Little House on the Prairie

I was on a walk yesterday with my five year old when we got to talking about the future. When I asked him what he wanted to do when he grew up, I prefaced it with my recommendations. A doctor? A scientist? No, he said, that's too hard. I want to work at your store like you. When I first started, I had similar sentiments. An old boss of mine fantasized about running a hardware store, and it was infectious. A retail store seemed simple, like some Little House on the Prairie episode. This so-called simplicity turned out to have two problems with it. First, it was not simple. Running a retail store in the modern age is wickedly complex. Perhaps it always was. Second, it turns out I would have been horribly bored in a Little House on the Prairie episode. Slow and easy is not my style. My dream was flawed in every way. Still, there is some truth to the slowness.

Opportunity Cost. At the strategic level of this business model is the intensely slow rate at which you succeed, fail, or worst of all, linger. Back in my IT days, I could do amazing things in 18 months. I could be heroic and then leave town like a sheriff who cleaned up the Old West. In this trade, progress is measured in years, and leases are often good yardsticks, ranging from 3-5 years or longer. We're looking at extending ours soon, so this is constantly on my mind. It's one thing to take a temporary pay cut, but it's quite another to dedicate a decade or more of your life to such a pursuit, while your previous career skills grow stale and drift into your past.

Retailers tend to measure growth in single digits and it takes ages to accumulate enough capital to make a big move, like a second store. Even then, it often takes many months or years to know if your decision was correct. This is the true nature of a "lifestyle job," it's understanding that there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Your life is the tunnel. Pick a nice tunnel. There will be no IPO or buyout and you won't be making a six figure salary while you wait.  One frightening statistic is that your chance of failure in year three (once you get over that initial hump) is the same as it is in year seven or year twelve. It just doesn't get any easier. It's not all doom and gloom, however. You do get to be your own boss, surround yourself with the things you love, meet fun and interesting people and generally enjoy yourself, but the cost is high.

Hurry Up and Wait. At the tactical level, a retail store owner finds their job is back-loaded. They do a lot of research on what to buy, spend a lot of money on presentation, such as fixtures and maintenance, and when not trying to come up with ways to make more money against ever encroaching inflation (if you're not growing, you're dying), they spend time nickel and diming their expenses into submission. The garbage bill, the telephone bill, and questioning every dollar the landlord spent on painting poles is a big part of the job. Don't get me started on the pole painting. After the stage is set, the games shelved and the boxes broken down and disposed of, the customers can come in and see how effortless our jobs are. Perhaps they'll want to quit their jobs as doctors and engineers and start a game store.

Summer Role-Playing Sales

I was crunching numbers for RPG Countdown and figured I would share our stats. These are from June until now:

Top 10 Role-Playing Sales

1. Dresden Files RPG: Volume 1
2. Pathfinder RPG: Core Rules
3. PF Advanced Player's Guide
4. Dark Sun Campaign Setting
5. D&D - Monster Manual 3
6. Pathfinder RPG: Bestiary
7. Dresden Files RPG: Volume 2
8. D&D - Psionic Power
9. PF Gamemastery Guide
10. Legend Of The Five Rings 4E

Dresden was a smash hit; no surprise there. The real story for us is the enormous number of Pathfinder core books we've been selling. You'll notice there is no D&D 4E Player's Handbook on this list. I think this is round two of the transition from 3.5, rather than some exodus from 4E. There would be an interesting story there if you actually had solid numbers.

The Pathfinder Advanced Player's Guide did outsell the Dark Sun Campaign Setting, but it's not exactly apples to apples, and with the Dark Sun monster book and adventure, D&D 4 was a much bigger release. As for Dresden Files, it has been a huge release, but it has slowed down quite a bit. It did very well at Gencon, so we're hoping we see some additional interest from that.  Great game. Pretty book. Check it out.

Top 5 Role-Playing Games

1. Dungeons & Dragons
2. Pathfinder
3. Dresden Files
4. Legend of the Five Rings
5. 40K RPG/Rogue Trader/Dark Heresy

Once again, we've almost got a tie for first place, with D&D outselling Pathfinder by about 3%. Our organized play for the two games is incredibly strong, as we witnessed on Thursday when our RPGA/Pathfinder Society group expanded beyond our capacity and were playing in our retail space.

Pricing Experiment (MTG: Scars of Mirrodin)

The next Magic set, Scars of Mirrodin is released October 1st. As an experiment, and as a celebration of the signing of the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, we'll have price tiers for pre-ordering booster boxes.

