Support Your Local Game Store?

[Bloodstone Mage]

When we had a local gaming store, I bought miniatures there, but that was it. He catered to the Magic the Gathering and Mage Knights crowd. He was driven out of business by...

Missionaries!!! Never let your local game store owner find religion!!! You will lose your local game store!!! Walmart and Conventions are not so wickedlly evil as your missionary!!!

Hmm...that's kind of a coincidence. The guy who founded my FLGS supposedly moved to Louisiana and is a devout member of a religion now. I think he was atheist before that. I'm not sure.

The guy who founded my FLGS once worked for Wizards of the Coast for a few months before getting laid off. When he was hired, one of the things that he had to do (according to the Wizards/DCI guidelines) was to sell his shop (this violated some rule that his job had). He sold it to two friends of his, and since the lay off, he hadn't been into gaming as much.

It seems to me that gamers quit because of work, religion, school, or love.

[Cheers!]

 

[Negative Zero]

first of all, i didn't read the entire thread, so apologies if anyone else sid this before.

firstly, when i went to GenCon last year (for the first time) i was appalled at the huge lack of "Con discounts." this year, i went as a vendor and i understoood why this is so. it is DAMNED expensive to set up at a Con. so most vendors can't really afford to discount their product.

now, some of this is offset by the fact that now, with no middle man, vendors are now selling directly at MSRP and keeping the full $10 per book difference (between manufactured cost and retail) and not the $5 that they get when they use a distributor/FLGS. (of course those are random figures pulled out of my head for the sake of illustration.)

but, in an effort to increase volume of product moved, some vendors will lower thier prices below retail. this is a gamble, because it makes more sense to sell 50 units and make $10 per ($500), than to sell 75 usits and make $5 per ($375). after all, they will have to pay to ship all that product back home, and the less they have to ship, the better.

... My local store (I'm friends with the owners) gets really upset with publishers who offer special deals at Cons. ...

now addressing this specific comment. i don't get it. isn't all of this the whole point of capitalism? how does the owner of the store think he is obligated to receive better treatment than the publisher gives to himself? just seems odd to me.

off to read the thread now ...

~NegZ

 

[Mucknuggle]

I buy at the cheapest price (which is usually the local game store, but it isn't really local) because I am limited with $ (I'm a student). Amazon has some GREAT sales sometimes, so I might choose that, but my gaming store also has crazy prices. You know that BESM d20 book that's $30 US? Well, retail is supposed to be $45 Canadian, but my store is selling it for fricking $36 Canadian. That's sooo cheap.

Anyway, the store is so far away and I don't usually buy gaming products unless I really want them (right now I just bought the Dragonlance Campaign Setting, Age of Mortals supplement and am seriously considering spending more on BESM d20 LE ($90 Canadian!!!), Warcraft d20 and Arcana Unearthed).

BTW my store has an online store and ships stuff worldwide. Check em out at www.levalet.com !

 

[MikeWilliams]

We sell our products for full MSRP at game conventions. In our opinion, it's called MSRP for a reason. If we offer a 10% discount on, say, the 30 dollar Earthdawn core rulebook, then what we're saying is that the book is actually worth 27 dollars rather than 30. Hence, it's in our best interest to maintain the 30 dollar price point. That being said, marketing by adding value to a purchase - like WotC's book bag offer - is something that I think can incrase convention sales without harming the perception of the product's value. Actually, when done right the perception of value is increased. Also, with promotional items, there are also ways that a manufacturer can get a FLGS involved in the marketing push.

 

[Maraxle]

For me personally, it's really a tough call. On one hand, I really like to support the small businessperson instead of a faceless corporate entity. I respect the people that have the guts to put it on the line and start their own business. I also like the idea of keeping my neighbors in business instead of driving Amazon's stock price up by one billionth of a percent.

On the other hand, I live in a capitalist society. Businesses need to compete on their own merits and do what they can to stay competitive. If the business model isn't working, they need to evolve. My FLGS seems to be trying to do that. They have started carrying a lot more used gaming materials, installed a soda machine near the game table, and carry a variety of board and card games. I still think they'll need to go further to be able to compete with that ~30% Amazon discount, but at least they're making an effort.

