Measurement and Reward (Tradecraft)

The game trade retail tier is a perfect expression of measurement and reward. When you begin to measure something and reward behavior,  you skew behavior in that direction. For example, if I give a bonus to employees for upselling product, they will absolutely upsell to every customer, whether they need it or not. My goal is to sell more things, but the reality is customers are driven away by the hard sales tactic. Upsells work in some situations, but not this one. So how are retailers measured and rewarded?

Wizards of the Coast measures butts in seats and rewards stores with status and limited product. If you look at game stores failing right now, the number two reason I've seen is the lamentations that players have done this or that. Players have moved to the store across town. Players don't like Standard right now. Players don't like the new tournament format. Oh dear, players have abandoned us!

Rewarding butts in seats has turned retailers into tournament organizers. They are not graded on their sales performance. They are not held to account for dumping $145 booster boxes for a dollar over cost. It's butts in seats, so butts in seats is how many game store owners measure success. Most don't know how to retail. Most would be offended, calling me a sell out, if I told them what they needed to do to effectively retail.

Distributors measure gross. The more you buy from a game distributor, the better the discount on games. It doesn't matter what you do with that product, just so long as you bulk up to the next discount tier. This leads to dumping, of course. If I'm $1,000 from hitting my next discount tier, why not buy that $1,000 of product and flip it online at cost? Distributors measure throughput and what we get in the game trade is tremendous throughput. Then we wonder why we have rampant product devaluation. It also ties into the number one reason stores close, undercapitalization.

Why invest in inventory that's worth ten cents on the dollar if you close tomorrow? You don't need dump trucks full of soy beans in your office to be a commodity trader, you just need to know they exist out there. I see store owners trying to sell their stores with acres full of tables and a few shelves of mostly card boxes. Pass.

Being a well diversified store, one which is a proper steward of game trade products, one that introduces and demos games to new customers, that protects brand value, that invests in inventory as a long term strategy, is not rewarded by the current game trade model. You measure throughput and butts in seats and you get throughput and butts in seats. Then retailers fail in droves, confused as to why their business model failed to perform when that's what they were being incentivized to do.