First, lets be clear on a couple things. A box of Magic boosters contains 36 packs with an MSRP of $3.99 each. That's $143.64 for a full box. I mention this because this is the baseline, a number that many Magic players find alien and unfamiliar. That Magic has become a commodity with a profit margin often approaching zero, is no secret. Therefore, almost every store discounts Magic to some degree, at least those who expect to sell boxes in any quantity. We're not interested in the volume, fly-by-night Internet discount pricing (or our late competitors), but we've learned we need to offer some sort of discount to gain any box sales at all. 

Second, and the point of this experiment, is that the credit card cartels have been squeezing retailers for years with their increasing fees, and when we add their extortionist fees to our sale priced boxes, it hurts us even more. With the passage of the new law, we're able to transparently reflect our fees back to the consumer to some degree in the form of pricing tiers that reflect the cost of various payment methods. I have no intention of extending this very far, but I want to use it to educate our customers that their payment method matters. The difference between using cash versus credit, credit versus debit, and some cards versus other cards is enormous, as we'll show in our experimental pricing.

So here's the deal:

Scars of Mirrodin
Full MSRP:  $143.64

Pre-Order Pricing:
$104.99 American Express / Discover
$99.99  Visa/Mastercard/Debit
$94.99  Cash

Before this law, we were unable to offer tiered pricing based on payment method. Note that some people believe this is bad policy and that retailers will do exactly what I'm doing here. However, notice the cash price. It's the lowest price we've ever sold a box of Magic that wasn't on clearance. The savings in fees allows us to pass it on directly to you, the consumer.
 
The take away here is that you help us when you use cash to buy things. We will pay more if you don't. There will be advantages if you can help us reduce our costs. Some of these advantages are immediate and tangible, like saving $5 on a box of Magic. Other advantages are less so, like the ability to hire more staff, stock more product, and even stay in business. You have more choices.
 
 

Game Stores on Facebook II

I'm out of town this week with a lot of down time with friends and family as we all assemble for a funeral. I was mentioning to my friend Jeff how I manually kept a list of game stores with Facebook pages and how I was just about burned out on the project. Jeff is highly technical, so the discussion inevitably led to how this tedious process could be automated.

90 minutes later he had written a program to do just that. It uses PHP scripting against the Facebook API to grab the Facebook store information. After another hour, he had it sorting, ignoring duplicates and including the logos. My contribution was gathering the store IDs and debugging the input until it worked. The new page is here and it's now a 10 minute update instead of a 90 minute update, which means I'll likely keep doing it.

About 10% of the stores were removed from the list, as the Facebook API doesn't work well with Groups, yet another reason to dump your group and move to a page. Since I had to manually tweak the process for each game store, please take a look and let me know if any are missing. Also let me know if I need to add new ones (game stores with pages that have fan counts over 100).

If you want to get a good idea of what's happening in the retail tier of the game trade, you could do a lot worse than follow the top ten or so stores on this list. 

The Facebook

With Gencon Indy in full swing, and my con jealousy meter in the red, I'm reminded that this is the year that social networking, really Facebook, has become actual social networking and not this aggregator of news about what we all had for dinner or links to your favorite Lady Gaga video (although that can be fun too). Before this year, Gencon was this thing that happened in the Midwest that only lunatic West Coast gamers attended. For the price of a week at Gencon, I could visit Paris or Rome. It was remote and only invaded my thoughts when it was apparent that the game industry had gone to ground for a week. It was more nuisance than anything else. Now it's omnipresent in my mind. I feel like I've missed out entirely. The photos and video reports are just amazing. How could I not be there? That's because of Facebook.

I put a lot of effort into Facebook, both personal and with the store, including shifting just about all of our marketing in that direction. It's a little scary to realize that the whole enterprise of Facebook is one big Beta test. You can't be sure some dweeb in his twenties won't suddenly decide to switch the whole thing around. It's very Internet 1.0 in that way, when browser support and new features could kill a website. Spendng actual money advertising on Facebook is not only a good idea for us, but it feels like a vote for the status quo. Here's some money, now don't move my cheese!

