Idea - Ever wanted to own a bit of a gaming store?

[thalmin]

As a side note, a little more trivia.
Of all those companies, as far as I can tell, only Flying Buffalo (and maybe GHQ) still has the same owner.

 

[Plane Sailing]

JaccoNamori, good luck in your venture, and I hope you get useful advice from the ENworld community.

I ought to point out though that we have a policy to prevent people asking other members of the community for money, so please don't ask anyone here to sign up (after all, on the internet nobody really knows who is on the other side of the screen, right?) because that way lies thread closure etc.

Regards

 

[diaglo]

I think they came a little later.
I did forget Gamers Guild. (rpg)
And Games Workshop (boardgames)

20 years ago?

what about TSR own mini line? (edit: not just Grenadier)
or RAFM (minis)
Heritage


Role Aids (from Mayfair Games)
Harn

did you carry any of the Star Fleet Battles or Car Wars stuff?

 

[thalmin]

Doh!
I did forget RAFM (minis), and Metegames (boardgames and rpg) and Task Force.
Steve Jackson hadn't started his own company yet.
TSR had not yet started their own minis line.
Harn wasn't around yet.
How could I forget Heritage? Though they were dead when we opened, we had a lot of their figs.

Then their was Gamescience (dice) and The Armory (dice and paint) and Floquil (paints). And Berkely (battlemats).

Yeah, we carried it all.

 

[ragboy]

Selling people a small portion of your business in the way you are describing is a de facto IPO (initial public offering) and the beginning of a corporation, something.

As a corporation, you can sell shares to anyone you want. It's not an IPO. The trick is you can only sell to 'friends and family' or to 'sophisticated investors' (which basically means millionaires).

Overall, instead of taking apocryphal advice from friends and messageboards, I'd suggest you buy a book concerning forming companies in your state and then talk to a lawyer once you have some complicated questions. I've formed 10 corporations here in Texas and I always have a lawyer right there next to me to draft all the papers and make sure I'm not sticking my foot in a big pile of future litigation.

 

[Trax t'lera]

Is it alright to post Marketing survey's here or links to marketing surveys? I'm looking for a good way to reach a large section of the gaming community.

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

A friend of mine with more money than common sense wanted to open a gaming store. She asked me to kind of be her lawyer and look into a variety of issues for her while she was still in the exploring phase. After looking into what she wanted to do, the market for it and a variety of other things, I told her not to do it. I felt that opening a gaming store is a horrible idea, financially. Its such a small market in some ways and with the competition from online retailers, you are in a lot of trouble.

A better idea would be to open a place that does LAN gaming and then eventually start carrying gaming material. Of course that would likely be a larger start up costs but could be much more lucrative.

 

[Eridanis]

Is it alright to post Marketing survey's here or links to marketing surveys? I'm looking for a good way to reach a large section of the gaming community.

Shouldn't be a problem, as long as you post in the Off-Topic forum rather than General DIscussion.