One of the first things a prospective retailer must decide when they want to open their business is what KIND of store is it to be? What I mean is – will it be a hobby store, ran by the owner mostly because they love to game, and want a place to game with friends – you know, like a club house? Will it be a broad gaming store with a vast array of merchandise, and great hours, like you might find in an upscale mall? Will it be a destination store that will rely on customers making the trek to their location? Will it be something else entirely?

See, the ONE time you get to decide such things is before you sign your lease. A store that is in a high traffic mall might do well with an entirely different stock of games than a store that is 2 miles west of nowhere, which must rely on customers who come there ON PURPOSE – this is a destination store, where as the store in the mall can be a more mainstream store.

Of course, what most retailers never realize until way after they have signed their lease, and placed their initial orders with suppliers – is that they really don’t know what kind of store they will be running - just what kind of store they WANT to run.

Over the years, I have made a large sideline business of buying out closed, closing, failed, failing and otherwise unprofitable or unsuccessful stores. I have bought more than 100 such stores. (I mean buying their inventory, naturally)

Almost universally those retailers had not realized that what they WANTED their store to be, and what their CUSTOMERS had wanted or needed their store to be – were completely at odds. Only recently when I opened my second retail location for Titan Games & Music, this being my 6th game store over all spanning 24 years - And, only after having opened and either sold or closed 4 OTHER stores, and the one flagship store we have in Battle Creek – did I realize that what my store would be – was whatever my customers WANTED it to be.

This may be the one secret to success in retail game hobby shops: Being flexible and adapting to your customers needs, wants and trends. I myself never imagined I would be selling used Video Games when I opened my store here in Battle Creek. And I certainly would have argued that I would not be selling used Movies – but Video Games and DVDs are actually our top categories in terms of raw dollars of sales.

When I am discussing TYPE of store before opening, what I really means is one of four types of store that I feel most game stores will fit into, which are:

1. Game-ING store, with lots of in store events driving people to the store.
2. Destination Store, where the location may not be great, but the draw will be worth the drive.
3. Mall Store: A mall store usually has lots of the top-20% category products, and not much in terms of more obscure items. Such stores generally need to keep a high turn rate on any product they stock.
4. Long Tail Store – a store that offers such a depth of products that it need not worry about turn rate, and even if a title only sells once a year, that is considered a viable product.

Many times a store is more than one type, though the rents in Malls usually prevent much in store gaming, or deep stocking of obscure titles.

And, a destination store may also be a gaming store, where people come to play. However, gaming stores may also have very limited hours, catering very specifically to a given activity in the store – where destination stores usually have a lot of open hours in a week, to allow for people to make them a destination they can rely on being open when they get there.

ALL this comes to mind because I have two very different stores. And, I am planning for #3.

My older store is clearly a Long Tail store in many aspects. We carry video games all the way from PSP and DSI, as well as PS3 and X360 – going back to Basic Nintendo and earlier games. We stock over 40,000 comic back issues. We have nearly 10,000 music CDs in stock – and have over 500 RPG titles.

But ...

My newer store has much less space, and a far higher rent – so we have a much shorter tail, and tend to stock more like a Mall Store – though we do have late gaming 3 nights a week, so that makes us more of a Mall and Gaming store type of thing. And though we do DVDs, we have like 700 in stock. And though we do comics, we have NO back issues at all!

Success:

Has been mostly achieved by staying very flexible. When we opened we thought we would have a large number of board gamers playing weekly – but that just has not materialized. Instead, Legends of the Five Rings (by alderac entertainment group – AEG), Magic: The Gathering (by Wizards of the Coast – WotC) and Warahmmer 40,000 (or 40K if you prefer) from Games Workshop now dominates our gaming nights. We thought comics would have been huge for us, but it is a much smaller portion of our sales than we anticipated (thought Blackest Night from DC has helped) – while we never anticipated that students at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo would flock to us to sell us used text books! But, used text book buying and selling (online) is a major part of our business model now.

Comings and Goings:

I am always open to assisting other retailers by mentoring them through the opening process. However, for the next few weeks I will be very busy.

March will see us attending Marmalade Dog, the University Club (Gamers Guild) ran Game Convention on the WMU campus. As well as attending the GAMA Trade Show (GTS) in March, giving seminars on Guerilla Marketing, Buying merchandise from your customers, and doing the Entertainment Model.

I will keep up with my monthly column here, though my March Column may come at the end of GTS – cause then I will have lots of news to share.

Marcus King
Titan Games & Music
1504 West Michigan Ave, Kalamazoo, MI 49006
637 Capital Ave SW, Battle Creek, MI 49015