Facebook is also the single largest cost savings ever for my business, as we shift money away from traditional marketing. It's a "money or your life" situation. A business can continue to spend money on unsatisfactory, traditional media, or they can spend their time actually trying to connect with their customer base, engaging with them, and learning about how to satisfy their demands. It's a time consuming, ongoing project that can't be foisted onto the new kid in marketing. It's stupidly inexpensive compared to old media. In exchange for your time, you are directly rewarded for your understanding and effort.

Traditional marketing now feels like poking a bear in a dark cave with a stick. Will the bear wake up? It might depend on the size and shape of the stick. The bear might not be in his cave today. The bear might become offended or might be indifferent. You might not even know if you've poked the bear. Stupid stick. Inscrutable bear. Wretched dark cave. Meh.

So yeah, I am networking socially, which is pretty surprising from a serious introvert. For example, I've openly questioned the relevancy of trade shows, when the value was in new product identification (now done via Facebook) and the kind of networking you can only get over a beer (also a check in the Facebook column, sorry beer). I'm not discounting face to face meetings and building personal relationships, they're very important, I'm just saying that before I spend thousands of dollars on a junket, the trade show value proposition needs to be better defined. Speaking of poorly defined trade shows, this is also the week that retailers formed their own trade organization, the Professional Game Store Association, partly due to the gross irrelevancy to retailers of the GAMA trade organization. You can follow their goings on via Facebook, of course.

Facebook Advice for Game Stores
This is in the category of "what I do and why it works for me." The common Facebook marketing wisdom is that you need to connect with your base twice a day for maximum effect. There are better times of day than others, but generally, if you can find two things that will interest your fan base that's relevant to your fans (not always about your business), you'll be successful. The big question then is how?

The problem with game store customers are they're fragmented. Sure, comic customers might be divided into various categories, but they all like comics. However, a 40K player could care less about a new board game release. There is cross over, and from our marketing research, the majority of our Facebook fans cross over into two or more seemingly random categories. Still, with five distinct categories, even the average fan with two areas of interest will find a post irrelevant 60% of the time. What to do?

We discussed this at length. With two posts a day, you would need to cram two and a half "messages" into each post to be relevant to everyone. That won't do. It became clear that each post should be concise and that meant that two posts wasn't enough. My strategy is to post concise messages in bursts of multiple posts, ideally twice a day. The timing isn't exact, but I tend to store up ideas when possible for these bursts. My own Facebook stream scrolls off the page in only two hours, so although I don't want to be in a customers stream continuously, getting in during peak viewing times seems even more important. I'm also realizing that customers are visiting the page and commenting on older stories more often, something I rarely do.

So that's what works for me. We're at 838 fans, which is the fourth largest game store fan base in the world. Yeah for us! Our page is successful in calling customers to action, when necessary, but I also like to tell them about new releases, industry news, and occasional geek culture. As much as I want to target 100% of our base, it's inevitably about what I think is cool. I really want to share neat things and get feedback. That's often my only motivation.

Office Supplies

"We're out of paper towels again!"

You would think with our fancy point-of-sale machine that tracks 20,000 items that we could keep our office supplies in order. In the back of my mind, I still think I can run a game store like a franchise. This means I should be able to have processes in place that track everything, including office supplies. Then I could just re-order stuff as needed, preferably from a laptop, on a beach, where I don't speak the language. Yes, this is the back of my mind we're talking about. In reality, all I really need is some sort of check sheet to know when supplies are low with an employee tasked to do it once a week. How many different office supplies could we possibly have?

It turns out we have around 50. It's a bit like our supplier list. About six distributors come to mind, but 87 are set up in our point-of-sale machine. I couldn't possibly list them without the software.The same is true with office supplies. There are paper towels, Windex, ummm.  See?  Once you start listing them, it's a bit shocking. It probably shows why I'm really good at income forecasting but horrible with expenses. There are too many little details. Don't believe me? The list is below. Meet me at the bottom.

