What's It Like Being a Local Game Store (LGS) Owner / Employee?

[Card Slinger J]

Are you passionate about what you do? Is it as miserable of an experience as I've been hearing about? Are there any retail horror stories involved? I know it's incredibly difficult for tournament grinders where they're forced to work during Organized Play events without having the weekends off. Now I know the recent pandemic has made it more difficult to work in this industry especially with no real safeguards and protections to help stay afloat. While the desire to rebuild is there it's impossible for an LGS Owner / Employee to have any faith, security, and/or peace of mind knowing that their business will survive another Government Shutdown due to a COVID-19 style pandemic.

So instead of diverting from the main topic, I want to know what led you to become an LGS Owner / Employee in the first place and was it worth it in the long run or did you regret getting into this business before the pandemic? Do you have a thriving community that you're proud of supporting or are you looking for other business opportunities that you feel are more fulfilling than what you've experienced already? Does your business have a strong online presence through social media, e-commerce, eBay, etc.? What do you do for marketing / advertising in trying to attract customers and potential new players for MTG, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pokémon TCG, and similar games?

[motleyslayer]

This is a bit hard for me to say as I've never owned an LGS or worked at one. I feel though that it would be hard to work at an LGS or own one without some kind of passion for some kind of gaming or collectibles, especially with how long the hours are and profit margins probably aren't that high in most areas.I feel like a lot of smaller/"nice" stores like games stores are going to have a hard time recovering from the lockdown. A few factors I can see being people are probably going to take a while to be comfortable being in large groups again and they don't deal in "essential" services.

One of the stores in my area is probably what you'd call a typical LGS that deals in comics, sports cards, minis and TCGs. They've always kind of been more in sports cards but wanted to give people a place to play their games. I know they've recently started ebay page but don't really market a lot of their events a lot when they do run something outside of fnm.

another store in my area (which recently changed owners) has traditionally dealt with toys but has recently (past 5 years or so) has gotten into Magc as extra income). The new owners have begun advertising a lot but even the old owners provided a good facebook presence.

The third store is actually more of a pawn shop that deals in Magic because the owner is a huge fan of the game. However, they've stopped running events as much due to lack of community support. They probably had the best online presence when they did run events.

Again, I've never worked at an LGS or owned one so I could be wrong on a few things

[Card Slinger J]

It seems like most people who are passionate for gaming and collectibles who open their own LGS are usually those who lack the proper business experience in retail to operate it well enough that they can afford to pay rent to keep their landlord happy especially when you take geography into consideration. Nobody wants to walk into a store feeling like they're going to get mugged in a dark alleyway especially If there isn't as much overhead for In-Store Play or If the public restrooms are unsanitary since that creates the kind of constant gate keeping against female customers from entering the store. That's why maintaining a good public image hence the "Friendly" in "Friendly Local Game Store" is important even though most people refer to it as just a "Local Game Store" or "LGS" for short. Having a set of rules and guidelines to foster a safe public community is key to maintaining this type of business.

It's hard to manage MTG at an LGS given some of the policies that Wizards of the Coast applies to you as a store owner / employee who really only have a few avenues of making money in MTG. One being tournaments based on players expecting to get exactly what they put in to the tournament not realizing that you have to provide a judge and/or employee plus electricity, cable, and so on and obviously you have overhead on a rent as well where you're not making very much money at all from the tournaments. If somebody puts in $20 they expect to get $20 worth of product. If they put in $25 and the product is $20 like a Pre-Release Kit they're expecting $5 of bonus products and owners / employees used to get a lot more from Wizards of the Coast. These LGSs can't afford to give away their revenue as prize support because they need it in order to stay in business.

Another big thing is Food & Drink. There's a big misconception on Food & Drink that it's somehow generating a ton of income and that's absolutely not true and when you're buying a beverage regardless If it's alcoholic (even though they don't serve beer at any LGS in my vicinity) you want to stay there longer. The hard truth about running a retail business is that you don't want people to stay in your store for 6-8 hours and not buy anything. In the case with Pokémon TCG, you have parents who drop off their kids at an LGS for Pokémon League and other sanctioned events like Pre-Releases and Standard Tournaments and then when the kids get picked up by their parents they want to buy some new cards where they normally drop between $10-20 on Pokémon TCG. It's kind of like a babysitting service where the LGS sort of babysits the parents kids, they buy Pokémon TCG product, and out they go.

I guess there's one group worse than MTG players in terms of how long they stick around an LGS without paying a dime and that would be Warhammer because once they buy their set much like with how Living Card Games work then they don't buy another set for awhile. The cost of buying one set is very expensive so it's not like they're a buying a set every single time and the LGS owners / employees need cash flow. They need people to buy things every time they come to their store. So whenever the owners / employees' turnover is very low that's definitely a bad bad scenario. People can just sit at an LGS for hours and hours and not buy anything and the owners / employees are faced with the difficult decision of whether they kick them out right now or later. They can't kick them out cause then they'd get a bad review but then they're like, "Oh I'm a customer". It's a code, they're not really a customer, they didn't buy anything.

