What do you want us to carry?

[heath]

Erich,
I appreciate the feedback and the kind words. I totally agree that our RPG section needs major help but the problem we are seeing so far is nobody is really buying/playing it in the store and everyone already has what they need for their campaigns. I would like to expand it but I also do not want a bunch of dead inventory that sits there and collects dust so I've been offering to do custom orders for anyone wanting to buy stuff and then if enough people start buying a particular game we will start carrying it in the store. When we custom order we will try to match online prices and you of course get to support the local shop instead of a random online shop. I look forward to seeing how the RPG scene progesses and if you have anymore feedback please let me know. I'll keep and eye on the games you mentioned and see if others are asking for them.
-Heath

[chadhimes]

I was also astonished when I saw the 'game shelf' where you could rent out a game a play it.

The game shelf is free to play and demo the game in the store not a rental.

[Belirahc]

*nods* Yeah, I could not thing of a better term at the time than rent. A library reference would probably be better.

[kinga65]

Heath/Andrew,

I heard Carson City is available. Do you guys have any copies coming in? I will be buying this and Power Grid Factory Manager.

Let me know.

Thanks,
Chris

[heath]

Heath/Andrew,

I heard Carson City is available. Do you guys have any copies coming in? I will be buying this and Power Grid Factory Manager.

Let me know.

Thanks,
Chris

I just checked all of our distributors and no word on carson city from them. We should have factory manager in stock unless somenoe else already bought it. It is sold out everywhere from what I heard.

[gamedave]

I totally agree that our RPG section needs major help but the problem we are seeing so far is nobody is really buying/playing it in the store and everyone already has what they need for their campaigns. I would like to expand it but I also do not want a bunch of dead inventory that sits there and collects dust so I've been offering to do custom orders for anyone wanting to buy stuff and then if enough people start buying a particular game we will start carrying it in the store. When we custom order we will try to match online prices and you of course get to support the local shop instead of a random online shop.

Well, from what I've seen, your RPG inventory is your first problem. It looks like you acquired a lot of unsold material from the back of somebody's warehouse. You had a number of books from D&D 3.0 Edition, for example, while D&D is now two editions past that. There are still gamers playing 3.0, but they likely already have any books from that edition they would want. If you want to sell books at new prices, you'll have to carry new books. But that creates a lot of problems for a brick & mortar retailer.

D&D is pretty much the only game you can count on for a large number of potential customers, but it's tough for a b&m to compete with online outfits. D&D, unlike pretty much every other RPG on the market, releases products on a consistent schedule, with products announced months ahead of time, and always released on time, with a good amount of preview material on the website, and with consistently high production values and an extremely predictable format. That means customers know ahead of time exactly what they will get, and likely have already pre-ordered everything they want from Amazon.com. Which is what I do. A b&m has two basic advantages over an online retailer. The first is the opportunity to browse a product before purchase, which is largely unnecessary with D&D 4E products.

With smaller-press products (really, pretty much everyone other than WotC/D&D), the opportunity to browse is a big advantage, since the content and quality of products can be so variable. And, so are release schedules. So, a gamer may not even realize a new book has come out, or is even in production, until he or she sees it sitting on a shelf at the local game store. Which is closely related to the second advantage a b&m has, which is the ability of a knowledgeable employee to recommend a new game to a gamer, particularly the ability to physically show the recommended product, and create the opportunity for an impulse buy.

But both of these advantages basically require a fairly large stock of games, both new releases from the big guns (WotC and White Wolf, mainly), and a selection of both new and old releases from smaller companies (Atlas, Green Ronin, Mongoose, Palladium, Pinnacle, etc.). You basically need a big enough stock of games in-store to generate enough interest to justify having a big in-store stock. That obviously creates a risk that you will have a stock of unsold inventory if you can't generate enough interest.

So, the products that dominate the market (D&D 4E) are precisely the ones where a b&m retailer's advantages are smallest, and you are basically competing on price and convenience with Amazon.com, which can give 20%-40% discounts off of the cover price and free two-day shipping to your door. And the products where the b&m retailer's advantages are greatest, the smaller-press games, are precisely those games that are most difficult to sell, and most likely to become dead inventory.