· All-purpose cleaner
· Band aids
· Carpet cleaner
· Change rolls (pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters)
· Checks, hand written
· Checks, laser printer
· Cleanser
· Coffee (just because I'm the only one that uses it doesn't make it less important)
· Coffee cups
· Credit card slips (conventions/emergencies)
· Deposit Slips
· Envelopes, regular
· Envelopes, window
· Floor cleaner
· Garbage bags, large
· Garbage bags, white/clear small
· Gift certificates
· Goo-Gone
· Hand sanitizer
· Hand soap
· Ink, inkjet, black
· Ink, inkjet, color
· Labels, P-Touch
· Labels, red
· Labels, white
· Light bulbs, fluorescent
· Light bulbs, standard
· Merchandise bags, blue (large)
· Merchandise bags, blue board game (medium)
· Merchandise bags, blue book (small)
· Merchandise bags, small white
· Notebooks
· Paladin club cards
· Paper towels, hand roll
· Paper towels, machine roll
· Paper, computer
· Pens
· Post-It Notes
· Sales books (conventions/emergencies)
· Shrink wrap
· Stamps, postage, first class
· Thermal paper
· Tissue
· Toilet cleaner
· Toilet paper
· Toner
· UPS boxes, small, medium, large, envelopes
· USPS boxes, small, medium, large, envelopes
· Vacuum cleaner bags
· Window cleaner

See? Even with a list, it would take a while to do a spot check, but we're trying to develop some sort of system. Developing systems seems to be a lot of what we do nowadays. We've got four employees and the key is consistency, which only comes from policies and procedures, real ones that people know and follow, not just a dusty book full of rules in a corner. I've got plenty of those.

I came to the realization this week that our operation has grown beyond my own capabilities. There is more going on than I could do myself. Before, employees were helpful and good, but they didn't do anything that I couldn't jump in and do myself. They worked to give me a day off. Now there is just too much going on. This is a good thing. "It's full of win," I can hear one of them saying. I'll give some credit to myself for encouraging them to step up. Want more hours? Find a way to step up and generate revenue. Most of the credit goes to those doing the stepping. Now maybe one of them can figure out something clever to do with this list.

Eulogy for a Friend

One of my best friends passed away recently. I knew Rob since junior high school, but we got to know each other as part of a group of geeky high schoolers who played a lot of role-playing games combined with semi-nefarious activities, like building rocket launchers, setting off smoke bombs at school dances and other miscellaneous mayhem. It was all in good fun. Our friendship deepened and continued through college, where we were roommates, good friends and occasional gaming buddies. When I learned of his passing, the first question I asked our mutual friends was gaming related. What do you remember about his characters?

It might seem ridiculous, and we did so much more than game, but it struck me as a crystal ball into who he really was. I already knew him well, probably as well as anyone. I knew him better than my own brothers and probably even my wife. Still, I needed more. Who was he really? I needed some context to make sense of his passing. As well as I knew him, he was still somewhat enigmatic.

It was an interesting exercise, it turned out. While we all role-played flashy, heroic, often bombastic characters who vied for center stage, Rob never did. We remembered the first character he created when I joined the group, a thief named Ummmm. He couldn't come up with a name and when someone asked him what it was, Ummmm stuck. Beyond that it got fuzzy. He played rogues and support characters is all most of us remembered. We couldn't come up with their names, or sometimes only wisps of remembrance. Jim recalled a laid back Traveller character with a jump suit and ball cap. Stefan reminded me about Moleface Dogbrawl, but couldn't remember if Rob played him or someone else. I recalled some sort of samurai from Oriental Adventures. Not remembering his characters felt sad, but Russell put it into context:

"...he was like the bass player in a rock band. Always present, always constant, always necessary. Not always obvious, like the flashy singer or lead guitar. But without him you wouldn't have a complete band/party/group."

Rob was always the steady. He was the one you could count on to be there, whether it was gaming on a Friday night or an impromptu road trip to Vegas in The Beast, his old Dodge cargo van. The Beast was like the Serenity ship for us in the Firefly series, an ever present, important character with it's own strengths and flaws. Many Rob stories include escapades in The Beast.

Rob was the anchor for our group, and all the various groups that formed around him throughout his life. I can recall several, forming various overlapping Venn diagrams with him in the middle: his grade school pals, our  high school group (which doesn't have a name, and that's the story I'm sticking with officer), and his college friends.

He was such a steady influence, that I recall only a few times when he got angry. It was when someone imparted their personal drama on others, when his friends were made to suffer because of someones selfishness. Because he was so steady, when he was outraged it had such a strong effect that you couldn't help but stop and address the issue. I saw entire group dynamics change instantly, not because of his persuasive arguments, but because of his moral clarity. It's not something you can do, it's who you are. You made Rob upset. What the hell is wrong with you?

So maybe take a moment next time you're gaming and turn to your steady, your cleric or rogue, your quiet bass player and just thank them for being the anchor. Thank them for making it all possible. You never know if you'll get another chance.

Rob on the left during one of our desert camping trips