previously supplied a service (ability to browse, and hence make informed purchasing decisions) on the basis of a service = sales model. Thereafter, customers decided that they liked the service (browsing) but didn't equate the service with any actual value (i.e., the browsing didn't enter the equation when deciding whether or not Amazon was cheaper on the whole). So, as the service costs the store money in wear and tear as well as in supplying the books, the store withdrew said service.

Can you honestly blame them?

Conversely, if you were a customer who went in to buy rpg books, and did so on even a semi-regular basis, you probably wouldn't have any trouble asking to see a book (as you know you are not there simply to browse, and as the management knows the same).

Of course, smaller publishers require those same brick-and-mortar stores to create a large enough pre-order to offset printing costs. So, the more you "browse then shop Amazon" the more likely you make it that the local outlet stops carrying rpg materials, and the more likely you make it that smaller companies go under. Hence, there is less potential material available for you to choose from.

PDF format publishing helps keep smaller companies afloat, luckily, but that's still more of a gamble than determining a print run based on pre-orders from actual stores. This is because (1) you have no idea how many copies you will sell before "going to press" and (2) it is far easier to steal an electronic format book than a print book. Think shrinkage is a problem in the brick-and-mortar stores? Imagine how many illegal transfers of the BoVD have occurred since the book's release.

Courtesy begets courtesy, and you get what you pay for.


RC

 

[VirgilCaine]

It may not be gamers stealing the books. My best friend works at our public library. He says game books, books on witchcraft, and especially certain DVDs (like "Queer as Folk" and "Sex in the City") get stolen all the time by what he calls "religious fundies". Apparently there is a regular group that steals that stuff just to keep them out of the collection.

That is so messed up it's not frakking funny. That is my frakking paycheck that was extorted from me they're stealing! No wonder my library here in Charlotte doesn't have any D&D books!

THOU SHALT NOT STEAL.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

What's so ironic is, it's nearly impossible to find anyone in my town (pop. 44,000) who games! They must be truckin' in the shoplifters from other towns!

No surprising - there are lots of closet gamers out there (says a closet gamer).

When I first saw the title, I thought: "The clerk's in the back with the PHB and a box of kleenex??"

Imagine my disappointment when the thread turns out to be about shrinkage.