Passion and Business (Tradecraft)

If game store owners could run their businesses on passion, good intentions, and love of games alone, we most certainly would. Believe me, many of us have tried. Outspoken game store owners are told they're destroying the hobby when they encourage others to run their store by the numbers, profitably. They're told this by other store owners mostly, future ex store owners to be sure, because passion doesn't cut it alone. 

If you want to see passion alone, read the Designers & Dragons series and you'll see the pattern that passionate game designers with no business sense are doomed to the pages of an obscure series like this one, relegated to wistful conversations about gamer childhoods. The winners, those that survived to make it to today, were able to match their passion with business acumen. It's no different with running a game store. 

The margin of error is too slim for passion alone and as you expand, the complexity of running a store is well beyond the capabilities of the average person's ability to manage their personal finances. New tools and techniques are needed and you will not receive them from your distributor or publishers, who are intent that you buy-buy-buy constantly, with carefully constructed finance systems that insulate them from the enormous churn of failing stores, estimated to be as high as 25% a year. Of course we have no real data nor even a definition of "store," to show how backwards we are.

The desire to reduce this churn is why some of us give talks on business management at trade shows, in hopes to reduce the churn. Although the number of such stores attending trade show seminars is certainly growing, it's probably a bit like preaching to the choir, perhaps the top 10% or so of store owners attending. Those are just people receptive to advice. Most of the advice I give falls on deaf ears, because it doesn't match the idealized nature of a game store in the future owners mind. "But if I don't have a lot of money, I can still do this, right?" Well, no. You can't. Money would be a barrier to entry in most fields, but not this one. They proceed anyway and join the 25%.

So you don't become a professional retailer because you lost your passion, you do it because you want to survive and prosper at a level beyond "buy a job" status. Perhaps you want to own a home one day or get married or have children or just take vacations. In this trade, that often makes you a sell out, a money grubber, or the worst accusation of all in a hobby that runs on geek credibility, an imposter. And you'll likely suffer from imposter syndrome for a good long time, probably until you get crusty and stop caring about the opinions of others. May you acquire crust with great alacrity. 

Vacation and WPN Article

I've been on vacation, so I haven't written much, with my usual level of rantiness reserved for myself, rather than expressed outward. Vacations are great to stress test the business, watching the rubber hit the road when it comes to policies and procedures. In my case, it became crystal clear what needed doing by the second week ... but with three weeks to go, I've got to put a pin in that and revisit it when I return.

My revelation was about the precarious state of the business after expansion, and the buckling down that I personally need to do to nurse it back to better health. It's like a marathon runner that just ran 26 miles and nearly collapsed at the finish line and I'm asking him if he wouldn't mind running over and picking up a quart of milk across town. Just chill out already. That's directed at me, while my staff and my manager have been fantastic in my absence.

I've agreed to write articles for Wizards of the Coast in their Wizards Play Network series. Other game trade authors like Michael Bahr are also in the mix, and I encourage you to read them. It was infuriating to hear non retailers give retailers advice in previous WOTC articles (just keep your bathrooms clean), so I'm glad they've asked us to write for them.

My first article is When and How To Expand. I have a very good editor over there that cut this sucker down to size while keeping my "voice" intact. I think it turned out well, especially the section on motivation. In the upcoming book, I try to expand on just about every option for obtaining money for these endeavors. This is an area that I don't mind admitting I've mined pretty hard over the years. OPM is my specialty, at least at the micro level.