The Greatest Show on Earth

Today we are talking about gatekeeping.

Whether I intended to be or not, I grew up to be a gatekeeper.

No, literally. I have a literal gate. Well, it’s more of a door really. People are always asking me, how do I get more folks into the store and, well, the answer is throw that door wide open. As wide as wide can be.

Both literally and literally literally.

What does your ideal customer look like? Everyone can do this – imagine what your typical customer looks like and then imagine what your ideal customer would look like. Tall? Well dressed? Carrying a mono red deck in a shoulder holster? Honestly, if you answered anything other than ‘it really doesn’t matter who comes in my store, so long as their eyes light up with wonderment’ maybe retail isn’t the best thing for you.

Everyone and anyone can be your customer. Don’t get hung up on the package they come in.

Years ago I worked for a well known chain of comic and game stores across the North of England. We had this one store in Derby at the height of the Pokemon craze. One day this kid comes in – about ten, scruffy looking, slightly grubby. It’s a school day. He’s playing truant. You have this mental picture already, right? Anyway, this kid asks to see the new Fossil booster boxes.

Look, it’s a quiet day. And I am half humouring him, because I am making a value judgement – which, from the benefit of twenty years of retail I would no longer ever make. But I was younger then. Timewaster. He asks the price.

And then STARTS PEELING OFF TWENTIES. Pulls out a wad of notes and starts counting them out on the counter.

He buys FOUR ENTIRE BOXES.

Turns out the kid was selling Pokemon commons at 50p each at the school gates and making more money a week than I was. If you cannot tell who your best customer of the day is going to be, you probably shouldn’t go around making assumptions as to who it MIGHT be. Do you want to live in a world where everyone is sizing up YOUR wallet to see if you are worth talking to? No. I guarantee you do not.

(You run a game store, so the answer is probably ‘not very big!’)

Everybody has value. Every single person you meet in a day, they are all heroes of their own story. They all crave validation, and you can give them validation by treating them all as if they – and their needs – were the single most important thing you needed to do that day.

This post is all about engagement. You already know that customers like to feel greeted when they come in a store – notice I said ‘feel greeted’ rather than ‘be greeted’ – that whole Games Workshop thing? It’s a bit creepy. A bit counterproductive. Like when McDonalds opened in Bristol and the staff all had to say ‘have a nice day’ – which, believe me, is not quite so effective a slogan when delivered in a monotone with a side order of world weary contempt. ‘ Have a NICE day…’

Used to be a store in Sheffield where the owner called everyone ‘sir’. With a lip curling snear.

Engagement is about being engaging. And so that’s the first important takeaway: Tone matters.

Open ended questions are better than closed questions. “Can I help you with anything today?” “No” Closed question. I bet that person is kicking themselves five minutes later, because you COULD help them but now they feel embarrassed even asking. Jeff Bezos never embarrasses you with personal interaction – net even when buying a gallon of lube and two hundred and fifty condoms.

Running a game shop can be surprisingly like running an adult entertainment store. Some people are embarrassed about what they know and like. Others are embarrassed by what they don’t know, but might like. And some folks are just there to gawp.

Thanks to Jeff, our customers don’t need us to vend goods and services to them. And they are often surprisingly keen to point that out. They need us to engage with them, to entertain them. Our stores are retail as entertainment, our competition is Netflix and Disney Plus. That Magic Prerelease is a tentpole event like Avengers is a tentpole movie. And why do we call them tentpoles? Because they support the whole damn circus.

The golden age of circus teaches us a lot about the act of engagement. Circuses would travel from city to city on specially built trains, flyering a destination for weeks before, erecting a city of greasepaint and canvas and sawdust overnight, putting on a show and leaving on the night train. They had a whole team of people to do engagement – advance teams, barkers, ringmasters, shills. An army of entertainers that weren’t wearing leotards that primed the audience to have a great time and part with their hard earned money.

The circus was an army that ran on cash in hand. The Greatest show on Earth

Which Hugh Jackman do you want to be? That’s your choice. “I’m the best at what I do,” glowering in the corner Wolverine Hugh Jackman, or “The Greatest Showman!” Hugh Jackman. Because one of those Hugh Jack…men? is going to make you less miserable in the long term.

PT Barnum was a gatekeeper par excellence. Can you believe there are eleven songs in The Greatest Showman? As a homage, here are my eleven top tips to a happier engagement.

