Shop Early (Shop Often)

It's early November and I'm sitting on $20,000 more inventory than I normally would at this time of the year. My store is relatively full, and other than releases between now and the holidays, and some specialty orders, I'm pretty much done stocking up. If you're a consumer, or a store owner for that matter, you should shop early too, and I'll tell you why.

Port Delays. There's a three week delay at West Coast ports that will throw the game trade out of whack for the holidays. Since a lot of what we sell comes from Asia, port delays will be a holiday wild card for product availability. New products may not make it in time. Older product is likely to be in short supply.

Poor Forecasting. Game publishers have been just, absolutely, terrible this year in forecasting demand. I don't know what black magic they use for forecasting, but their mojo has eluded them in 2014. A third of our best sellers are just gone right now. Upcoming games for Tabletop Season 3 are spotty at best. Whenever I see board game holiday articles in the making, I try to insert the availability of the games being suggested. That availability is poor. The worst offenders are game companies with exclusives, but that's for another article and consumers hardly know who they are (nor should they care).

Increased Demand. The game trade is not going mainstream, despite the fears that specialty retail will soon be invaded by mass market Mongols. However, there is certainly increased demand in board games that is driving sales quite nicely. This increased demand will exacerbate our other problems. A lot of board games are made in Asia, and board games, at least for my store, are where we see really strong holidays sales. Our board game sales in December are often double a normal month, while other departments only go up 10% or so.

Online Won't Help. Internet retailers like Amazon, as well as smaller online venues get their product from the same well. Although there is talk about distributors having private reserves for some of these big online discounters, don't expect online sellers to be holding product come December. They will run out too. Our brick and mortar store has been the "last man standing" on many products this year, according to people who only buy online who don't mind mentioning we were their last resort.

So there you have it. No bitching and complaining come mid December for things you could buy now. Also, if something is coming out between now and Christmas, pre-order with a local retailer. Yes, I'm biased, but a local retailer will get at least some product, and if you pre-order, which is still pretty rare for brick and mortar, you're practically guaranteed a copy. The "Amazon screwed me on my pre-order" complaint is common during these periods with both customers as well as publishers.