Silver Spring Hobby & Games Closes Its Doors

[Mark CMG]

We lost another Brick and Mortar location earlier this week as Milwaukee game store Silver Spring Hobby & Games closed its doors. How's the situation for B&M stores in your area over the last few years?

http://www.virtualmagic.net/

 

[Glyfair]

We lost another Brick and Mortar location earlier this week as Milwaukee game store Silver Spring Hobby & Games closed its doors. How's the situation for B&M stores in your area over the last few years?

http://www.virtualmagic.net/

As it turns out, a favorite book/game store in Delaware announced it was going out of business last week, Between Books. Yesterday the local paper even had a story covering it.

While there is another game store further south, I had a good relationship with the owner, Greg, and it is a shame he couldn't make it work. He struggled to survive in the 90's when Borders and Barnes & Noble came into the area. He made it through that, but couldn't manage to survive the combination of a bad economy and the move to digital.

I have yet to make it down to pay my respects, but I fully intend to make the journey.

 

[DnD_Dad]

The only ones near me is Leisure Hours hobbies and the Wandering Dragon Game Shoppe. Leisure Hours has been around forever, but has declined greatly in the past years to carry the bare minimum if gaming goods and somehow they only hire comic book guys from the Simpsons. The Wandering Dragon is only a few years old and it is fantastic. It's like they took Gamesplus(or Mecca as I like to call it,) and gave it a fresh-friendly family feel to it. The owners are great and they really respect their customers. I would say Gamesplus is by me, but really it's about an hour and a half away. I love that store and I have nothing but great things to say about it. Can't wait to see everyone there in a few weeks.

 

[Michael Webster]

I'm lucky in that I live in an area with ample of B&M stores. However, for every two that close, only one opens up. Which is both good and bad. The stores that are still open work pretty hard to keep their customers coming back, but they can't compete with the prices online.

I try and encourage people to visit your FLGS and buy something from time to time, even if it's just dice. Everyone needs more dice! I give them the example of I, who used to be a WotC Delegate and used to get a lot of my gaming stuff 'free' (still had to work for it), but still would buy stuff at the FLGS (usually other companies games I was interested in), then they could too.

 

[Morrus]

We lost another Brick and Mortar location earlier this week as Milwaukee game store Silver Spring Hobby & Games closed its doors. How's the situation for B&M stores in your area over the last few years?

There hasn't been one. The closest, I believe, is London. B&M stores simply are not, and never have been, part of my gaming landscape in any capacity.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Yellow Submarine Nagoya is my B&M store.

They sell about 30% magic, 10% boardgames and 60% Japanese trading card games I know next to nothing about. D&D is a sliver, though they have a nice dice selection, not great but nice.

We play Lair Assaults and an ongoing campaign there on most Sundays and I have gotten my last three Dungeon command boxes there, plus a WOTC boardgame, and a few dice. I spend what I can there, but D&D sales are NOT keeping them afloat.

 

[ShadowDenizen]

The Boston area has lost quite a few stores over the years, but there's still a solid staple fortunately.

Just this week, I hit both "Compleat Strategist" and "Pandemonium Books", and was able to find everything I needed for the Marvel Super Heroes RPG, Ars Magica, and CoC..

The former is in a hard-to-find location within a crowded metro area, and is TINY, to boot, but stocks a decent amount of obscure stuff both old and new. The latter is centrally located, with ample space, but it seems like their stock in Board-Games and RPGs has dwindled to allow for more Magic: The Gathering stock.

 

[Stormonu]

Since 2005, the the three FLGS's in my area dried up. Two were actually the same business with different owners.

There hasn't been a decent FLGS in the area since the 3E bust. Wizkids and GW managed to carry one shop about 6 months past the decline of 3E, but when Wizkids went belly up and GW prices kept going up, the shop closed. Their customer relations didn't help them either - there were several (large), unpaid, unclaimed GW orders when the shop closed.

Likewise, the RPG section at the local B&M has been shrinking, to the point it's invisible among the video game guides that are stacked on the same shelf.

These days, its just easier for me to order off the game maker's web site or Amazon. I've given up on game stores after a rash of bad customer experiences.

 

[Michael Webster]

I've given up on game stores after a rash of bad customer experiences.

Have you approached the stores management? Let them know they're losing a customer because of those experiences?

I ask this because locally people complain about one of the local game stores to me all the time. When I brought these complaints to the management of that store, it was the first they heard of it. They can't fix what they don't know about.

 

[Morrus]

Have you approached the stores management? Let them know they're losing a customer because of those experiences?

I ask this because locally people complain about one of the local game stores to me all the time. When I brought these complaints to the management of that store, it was the first they heard of it. They can't fix what they don't know about.

Depends. What do they pay for business advice?