Currently, most of my gaming purchases are made online, but if they continue to evolve, their share will continue to increase. Some sort of discount or rewards card would help. Or even the occasional special, like buy the DMG and get a free d20. Or a free workshop on painting minis (you buy the minis and paint, of course). If you can't beat them on price, add value to your products.

 

[JoeGKushner]

I love Games Plus for its wide selection but the fact that as a regular customer whose brought five-ten people in over the years, the fact that the frequent discount card isn't even 10% doesn't haunt me too much. I usually buy a few paints, brushes and miniatures there now and save the larger book purchases for Books a Million although if I see something that I 'have' to have, I have no problem popping the money down for it.

 

[fl8m]

I usually buy my stuff wherever i can get it, the biggest game store in the area went out of buisness so i'm left without a local game store to support.

 

[CarlZog]

Everybody seems to be talking about how buying at the con hurts the local shop, but nobody has mentioned who you support by buying at the con.

Exhibitors at GenCon (and smaller local conventions) are helping to foot a big piece of the bill for the cost of the convention. So if you don't want to buy anything at GenCon, consider paying two or three times the current rate for your badge instead.

CZ

 

[MUKid]

Re: Re: Support Your Local Game Store?

now addressing this specific comment. i don't get it. isn't all of this the whole point of capitalism? how does the owner of the store think he is obligated to receive better treatment than the publisher gives to himself? just seems odd to me.

You're right, it is the point of capitalism, and if the publisher were in competition with the game store, they should obviously sell it for as low a profit as they can stand. But the situation is complicated when the publisher depends on the game store to move their product. By undercutting the store, and thus stealing sales from the store, they are denying profit to the store. And if the store is denied enough profit, they go out of business. If all the game stores went out of business, there's no way that someplace like Amazon would make up for all the lost sales, and many, many small press publishers (who don't get picked up by Amazon) would probably go under.

An oft-forgotten player here is the distributor as well. Distributors (like Alliance, here in the Midwest) make money for the service of getting the product from the publisher to the store. Your FLGS doesn't just call up, say, Malhavoc and order six copies of Arcana Unearthed. Rather, they call the Alliance people, who have it to them within a day or two. This helps the publisher get their product into all the stores the distributor does business with, as well as help the retailer by providing one-stop shopping for all the products they carry (well, most of them).

So the problem, as you see, with selling stuff at Cons for cheap is that people go to Cons to shop, and they don't spend their money locally. This hurts the store as well as the distributor, which could possibly hurt gaming in general -- something that none of us probably want. One only has to observe all the tales here of various shops going out of business (it's happened around here several times) to realize that this isn't exactly a sure-fire market, and stores often eat or starve based on small changes in the sales environment.

This sounds like I'm making the point that you should never buy at Conventions, but again, I'm not convinced the lost sales matter that much to a retail store. BUT, the point that I'd like to make is this -- is it worth it to save $5 and have that cool new d20 book on the day it releases at GenCon, or could you spend the $5 extra, wait four extra days, and help out your local store?

Or, on buying from Amazon (which bugs me more), let's say you save 30% to buy D&D 3.5 -- you just saved $27. Is it worth $27 to have a local place where you can go and browse and make impulse buys? And don't forget that you can't get a book like A Magical Medieval Society or From Stone to Steel on Amazon -- if those publishers were totally reliant on Amazon, they simply wouldn't exist.

It's all about weighing costs. If you can save $120 a year -- $10 a month -- from ordering online, is it worth $120 to keep your local store open?

Still just curious about what everyone else thinks -- I'm not trying to preach or get up on a soapbox or anything, and I'm still not sure what my own opinion is.

 

[MUKid]

Everybody seems to be talking about how buying at the con hurts the local shop, but nobody has mentioned who you support by buying at the con.

Exhibitors at GenCon (and smaller local conventions) are helping to foot a big piece of the bill for the cost of the convention. So if you don't want to buy anything at GenCon, consider paying two or three times the current rate for your badge instead.

CZ

Oooo, good point. If I were a debating man (which I obviously am) I'd say that as long as the product sells somewhere, the publisher gets money. If going to the con means that the publisher generates interest in the product, which then sells at greater numbers at game stores, then the convention is like advertising, and is profitable to the publisher in the long run.

You might argue that unless the publisher sells product at the Con, then the interest generated won't last until the customer gets back to the store. Well, if that's the case, why not let the customer write down his/her local store, and the publisher sends a check for 10% of the purchase to the local store?