1) Treat kids like adults. Kids love stuff, and they rarely get validated for loving stuff. Back ‘in the day’ we were the only store where we all went home and watched new episodes of Pokemon every night. We all had our favourites – mine was Psyduck. You are literally the only place some kids will ever go where they are treated like everyone else and not just as ‘kids’, so lean in to this.

While you are at it, treat adults like kids. Enthusiasm is infectious. Be enthusiastic. Believe in your products. Play them. Enthuse about them. Share the love, and share in the love others have for the things you sell.

This was a takeaway from my first ever game store, that let a fourteen year old come talk D&D to them every day.

2) The Infonugget Icebreaker technique. “The new D&D manual is going to be in Thursday!” I don’t really care what the customer wants to know or does know. I share snippets of what *I* know. Imagine yourself as a gardener spreading seeds. Who knows which ones will take root or not? But imparting information in this way – succinctly – is a great way to engage and prompt any potential follow up conversation. “I’ve never played D&D” is an invite to ask what game they do play, or to tell them about your Beginners D&D sessions every third Sunday, perfect for new players… see what I did there?

Instead of the Games Workshop fallback of “what army do you play?”, you are flipping it to “the new Space Wolves Codex is out Thursday. Maybe they care. Maybe they don’t. You engaged. But the ball is now in their court however they want to follow it up.

3) Demo demo demo demo demo demo demo demo… Batman! Passive demo tables set up a game and wait for the customer to touch it, then pounce on them to offer to teach them the basics. You think Hugh does that? The end credits would be rolling before Keala Settle belted out This is Me at that rate. Active demos solicit participation. The reason three card monte works is that you get engaged by remotely glancing in the direction. You’re not active demoing Gloomhaven, but there are plenty of games you can set up on your till and teach a one minute overview of.

4) Never assume anything. Or anyone. I always make a point of engaging with the folks who I least suspect to be gamers. Bored looking teenagers. Parents. Long suffering girlfriends and boyfriends. Young kids. Dogs. Every other store is going to engage with the obvious customer, but the secret to kids is the parents, the secret to partners with non gaming significant others is the significant other. And the dogs are just cute. What can I say? I’m a sucker for cute dogs.

If the worst part of engagement is somebody telling you they don’t understand anything you sell, it’s their kid/partner/owner that’s into it, you immediately became target number one on the Christmas present acquisition list. Engagement is about making connections, and you make those connections in the weirdest of ways. I am often the only game store that a customer’s partner has ever been in that talked to them. Ever.

“I just don’t understand how you play these games” is an invite to demo that one minute game you set out on your till. It’s an invite to “Beginners D&D every third Sunday!” And we sell tea and coffee, so worst case scenario it’s a beverage sale!

5) First taste is free! Decipher used to make a cardgame called Boycrazy. You collected pictures of hunky boys. It was awesome. I never sold a single booster but I gave a load of packs away as joke icebreaker gifts to bored teens dragged around town by their families. Now I have Magic Intro decks.

Those. Things. Are. Amazing.

We’ve given away Heroclix commons, Pokemon cards, thousands of intro decks, puzzles, stickers, sweets, biscuits, tea and coffee upon occasion. Things that cost us nothing but generate us goodwill. I’d give young kids Pokemon commons when they were in with their parents so the parents could browse the shelves in peace. Minimal expense, but as a parent myself? Priceless benefit!

6) Who would win in a race? Superman or the Flash? Asking a question can bring people into a conversation. Whenever I am having a conversation – with a regular, say – and I see somebody hovering on the periphery I bring them in. Our stores are non-exclusionary spaces, and that means always bringing more and more folks in. Throw the gates open! And this is where that starts. As a store owner – or worker – if I ask a customer what they have come in for today, it’s a closed question. but if two customers are talking to each other it’s the beginning of a friendship circle.

And it frees me up to work!

In the carnival, your regulars are your shills. They are the folks who are advertising your store because it’s the sort of store they play in. Nobody wants to eat in an empty restaurant, so make sure your space is full of shiny happy people who look like they are having a great time, but reserve the best seats in the house for the customer you don’t even know yet.

7) Always room for a small one. Look, my staff and I disagree on this. I always want to squeeze in an extra table, for that nice couple who just found the store and want to play boardgames for an hour. It’s not about the money for table hire – lord knows we give you that back in store credit. It’s about that feeling of being made to feel welcome in a space, to make that space your own in some way. Everyone has had that experience – that restaurant that made them feel especially welcome, that reopened the kitchen even though it was late. “We’re pretty busy but I’m sure we can sort things around and get you a table if you wanted to play” is much better than “Sorry, we’re fully booked”.

