A couple of random memories...
Wizards tried the computers and gaming tables with the three stores they opened. All it usually garnered were kids looking to play free games.
That's true. I was here in Seattle when two Wizards stores opened (one in the U-District and the other in Northgate Mall) and I thought they were the coolest looking places--but I felt so incredibly old compared to everyone else that was there, none of whom were in the retail section of the store.
That was the astonishing thing--the actual amount of space given to the store (and, thus, the amount of stuff they carried to sell) versus the seemingly endless amount of space given over to either empty tables for gaming or computer consoles was striking.
So, the only things I ever bought from a Wizards store were KODT comic books--because they were the only place I'd found that actually stocked them. And I never ran or played a game there...and found other places to shop for most of the stuff I wanted. So, no matter how cool it looked, I only went to the Wizards location in the U-District three times...and I was disappointed but not surprised when I went back to the Wizards store in the U-District for what would have been the fourth time...only to find it emptied out and locked up.
...and, if I think about the time when I bought the most gaming stuff, ever...it was when there was a Games & Gizmos location six blocks from the Record Store I helped manage. It was corporate and sterile--but it was nearby and decently stocked. I'd go there on my lunch hour and time afte time, I'd come back with a sourcebook or a new game...or, just as often, a trivia/board game.
And, after they closed, although I didn't realize it until I looked back at it...it might have been a few years before I bought any RPG related product. (Instead, I bought more Xbox, and later Wii, stuff from Best Buy or Amazon.) This is how I missed out on 3.x (and how confused I am by jumping back in w/4e.)
You know what's gotten me back into buying stuff? Seeing the low price for the 4e Core Rulebooks from Amazon and being willing to spend that much to satisfy my curiosity. It's reawakened my long dormant interest in gaming--and I suddenly find myself buying a bunch of books for a bunch of systems...some indy PDFs, some from FLGS, some from Barnes & Noble, some from Amazon.
...and my most recent delve into a local FLGS? I felt creepy and old in there...and the shopping experience was as crustily eccentric as most of us have experienced (with my interaction with the proprietor lacking any attempt at answering my purchase-centric questions and more along the lines of an annoying NPC tavern encounter)...and I recognized that I was paying full mark-up for something I might have been able to get cheaper, if I could wait a few days for it to be shipped to me.
...but, when you've got that fever...you want convenience and access, and you're willing to pay more for it.
pg--seattle
PS--Reflections after reading a recent gamersgambit post: Again, I keep going back to my experience in indy-music retail and trying to draw some real world experience in this situation.
Music retail works at around 30-35% mark-up...but, with the lack of volume in the hobby/game industry, I can see where you'd want to expect a 50% mark-up to off-set your overhead.
However, you don't want to get into the trap of expecting EVERY PRODUCT to make you its maximum-mark-up...as if that level of mark-up can make up for low volume (and I'm certain you're aware of that.) That's top down thinking--that's what YOU need (or what you've convinced yourself you need) and consumers don't give a damn what YOU need. You have to figure out how you can give consumers what THEY need in a way that makes it work for you. Start thinking about things that way first--what they want from you and how you can give it to them, rather than always thinking about what you need from them and how they should give it to you.
As anyone who has watched Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares knows...you can fall into an awful trap if you see your volume of sales become sluggish and hope to make up for that with higher prices. It seems logical--but it will kill a business.
Perhaps you can't compete, across the board, with Big Box or On-Line retailers on price--but in the short term, you can still use you specific item-based prices aggressively in order to generate traffic. In fact, you HAVE to. Telling everyone that you're offering a good price on a desired item for a limited time is a time-honored traditional way of generating traffic--and once you've got them in the store, then you use your superior service and product knowledge to push full-priced add-on sales...or, better yet, be ready by self-bundling products related to what you've put on sale in a point-of-purchase area.
PPS--Gamesgambit, you sound like you're doing well by the customers that you have...you may be getting all of the business you can from your current customer base. Maybe the problem isn't the size of the piece of pie that you're being served--maybe the problem is the size of the pie.
What can you do, other than simply "continuing to exist", to increase the size of your potential market? How can you get people into gaming (or, perhaps just as importantly, BACK into gaming...)???
And recognize that I don't necessarily mean "how do you get the kids to put down their DS's and pick up some dice?"--in fact, I think going the OTHER way is the way to go... How do you sell tabletop RPGing as a social activity
enjoyed by college students or adults?
Rather than spinning it as something that kids do--knowing that everything that kids do, kids eventually grow out of--and back to something that smart, artistic, social adults find enjoyment in doing (and spending money on)???
I think there's a segment on your local "PM Magazine"-style tv show on that, if you can manage it, just waiting to be filmed in your store...and that's valuable free advertising right there.
