What's Bugging You Today? Volume 3, Part 1

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Originally Posted by Some Stupid Japanese Name

Anyway, It's been two hours since I opened and they were the first people to walk in the door.
They didn't buy anything.

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Thanks for your posts about the store. It makes me feel a lot better about dropping my plans to open up my own shop. Although it's not like I've done anything else worth while but at least I'm not in debt.

It really sucks but I just don't see a future for small time game shops unless it's like a couple I know of around here who make enough to keep the doors open but no way they'd still be around if the owner's spouses didn't bring home the bacon.

I think a cool arcade with a liquor license in a nice part of town is about the only video game business I would want to run. There are a few esports places that do well too, but that crowd brings its own problems.

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Originally Posted by Timber

Thanks for your posts about the store. It makes me feel a lot better about dropping my plans to open up my own shop. Although it's not like I've done anything else worth while but at least I'm not in debt.

It really sucks but I just don't see a future for small time game shops unless it's like a couple I know of around here who make enough to keep the doors open but no way they'd still be around if the owner's spouses didn't bring home the bacon.

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There's one about 30 minutes from me that has been in business for ages, and seems to be doing well. They seem pretty well known though, had their own forums for awhile. Digital Press is it's name. They do all kinds of shit too, tournaments pretty regularly for all kinds of games, and the last weekend in every month they do a thing called NAVA. Basically they have some kind of tournament, and let people bring in shit to set up little stands if you will to sell. It seems to keep traffic coming in the door. Though again they're in Northern NJ which has a pretty high population density so that could be helping them, combined with how long they've been around and shit. I don't know, maybe they're the exception to the rule kind of thing.

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Originally Posted by Josh

ONLY AMERICANS EAT DUCK SAUCE!

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Your mom eats dick sauce.

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Originally Posted by Timber

Thanks for your posts about the store. It makes me feel a lot better about dropping my plans to open up my own shop. Although it's not like I've done anything else worth while but at least I'm not in debt.

It really sucks but I just don't see a future for small time game shops unless it's like a couple I know of around here who make enough to keep the doors open but no way they'd still be around if the owner's spouses didn't bring home the bacon.

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My, what a thoughtful, supportive post.

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Originally Posted by Shin Johnpv

There's one about 30 minutes from me that has been in business for ages, and seems to be doing well. They seem pretty well known though, had their own forums for awhile. Digital Press is it's name. They do all kinds of shit too, tournaments pretty regularly for all kinds of games, and the last weekend in every month they do a thing called NAVA. Basically they have some kind of tournament, and let people bring in shit to set up little stands if you will to sell. It seems to keep traffic coming in the door. Though again they're in Northern NJ which has a pretty high population density so that could be helping them, combined with how long they've been around and shit. I don't know, maybe they're the exception to the rule kind of thing.

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I moved to NJ 6 years ago and have never been to DP. I need to stop by one of these days.

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Originally Posted by Shin Johnpv

There's one about 30 minutes from me that has been in business for ages, and seems to be doing well. They seem pretty well known though, had their own forums for awhile. Digital Press is it's name. They do all kinds of shit too, tournaments pretty regularly for all kinds of games, and the last weekend in every month they do a thing called NAVA. Basically they have some kind of tournament, and let people bring in shit to set up little stands if you will to sell. It seems to keep traffic coming in the door. Though again they're in Northern NJ which has a pretty high population density so that could be helping them, combined with how long they've been around and shit. I don't know, maybe they're the exception to the rule kind of thing.

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I've seen that too. Having game nights etc. It's all about getting the foot traffic and making people feel like the store is part of their life again.

I checked recently, and DP forums are still online, but they've died down a lot.

Similar to TNL then.

While I wouldn't pose my bad business as the inevitable outcome for ALL game stores, it's certainly more likely to end up like this than not. Hindsight being what it is, there are many factors I should have taken into consideration.
1) Location.
There are 3 other Game Craze locations within 25 minutes of me. One to the North, one South, one North East. It's too congested already.
As I've said before, I'm right on the dividing line of more well to do people on the West, and more poor to the East. The Westerners don't come East to shop. The Easterners don't have any money to shop with. I just had a girl in here wanting to buy GTA V, but she was $10 short. She must have mentioned how badly she wanted that game, but $10 short about a dozen times. As if maybe if she said it enough I'd just let her have it for what she had. I'm in a plaza that's been dead since Walmart opened less than a mile up the road.

