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What Will Become of the FLGS?
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7697033" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>The same thing that happened to the video game arcade.</p><p></p><p>In the future, if you want to make money off the geek market, you'll have to do more than distribute a product. Your brick and mortar will have to monetize successfully something that is inherent to brick and mortar. It can't simply be a distribution pathway or a middle man because the internet basically monopolizes the store as source of information and communication that any sort of retail store in any market used to serve in by making that information freely available without specialized knowledge, tools, or business relations. </p><p></p><p>Barnes & Noble survived for example by making its brick and mortar feel like a café.</p><p></p><p>I expect that in the future brick and mortars are going to have to monetize play space. </p><p></p><p>One possible route here is turning your game store into a themed bar or restaurant. One model I've been thinking of is that you pay a cover charge to enter the play space, and that cover charge acts as a voucher for buying snacks and so forth. This ensures that anyone uses your play space is a paying customer, but doesn't raise a barrier to entry so high as to make the play space undesirable. You could also offer monthy or annual membership fees that allow you to get in without paying the cover charge. I'd also ideally 'gamify' the membership model, offering a rewards program similar to what many grocery stores use. This also serves as a cover for a means of tracking which customers are being destructive and harming the store, since damage and theft to rented gaming materials is a potential large source of loses. Shoplifting traditionally is one of the things that helps kill the FLGS.</p><p></p><p>And I'm not kidding about this. I'd been thinking about this model for a while, but someone else has figured out the basics of it already. There is a bar in town that rescued the arcade in the same fashion to create a nerd themed hip meeting place for adults, and the same is planning to open up an adult gaming space. The biggest obstacle to going that route in most cases is dealing with the fact that most gaming stores are serving both an adult market and a children's market. Also they tend to lack capital, and often an owner with real business acumen.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7697033, member: 4937"] The same thing that happened to the video game arcade. In the future, if you want to make money off the geek market, you'll have to do more than distribute a product. Your brick and mortar will have to monetize successfully something that is inherent to brick and mortar. It can't simply be a distribution pathway or a middle man because the internet basically monopolizes the store as source of information and communication that any sort of retail store in any market used to serve in by making that information freely available without specialized knowledge, tools, or business relations. Barnes & Noble survived for example by making its brick and mortar feel like a café. I expect that in the future brick and mortars are going to have to monetize play space. One possible route here is turning your game store into a themed bar or restaurant. One model I've been thinking of is that you pay a cover charge to enter the play space, and that cover charge acts as a voucher for buying snacks and so forth. This ensures that anyone uses your play space is a paying customer, but doesn't raise a barrier to entry so high as to make the play space undesirable. You could also offer monthy or annual membership fees that allow you to get in without paying the cover charge. I'd also ideally 'gamify' the membership model, offering a rewards program similar to what many grocery stores use. This also serves as a cover for a means of tracking which customers are being destructive and harming the store, since damage and theft to rented gaming materials is a potential large source of loses. Shoplifting traditionally is one of the things that helps kill the FLGS. And I'm not kidding about this. I'd been thinking about this model for a while, but someone else has figured out the basics of it already. There is a bar in town that rescued the arcade in the same fashion to create a nerd themed hip meeting place for adults, and the same is planning to open up an adult gaming space. The biggest obstacle to going that route in most cases is dealing with the fact that most gaming stores are serving both an adult market and a children's market. Also they tend to lack capital, and often an owner with real business acumen. [/QUOTE]
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