I honestly don't know if there's any way out of this catch-22 situation for brick & mortar RPG retailers, which is why game shops in general are in such financial difficulties, and why Fanboy Comics dropped RPGs almost entirely.

I actually used to order most of my books through Fanboy Comics, back when they had a stock of other RPGs (used and new) and a game room. I supported the store because I felt I got good value (browsable in-store stock and play area) for the b&m premium. But they never devoted much staff or resources to promoting any particular games - I actually usually alerted their staff to an interesting new game coming out, rather than vice versa. If you had knowledgeable and enthusiastic staffers who actively promoted RPGs (demos, Game Day events, just talking up new releases or favorite older products) you might be able to drum up more business than Fanboy did. But I'm not sure there's a large enough market in Wilmington to support such an effort financially, or that the economies of the RPG industry and e-tail would allow it.

I am intrigued by the statement that you will try to match online prices. If you can actually manage that, I would probably start ordering RPGs through you, rather than Amazon.com or another retailer, but that's going to be tough. If you carried a large selection of new and old RPG releases and hosted RPG demos and other RPG events (as Fanboy periodically attempted to do), I'd probably order through you, even if you couldn't offer a discount. But that would be tough, as well.

I love RPGs, and I'd love to see a successful RPG store in Wilmington. But even if Cape Fear Games never becomes a decent RPG store, I wish you luck. I welcome a gaming store, of any kind, to the community.

[heath]

Dave,
I greatly appreciate your long and detailed post, and insights like these are priceless to me. For the most part all of our prices in store are similar to what you would find online, but you get the benefit of supporting a local shop and of course get your product right away(unless you're special ordering). RPG's are by far my greatest weakness as a shop owner as I'm from a magic the gathering/board gamer background. Right now the business plan is to get all of the website working as far as being able to buy MTG singles and board games which I think will be the majority of our business. Selling MTGO is what I've done for a living for the past 7 years and it's what I'm best at so we hope to be able to become profitable mostly through selling singles for the time being. Long term wise we want to be able to support a more broad spectrum of games and we do need help of devoted players in ways like helping do demo's for the games that we, the staff, are not as familar with. As you can imagine, a store our size has considerable startup costs so we have to make sure the games that we carry right now are going to sell somewhat well. For instance we keep expanding our line of warhammer since it has been selling so well and will continue to do so. But I do think that we should at least step it up as far as how we are displaying the books and make sure we have the new D&D books in at the minumin. The current setup does make it look as if we are not devoted to them and I hope we will be able to have more time to conentrate on getting our RPG section up to par.

Again thanks for your feedback and please let me know if you have any other ideas.
-Heath

[gamedave]

For the most part all of our prices in store are similar to what you would find online, but you get the benefit of supporting a local shop and of course get your product right away(unless you're special ordering).

Ok, for example, pre-ordering the Player's Handbook 3 through Amazon.com, I pay $23.07 with free two-day shipping to my door. The cover price is $34.95, so that's a 34% discount. Can you match (or come close to) that price? If so, I'll start ordering my RPGs through you. And, again, if you were able to carry a large in-store inventory of RPGs and hosted RPG events, I'd be willing to pay full cover price to support the store, but I don't honestly know if that's a financially supportable model (Fanboy Comics decided it wasn't).

As far as suggestions, again, I think there's a Catch-22, as the only way I can think of to drum up business for RPGs is to make the investment in stock and staff, so that you've got stuff to promote and people to promote it, but that means a risky investment in a model that's already failed, a couple of times (Fanboy Comics, Time2Game) in Wilmington. I can think of a couple of specific suggestions, though.

One is to run demos for specific RPG items you have in-stock. Fanboy used to try to run regular RPG demos on Wednesday nights, which I often ran, but they depended almost entirely on customer-volunteers (like me), which had two problems. First, the demos depended on outside personnel whose schedules Fanboy had no control over. When I wasn't running, I often tried to play, but frequently the scheduled GM had a last-minute conflict and canceled, or simply failed to show up. When I was running regularly, we usually got pretty good attendance (sometimes as many as a dozen people for a single session), but between two overseas deployments and a shifting work schedule, I had to stop running regularly, and Fanboy never seemed to be able to get anyone else to run on a regular basis. So, if you had a knowledgeable staffer running the demos, you could avoid that problem.