2) Name.
My partner opened his first store 22 years ago. At that time, on top of the nationals like Electronics Boutique, Babbages, and Software Etc (we never had any funco's around here) that were in each of the three leading malls in the area, there were 3 or 4 indy shops. The largest one was HO/RC Hobbies. The dude that owned that place was the scumbaggiest Simpsons comic book guy archtype you could imagine. Paid you nothing for your stuff, charged almost as much for used shit (no matter how awful the condition) as he did new, and if you bought a defective item good luck arguing that you didn't break it. Also, he didn't seem to care much about games. His passion was RC stuff, he just got into games because of how popular they got in the NES era. So then this 21 year old kid opens a store called Game Craze. He's a acne pock marked face nerd. You walk into his shop and everything is orderly. He talks about what he likes passionately. His prices on both sides of a transaction are fair. I start dropping by on my lunch hour just to chill and talk. He eventually opens another store. And another. Then his used car salesman (realtor actually, but that doesn't paint the type of personality he is as well as used car salesman does) uncle, who's about to lose everything because reasons, talks him into doing a franchise like deal. He opens some stores in the outer Rochester area. Two of the three stores near me are his. This is the early 2000s. PS2 era is strong. It's almost impossible to not be making money in the games business right now. Which is great because this dick knows nothing about games or its business. His stores are always the ones at the bottom of the list of 'what game craze stores do you like?" His shitty business practices have tainted the brand in this area. I should never have let my partner back down from his promise of letting me choose the name.

3)Timing
When I was at the flea market, I was working 4 days a week in a store somewhere. That gave me 3 days to travel from Buffalo to Syracuse hitting every game store, thrift, consignment, department store clearance, whatever, to find product to flip. I mentioned it before, but I didn't get too many trades at the Flea. It was an indoor flea, housed inside an old Ames department store. My store was at the back of it. Anyone that had stuff to sell had to pass several hundred other vendors maybe willing to buy the stuff before the person even got to where I was. Most of my stock came from whatever I could find in those three days, and thankfully I never had too much trouble finding shit.
All of a sudden it's August 2014 and I'm opening a legit store. The writing for indy brick and mortar has already been on the wall for a few years. New sales are trending downward and though vintage has seen a huge boom, the trades just aren't coming in like they used to. It doesn't matter how much NES TAITO GAME sells for when you never get any in anymore.
The initial idea was that I'd work the store to get it on its feet (a few months at most), then find some employees. It didn't take long to figure out that this place wasn't going to be able to support ANY employees, let alone turn enough of a profit for me to live. Or any profit. Not only do I have very few trade ins, I also don't have the time to go hunting like I used to. And since smartphones and places like CAG and Slickdeals are far more prevalent these days, by all indications, there's not much left to find anyway. Everyone is into the game reselling cottage industry. That's the final, and most important issue.

4) Turnover of Inventory
Or, lack of it. People lose interest in stopping by when they're met with the same 40 or so titles that they looked at the last three times they stopped. I don't get the trade ins, I can't find stuff outside of here because I'm stuck here 24/7, and even if I were, there's nothing to find. My inventory is pathetic. Yet I hear from several travelling nerds that it's one of the most diverse in the Rochester area. This city is just run dry of product. It's all either sitting on people's $20 Walmart shelves or being put on eBay.
A lot of the stores that I hear are doing well are doing so because they've been around for a while already. Or they have diversified into table top. And novelties. And licensed merch. If you don't already have a steady stream of trade ins, it's about impossible to create one at this point in time. It's too easy for people to flip their stuff themselves. But if you've been around for a while, grown a loyal customer base that doesn't mind getting a little less for their stuff by trading it to you because they're using it to get stuff they want from you anyway, then you're probably doing fine.

Dunlap said something in chat something like I needed something to draw people in here. This entire time I thought I had that something. Me.
Aside from how you may feel about me on the internet, I offer something no other game store in the area does. My stupid OCD-like attention to detail.
I don't exaggerate when I say I'll spend 30 minutes taking an NES controller apart, scrubbing all its components, putting it back together, and fully testing it (again) before putting it out for sale. All for a price equal to or (usually) less than what the other guys are charging for it. My systems are always less expensive, and in far greater condition than what anyone else around here sells. I don't sell discs in generic cases. I don't put out scratched discs. I don't put price stickers on labels or cardboard boxes. I test every system and accessory before it goes out for sale. I replace worn thumbsticks with new ones. I replace analogs that are getting loose. I replace microswitches that don't feel right.
I SHOULD be charging a premium for this shit. But I don't. I can't! Even though I do so much more for my customers than anyone else and charge less for it, I still can't get the $40 an hour sales I need to fucking break even.
I thought there'd be enough people in the area that once they found a place like mine existed, I'd have their total loyalty. When I first stepped into Game Craze 21 years ago, I never seriously shopped at another game store again. I had no need to.
I thought I could replicate that, and improve on it, and become a phenomenon.
I was wrong. People don't care about higher quality for less. They just care about the less. There's a piece of shit second hand store that will take PS2s that are beat to shit, have generic controllers, and don't read blue discs and sell them all day long for $40 as is. Takes forever for my $50 one that has been professionally manicured and comes with official accessories and three month warranty.

Anyway. That's that.