Always.

Again, it’s what we call ‘an in’. You are engaging with them in a way in which you are encouraging them to engage with you. To invest emotionally in their own experience of you. Turning a customer – a shopper – into a participant.

This used to be the holy grail of Organised Play store models. Participation was engagement, and engagement meant more sales for a store and more sales for a brand. Many stores now see Organised Play as its own thing, rather than an exercise in sales and marketing. Kind of reminds me of advertising agencies making commercials to win industry awards rather than sell product.

8) racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia have no place in your game store. We can be anything, anywhere, anywhen. We can play three gendered Shirren in Starfinder, or manage the power output of the Lower Ruhr valley in Powergrid, and one day the rest of the world will catch up. Your game store is a shining lighthouse of tolerance from your Bronies to your Yugimons. Here’s the thing though.

Not everyone is quite on the same page.

Most folks don’t set out to be racist, sexist, homophobic or transphobic. And you have every right to challenge that behaviour in your store. You should. As a game store you are a safe space, and folks will expect you to police that. But like I said, most people don’t set out to be bigots.

I prefer a technique where I take folks outside and ask them if anything is wrong? If everything is OK? Because, you know, some folks could… misconstrue words, attitudes, things people say, or post, or wear. As meaning somebody held views that – obviously – that person doesn’t really hold. I mean, who could think less of another human being because of their genitals or their religion when all we really care about is whether they love games as much as we do.

Your mileage may vary, but I’ve found it a compelling argument. I get it – I’m a straight white CIS het male and tolerance is my privilege. But everyone deserves the chance to change. Most people do.

9) Autism is a thing. Social anxiety is a thing. Depression is a thing. We are not always our best selves. We are not always mindful of others. We should cut others the slack we expect them to cut us. “You should go home – you’re not in a good place. But I’ll look forwards to seeing you tomorrow”. I’ve learned the hard way when to leave the shop. Too much stress. Too much anxiety. Parents are always “But my son is autistic and I’d be embarrassed if he had a meltdown” and we are like “hey, at Fan Boy Three we call that Tuesday”.

There’s a frequently made lazy correlation between extreme hobby engagement and autism. Nerds aren’t antisocial – they just don’t see the need for that watercooler conversation about last night’s TV – unless it’s a complex theory about Mandalorian politics during the Fall of the Republic. And they are totally down for that.

The more extreme hobby engagement is, the more gatekeepery it becomes. Unless you deal with folks with Aspergers on a regular basis, it can be intimidatingly (and unintentionally) pass-agg. Here’s the thing though – your store may be the only meaningful human interaction some people get. It’s tough caring about Dungeons and Dragons in a world that only cares about football. And growing up, my game store was there for me. For my friends. And I vowed that when I built my own store, I wasn’t going to pick cool kids like it was team sports all over again.

But you do need ground rules. Like team sports, all over again. This means sure, telling folks when they are being a bit too much. Reminding them how important being inclusive is, in a non-pejorative, non confrontational, non exclusionary way. Are they OK?

Is everything OK?

10) Is everything OK? You might have spotted by now that this is my default response to almost every social crisis in my polis. Nobody WANTS to be ostracised. Everybody wants to be welcome. Everyone wants their friendly local game store to be Cheers, with boosters instead of drinks. Witty one liners, a live studio audience, a recurring cast of colourful characters all worthy of their own spinoff. And it’s good to talk. To engage, long term – not just carnival barker to rube.

To talk and have somebody listen. Friend to friend.

11) Because People BUY off people they LIKE. That’s the secret. They say they shop on price and value, but if that was true no cafe or restaurant in the world would turn a profit. Shoppers engage emotionally before they engage financially. Everybody is a customer. Everybody is different. It’s like a giant puzzle box – the folks who want to be on the inside, the folks who want to share their knowledge, the folks who want to share your knowledge, the folks who came to be entertained. The folks who thought they were too cool to be taken in by the sights and sounds of the midway.

Happily playing the coconut shy and eating candyfloss.

So roll up, roll up gentle reader. Step this way into a place of wonder and amazement, where games of skill and chance await, games to test your dexterity and your intellect. Games with dice, games with cards, games with miniatures. All of time and space are yours to explore within these walls, where you enter as strangers and leave as friends.

And the only thing missing? The one thing that would make our lives – and yours – complete?

Is it SHOW TUNES?

No… It’s YOU!

And maybe Hugh Jackman.