Behind the Counter
Owning a game store is fun, and I enjoy it. But, when you put your family’s financial stability and safety on the line, it is best to know that ‘is’ what you are doing. I don’t guess I really knew that, but I would find out!
Behind the Retail Counter: Marcus King, owner of Titan Games
I have been thinking a bit of my history owning a game store. And, how ill prepared I was for the challenges of it all. Decisions like “who to hire” and “where to advertise” seem simple, but they have long term effects on a business. Those decisions, however, I was fairly prepared to face. Or at least, I knew that they would be there to be faced. There would come a decision I had no idea I would have to make!! We’ll get to that in a second.....
I think it adversely effected my moral compass when I went through a bankruptcy a few years ago. For a while, I didn’t consider myself a very honest or likeable person.
What happened? After taking tens of thousands of dollars of orders from a group of people in Indonesia, the platinum card charge backs began - and it was a mess. We had taken just about $65,000 in orders. Of course, we had also spent that money on orders, payroll, rent, etc. So, when the charge backs began (A charge back is when a persons credit card is used fraudulently, and the money comes back out of your account), and the rubber checks bounced (our checks became rubber because we made large purchases based on those big deposits - but by the time the check went to the bank, the chargebacks had zeroed out our accounts) we ended up overdrawn by an enormous amount. (In this instance, the people in Indonesia were using the platinum cards of people who had been recently deceased, to buy merchandise from online stores, like mine - which they could then sell at 100% profit, since they were never going to pay for the merchandise at all).
We talked the credit card companies into allowing us to pay back about half of the fraudulent charges by continuing to do business and accept cards - with those charges not be deposited into our account - but used to pay off the other charge-backs we still needed to pay back. (We had already paid about half of the charge backs off when they took what was left in our account -out). We tightened our belts, and asked our trusted and valued employee’s to help by taking small pay cuts, and reduced hours. Of our 6 full time employee’s, we subsequently found that 4 of them were stealing from us, because they felt we were screwing them over).
The complications of not knowing a whole lot about business, getting ripped off by the Indonesian crooks, and ambushed by our employees resulted in our business closing, my wife and I filing bankruptcy, losing our vehicles and our home, and having to start over. The stress was unimaginable. Though I had done some things in the US Army I considered a true test of my mettle, I had never been prepared for the decision which was laying before me:
Hamburger helper for dinner this week, or new shoes for my son - cause we could not afford both. If we bought the meat for the pot, we could not afford shoes. If we bought shoes, we had to eat PBJ’s or, maybe, Mac & Cheese. And, that was the decision I was not prepared to make when I opened my store: Meat for the pot, or shoes for the child - we can’t do both.
This was 2000, or 2001, the years have blurred the memory a bit, but I remember the feeling it gave me. Rage and Shame. I had done this to my family by not being more adept at business, by allowing a bit of greed to cloud my judgement on the orders coming from Indonesia. We had checked with the credit card processor about how to tell if the orders were legit, but were told that if the order cleared, and you got an authorization number, there was nothing to worry about. That was obviously bad advice. I had decided to take those $5,000 to $8,000 orders every day from the same address - and was loving the money it was putting into our bank account.
To complicate matters, I had just bought “Titan Games” from a fellow in Savoy, Illinois - with a promissory note for $100K+, and my business partners HOUSE was the collateral. If I were to reneg on that debt, my best friend would lose his home, which was paid off - and where he lived with his ailing mother, his fiancee’ and their autistic son.
Yeah, the stress was killer. For about 6 months, I thought about suicide every single day, and wished someone would do me the favor of hitting me with a bus. I felt trapped. And ashamed.
In retrospect, I should have negotiated with my landlord about laying off 6 months of rent, and letting me get back on my feet. I should have cut my staff, not just asked for their help. I should have worked 80 hour weeks and dug out of that hole, but - I was fairly inexperienced. Naive. I now realize I could have made a LOT of those decisions better, and saved my business in the process. But, too soon old, so late smart.
We closed BC Hobby, sold off what we could, and put the rest into my Dads pole barn. Lost everything except the Titan Games inventory in the bankruptcy (TitanGames was a separate company, and as I said, I had a partner in it).
Over the next two years, I would indeed be working 80 hour weeks, doing conventions, watching back sales lists for good deals and liquidations from various sources, selling on our website, ebay, amazon, yahoo - and making special deals with anyone who would work with us. After two years of working 7 days a week, we finally reopened a new store, and moved the business out of my dads pole barn, our apartment, and 2 storage units - and under one roof.
The new store? It was a mess. Titan Games retail store sucked. It sucked so bad I once had a publisher stop by on his way from Chicago to Detroit, and when he saw our store, he asked that we not display his product in our store. Now, that sounds harsh, I know - but, it really was a huge help in focusing me.
At that time, we were “the worst game store I had ever been in”. And, I kid you not. Our shelves were made of 2x4's and damaged sheets of ply wood (we could buy at 75% off, and build ourselves). My desk was a bookcase, laid on it’s side, on top of a beat up folding table, which had no legs, and was held up by 12 milk crates I had “acquired” behind a gas station. Back then, we had to make decisions like “pay the rent, or buy a TV” (cause we owned almost nothing). It took 3 years to make the shop look great, and on the way were went from “Crappy” to “awful” to “bad” to “eh!” to “Not to bad” to “almost okay” to “Okay” - you get the idea. We refixtured the store by hook or by crook, often finding displays that were abandoned, and buying mis/matched junk at dollar store closings, a Kmart refit, and anywhere else we could.