The worst case is when they buy online and then they bring it to their LGS though we're all guilty of this so it's rather a moot point I guess. In the case with card singles we often times think they make a lot of money and theoretically it can however it's a fictional way of making money but you do have to come to the general conclusion that Wizards of the Coast is now selling singles direct-to-consumer via Secret Lair so that's not good. There's still a convenience purchasing card singles from your LGS that Wizards of the Coast hasn't made a Secret Lair of that you know you're odds of receiving them in the mail is more consistent to how Wizards of the Coast has been operating on this. Sadly the profit margins for MTG singles are razor thin because the math doesn't work compared to buying booster boxes / sealed product. But then how can a owner / employee sell booster boxes / sealed product for less than $80 that a customer bought for $86 when they can't and they're going to lose customers?

Online MTG Content Creators like Tolarian Community College used to encourage players to support their Local Game Stores but later turned back on it because his own LGS wasn't able to pay him like Card Kingdom does since they're much bigger. That's a big problem and part of the issue is that If you own a LGS or work there as an employee and you don't have a really good YouTube channel to help promote yourself and your business then you're kinda screwed. That's the only reason why someone would pay you more money when they can get it cheaper from someone else online. There have been LGSs going out of business long before the pandemic, one of which I know was located at a really bad intersection on the highway that was almost impossible to get in and out of especially during construction work and another I knew of that mostly sold Force of Will TCG products which was located right behind the grocery store I work at.

[robertleva]

Here's my own little anectdote:

There is a young man (20 yrs old) who I met at FNM before all this covid bs started. Nice chap, friended him on facebook, but then the LGS closed for covid. About 6 weeks ago I saw a post on his facebook that he had opened his own LGS named "Game Fruit". Honestly I was pretty shocked because a) he was so young, and b) seems like a REALLY bad time for a new LGS to get off the ground.

I just realized yesterday the store was only a couple blocks away from home. I will stop in and buy some stuff and see how he's doing and report back. I wish him all the best and I will pray for him of course, but I have a bad feeling in my gut about this choice and I have learned to heed these instincts.

[Card Slinger J]

Seems like a lot of LGS owners are making the mistake of adopting their business model to be more like Rudy from Alpha Investments and Sports N More where they mainly just sell MTG products to customers online instead of actually providing overhead for In-Store Play to host events and allow casual players to play EDH / Commander every weekend. Customers don't want to play MTG at home, they want to play at their LGS whenever they can however with the ongoing pandemic and social distancing it's gotten a lot harder to do so. Then you have the digital market becoming more of a challenge for these LGSs to thrive in the current environment we're in right now so I would like to think there would be a solution to appeal to those who still prefer to have the Gathering aspect of Magic without being forced into playing on Arena / MTGO.

The idea of GameStop or even Target providing that niche for In-Store Play that these LGSs have difficulty maintaining with their razor thin profit margins didn't sound like a bad idea at first glance though I'm starting to wonder If it could actually work If proper moderation was involved. Of course there's the corporate aspect which I'm not too fond of since building a community through In-Store Play at an LGS is something that seems to only come on a grassroots level where as it might be hard to accomplish on a corporate level. I remember hearing rumors of public Internet Cafe's popping up within my playgroup though I don't think it's a viable solution given the hand we're dealt with right now. It's already dangerous to invest money into a gaming hobby that's heavily reliant on a physical location to even play it when there's very few alternatives that are as satisfying.

[BaronCappuccino]

I owned a gameshop from 2012 to 2016. It all happened pretty organically and wasn't the plan. I opened The Steampunk Cafe as a different take on the usually dull Victorian coffee shop, and next thing I knew, all my customers were gamers.

A friend fronted some initial Innistrad block boosters to test the draft waters, and there was some decent luck even unsanctioned. After a location upgrade six month later, it reopened and quickly moved towards sanctioned, and very quickly hit advanced tier. At that point, forever onward, I was never sure if I was a gameshop with coffee or a coffee shop with games.

For the most part, I offered Magic at near cost while making rent off sandwiches and drinks. The whole place ran more like a club with a small and really loyal customer base.

Eventually, a friend of mine was trying to open a full fledged comic and game shop, and I split off my business and just ran the coffee shop, and he moved his game shop and sublet. Then I was a coffee shop with a game shop, and things were more cut and dry.

In 2017 I got married and had a kid, eventually got a house, so I closed shop and now I'm opening a coffee roastery, off my coffee clientele. All said, it was a wild five year ride.

[Card Slinger J]

I guess the idea of running this type of business was okay but the execution of the people who ran it have been doing a terrible job because they often forget that they're running a business not just a hangout spot to socialize with their friends in public while holding up lines with customers waiting for their orders / buy lists to get processed. It also doesn't help when you have less than two co-workers managing the retail counter as If they're not expecting to be very busy when sometimes that WILL happen.

They aren't running any events at their store due to the pandemic so why should they be worried about being busy? I think there will always be a demand for Paper Magic regardless If it's competitive or casual more so with EDH / Commander. You'd be hard pressed to find casual environments for Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokémon TCG since they're more competitive based but Vanguard breaks the mold in terms of both being casual and competitive.