The second problem was that the volunteer GMs would run whatever game they were interested in running. I personally would sometimes run out-of-print games I liked, or my own home-brew RPG. Except for the annual D&D Games Day, there was never any attempt by Fanboy to make sure the games being demo'd were actually games they had in stock. So, even if the demo drummed up interest in a game, there was often little or no opportunity for Fanboy to profit. Of course, for a volunteer GM, Fanboy could hardly insist on running a particular game. Again, using a staffer to run a demo would solve that, as might asking for a volunteer to run a specific game, in addition to soliciting general demo volunteers. For example, when Atlas Games releases its latest supplement to All Flesh Must Be Eaten, you could have someone run a demo featuring that supplement the next week, with copies of the core book and the supplement in stock and prominently displayed. Even without new releases, you could feature rotating games featured with prominent in-store displays and scheduled demos, and when possible tie them into outside events (featuring horror RPGs near Halloween, sci-fi RPGs to coincide with a big sci-fi movie like Avatar, super-hero RPGs to coincide with a new comic book-based movie or a big comic book event, etc.).

That ties into my second suggestion. Fanboy never really promoted new RPG releases (other than the D&D 4E launch), certainly nowhere near the extent to which they promote comic book releases (understandable, given that comics are the core of their business). Even if you didn't carry a large inventory, I think it would be a good idea to maintain an RPG release schedule on your webpage, highlighting upcoming RPG releases (and eventually, even the ability to pre-order though the webpage), and maybe in-store displays or posters, or even just a "coming in next week" section on the white board. Anything to get people aware of all the RPGs that are out there, and get them to try something that isn't WotC or White Wolf. And, maybe, get some board and card gamers to try an RPG, and bring in some new gamers.

Outside of RPGs, an idea I've discussed with friends that I think might be a good idea would be to set up a dedicated minis painting area (you do have a lot of space in the store), with items like magnifying lamps that individual hobbyists might not have at home. You could also host minis painting demos and/or classes. The idea would be to encourage people to do their painting in the store. The more time they spend in the store, the more likely they are to look around and buy stuff you have, and, of course, when they run out of paint, or realize that the Orc Green Flesh would look really good there, or their X-Acto knife is getting dull...why, there's a whole bunch of painting supplies, right over there! And, if you have people having fun while they work on their minis in the store, you might get other folks interested in picking up the hobby.

[Lord of the Forest]

I came to the store this past weekend and I must say I was impressed. I was amazed at the board game selection that I saw (most I have not seen anywhere other than a catalog or website), and while the RPG selection was a little thin, I understand that the store is still working on getting up and going in that direction.

I visited the store today I shared the same sentiments. There's a bunch of fantastic White Wolf supplements but no sign of many of the corebooks, so I find it definately lacking. I would be overjoyed to see the RPG selection to flourish.

As for suggestions of what to carry, I'll start out by recommending MouseGuard, one of the more recent and fun games I've picked up.

[heath]

I came to the store this past weekend and I must say I was impressed. I was amazed at the board game selection that I saw (most I have not seen anywhere other than a catalog or website), and while the RPG selection was a little thin, I understand that the store is still working on getting up and going in that direction.

I visited the store today I shared the same sentiments. There's a bunch of fantastic White Wolf supplements but no sign of many of the corebooks, so I find it definately lacking. I would be overjoyed to see the RPG selection to flourish.

As for suggestions of what to carry, I'll start out by recommending MouseGuard, one of the more recent and fun games I've picked up.

Thanks for the feedback. I apologize for my ignorance but would you mind telling me where I can find a list of the core books for whitewolf? I'll go ahead and order all the core books for whitewolf and d&d. We also ordered some of the huge playmats with the hexes/squares on them. They are pretty sweet looking and should be in next week sometime.