But, my ex-wife and I put everything into it, and I do mean everything. Our kids had to help too, cause we couldn’t afford to pay people to help us. My daughters came home from school, and pulled orders, cleaned old video games, waited on customers. This was pretty much their lot in life for 2 years, before I could start to even pay them a little bit. This is one of those things I really regret. In retrospect, maybe I should just have taken a job as a welder or truck driver, and let my kids be kids.
But, we did get a lot of time together as a family - even if it wasn’t family time.
Wow, I remember this time when, after our second Origins convention (or, maybe it was our first GenCon?), my two daughters were so happy. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why - I had been extremely testy, and hard to please all week, we had worked and worked - and the girls had really been worked to exhaustion. When I asked what they were so gleeful about, Katie said “Cause after the last day of the con, we get to eat in a restaurant!” Which, we had not done except for conventions in at least two years. That Katie is still a joy to me, always finding the silver lining not only in rain clouds, but in hurricane winds, and sleet storms!
At the time we filed bankruptcy I owed My Game Distributor “A LOT OF MONEY” - I would post how much, but it might be in bad taste - I don’t mind sharing my numbers, but this is also someone else’s number. Lets just say it was a LOT of money. We did not screw our distributor, and they did not screw us. We continued to buy some product every week, and sold it on our website (though, we could not buy several products, as they would not sell some products to online only stores), and we always paid COD Money order, and usually it was “Plus $100" to pay on the back portion. When we started doing cons, we would occasionally pay “Plus $200" - it took about 2.5 years to pay them off. My printer (the company who did our business cards and flyers and more) was an old guy who sold his business, and I offered to either pay him “eventually” or to bankruptcy the money - he wanted to be paid - and he got every cent. My old LandLord opted to take the bankruptcy, because they are a big corporation owning many strip malls and office buildings, and it made more sense to write off the debt. But, I did try to make good with everyone who would take long, drawn out payments. That included distributors, a couple publishers, and some others. All paid off eventually - unless they opted to take the bankruptcy. I believe I paid off the last of that debt in 2006. (I did say eventually, right?)
Within those first two years, my ex and I had reached a point where most of our “old” debt was paid off (except for two huge creditors), and we had begun to become somewhat profitable. How? Well, due to several factors. My children were a BIG part of it. So was GAMA (The Game Manufacturers Association) - and the people I met at GAMA. I had gotten involved in GAMA by attending GTS (the GAMA Trade Show), then by running the Origins Auction 1 year, and had met my new business partner though that operation (Ted Wilson). We hired some good people in the coming years who really busted their butts for Titan Games. My ex and I built relationships with other retailers, with publishers, and never shirked an 80-hour work week. It was a long hard row to hoe, let me tell ya! But, finally, we had some money on hand for things like school clothes, going out to dinner, seeing a movie. That was about 3 years ago, and Titan Games & Music has continued to grow, and do pretty well (most of the time). It was nice not to have to shop for my children’s clothing at Good Will.
(Note: Nothing wrong with Good Will, I buy jeans for myself there, and like shopping there. It just made me feel terrible to have to shop for my kids school clothes there. Though, I am very thankful they were there when we needed them. I now donate all of my clothes to them when I am done with them.)
Now, I have had some introspection this week, and have been thinking about what toll all this took on me, and whether or not I am a good person. I would like to believe that I have come out the other end of this journey pretty much intact. But, I am not absolutely certain.
Looking back, a couple times when people sold me collections or brought me merchandise they wanted to sell - I was overly aggressive in my purchasing practices. My rationale was that if they took what I offered, it must have been enough to satisfy them. Other times, telling people I would pay within 30 days, then taking 60 to pay them. On particular distributor who sells me stuff regularly still teases me about paying on time now - cause for 2 or 3 years, he always got paid “Net-Whenever”. I feel bad about those decisions sometimes, and am not sure I can be called an honest person because of them. But, “Meat for the pot, or shoes for the kids” is a tough spot to be in. And, thinking back, I feel I did right by my family.
My kids love me, even admire me (or so they claim) and 2 of them still work for me, though they don’t have to. These days, Katie is one of my highest paid employees. Max, who is 13, works a few hours after school - like maybe 3 to 5 hours a week.
I hope I didn’t make too many enemies, and hope even more that I have made amends with most of those enemies I did make. If you happen to be reading this, and I have wronged you and not made it right, yet - please let me know by calling me: 269-963-3773
So, honesty. What is it, what does it mean to me? Today, when I buy a collection I ask people how much they want for their stuff. If they are asking less than half of what I would normally pay, I pay them 10-15% more than their asking price, just to be fair. Or, I split the difference - which still saves me money, and gives them more than they would have been satisfied with. If people ask me to make an offer, I tell people two things: What the true value is to the best of my knowledge, and how much I can pay for it. Often, I still buy things for 20% of what I resell it for - but I make sure the seller knows what the deal is before hand.
Honesty, integrity. I think I possess both. But, perhaps that is best left to others to judge - I am far to critical of myself. I hope to never be given the choice of “Meat for the pot, or shoes for my kids” again.
Marcus King
Titan Games - Owner
637 Capital Ave SW
Battle Creek, MI 49015
269-963-3773
