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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gamersgambit" data-source="post: 4343232" data-attributes="member: 66022">That's Another Long Post You've Gotten Us IntoAnother long post... Felix sez:  JoeGKushner sez...  I am not an MA anything, first of all. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Secondly, the fact is that for all the blather about helping out small business and capital gains tax and investment and the whole nine yards you'll hear from fiscal conservatives and libertarians alike, when small business gets replaced by large conglomerates, you wind up with a shortage of options and a seriously underemployed population.  Town main streets become wastelands, anyone who wants to venture out of the corporate model of working for someone else winds up with limited options, fewer jobs are created for the young, tax rates decline in general for local communities as small businesses go out of business, which leads to dead communities.  What we're seeing the start of is the phenomenon of mining towns when the mine runs dry or one-industry-towns when the logging plant/factory/military base moves overseas or goes out of business, only on a much broader scale. Thirdly, Amazon has run at a deficit for years.  As of September 2007, their accumulated deficit stood at U.S.$1.58 billion.  They're also pretty anti-union in their practices. Fourthly, WalMart...well, I don't have to talk about WalMart.  Lots more websites than this board can tell you why they stink on ice. Korgoth Check out the Lang Law (France) and similar fixed book price laws in Europe, and analysis thereof.   The conclusion of all this is, if you have a lot of money, and are willing to take a huge loss, you can do loss leaders until such time as you drive competition out of the market, then raise your prices and/or have so much volume sales that you can make up for your crappy margin with numbers.  Yet the illusion of "price savings" to the consumer winds up being false because the economic impact on job shrinkage, tax base, underemployed and unemployed workers, strong, unified and powerful political lobbys defending your effective monopoly, and other aspects wind up costing the consumer much more in "invisible costs". DaveMage sez... Corjay comments... This idea (that we're gouging you) is somewhat flawed.  As it is, the best margin I get from anyone is 50% of cover price before shipping.  There are some products I can afford to offer at a discount and/or absolutely HAVE to, but that 50% margin is what keeps me afloat...and that 50% margin is vanishingly rare (most products are sold to me at a 35-45% margin).  The more I discount, the less I make; the less money I have for rent, utilities, employees, etcetera etcetera.  Charging cover price for a book isn't "gouging" people.   It's not like this is some sort of market where we can make up prices for things--the prices are all fixed elsewhere.  As it is, a box of Magic cards /should/ retail, at full price, for $144 and a single pack for $4 (before taxes).  With tournaments offering 5 packs for $15, I take a loss on the individual packs and if I tried to sell a Magic box for $144 people would laugh at me. Which isn't to say I don't offer any discounts--I do offer quite a few, and run sales a lot, on different items in the store.  I play a precariously balanced game between keeping inventory thin and providing depth and breadth of product/product lines.   Corjay sez... Right now, we're doing it in QuickBooks as a credit to the customer's account in the computer.  This places recordkeeping in our hands, which as has been mentioned deprives us of the ability to place the onus on the customer to keep track (and thus means that we can't make pure profit when the customer doesn't bring in their piece of paper/card/receipt/what-have-you).  I'm not a big fan of that sort of business dealing; hampered by a strong sense of ethics.  That may change as time goes on... j drakeh sez... Yeah, we bumped ours down to a 35% sale...for obvious numerical reasons. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Ian Argent We do, actually.  I'm not at work right now, so I don't know what we have in stock, but I try to keep up to date (I'm a long-time fan and GM of Shadowrun, but just because I want to buy something doesn't mean there's demand enough for me to keep old restocks in stock).  Email <a href="mailto:gamersgambit@gmail.com">gamersgambit@gmail.com</a> with whatever you need, if I don't have it in stock I can get it in 1 business day.Philotomy sez... I want to say "My work is done here." <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> I have taken to heart the suggestions on this board; and will be proceeding to implement quite a few of them (and give them to my co-owner who also owns another store--the Dragon's Den in Poughkeepsie, NY).   I'd like to add this about the "you have to provide better services" mantra.  I am eager to provide as many services as I possibly can and can afford.  However... Storyteller01 sez...  What he said is true, and the initial impetus for my post.  Frankly, I have *already* captured the dollar of the sort of people who want to play in my gaming space (there are few who come to my store to play AND buy things elsewhere; and of those few, I've been drawing them into the fold with the $5-play-fee-goes-to-store-credit model).   I give the best service I can.  I don't expect people who have never played in a gaming store & have no relation to gaming stores whatsoever to suddenly start shopping in an FLGS. As nice as that might be, I'm well aware that the only thing that'll do that is service & advertising, not posting on enworld (although that too is a form of advertising). There's no reason for them to do so.  The impetus for this post was primarily to convince those of you who *USED* to shop at FLGSes and were lured away by online and big-box pricing to remember where the game community that fostered you came from, and to support them so that the next generation of gamers like you can have the same experience.</blockquote>

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