The Temple of Elementary Retail

Everything I learned about running a game store, I learned playing Dungeons and Dragons.

“No Bob, you can’t buy potions for the same price you SELL them for – how would store owners make any money?”

Seriously though, my store shares a lot of traits with a D&D character. And yours does too.

Let’s start building a store as a D&D character. Both have a series of defining features with quite a lot of similarities. We’re going to start with the race of our character. In Dungeons and Dragons, your D&D character’s race is a product of where they were born, which is to say, where in the game world they came from. Your store is no different. But instead of your game world being the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk, your game world is your geographic area.

Your city.

(Or lack of city, if you are rural).

All cities share certain characteristics. They will have transition zones, working class districts, industrial districts, upper class districts, cultural districts and shopping districts. You can break them down on a map if you like – City Hall already has. They zoned it. Though it might surprise you to know that our ancestors were already zoning cities in prehistory. Birds of a feather flock together and so do businesses.

Before Fan Boy Three opened in Manchester’s Northern Quarter it had been the garment district. Manchester was big in the clothing trade – the piece work from Halifax, the woollens from the mill towns, everything passed through Manchester during the Industrial Revolution. And it got stupid rich. But by the turn of the millennium, most of the fashion houses had moved on. The Northern Quarter was a shell of its former self – all boarded up buildings and alleys full of crack dealers.

Basically, we lucked in. The area was ripe for gentrification, and the hipsters moved in after us.

You can break any city down into zones like this. And each zone becomes a recognisable fantasy race.

Dwarf zones are industrial. Dwarf customers grind their hobby like they grind their job – game stores in Dwarf areas are often monoculture stores where everyone plays Magic or Warhammer or whatever. (Seriously, who am I kidding. There’s no whatever – the only brands big enough to support monoculture stores are Magic and Warahammer!)

Elf zones are cultural. Elf customers like to browse, they like all wood pieces and a light airy environment. You’ll find Elf stores near theatres, art galleries and museums. Minimum clutter, maximum aesthetic. What can I say? Elves are fussy.

Halfling stores are likely in the restaurant district. These are the boardgame cafes known for their food and conviviality. Their clientele like a good time and a party atmosphere. Alcohol may flow freely. Bare feet are optional.

Gnome stores are experiential. You’ll find gnome stores in the hipster district – what they sell is almost incidental compared with the experience they offer, in terms of service, selection and events. As a case in point, Fan Boy Three is most certainly a gnome store – people ask me all the time why I invest so heavily in Kickstarters when I could be curating a tightly pruned list of evergreens. Because I’m a gnome store not an elf store.

Half Elf stores are hybrid stores. These marry boardgames and cardgames with videogames, or with second hand games, or with books or e-cigs or phone repairs. Sometimes it’s hard to reconcile two natures, but hey – multi-classing was sweet in first edition (even if you ended up a level behind). that level behind in retail is money tied up doing the other string to your bow. Ironically, because half-elves often = archers.

Human stores are traditional game stores. The places that didn’t change. What even ARE these new fangled stores? the owners say. And that’s a perfectly valid choice. And if you are in a rural setting, chances are YOU are a human store too. Stuff on shelves. Bums on seats. Zero pretensions.

Lastly, if you chose to open in the cheapest area of town you are a Half Orc. My buddy Captain Sci Fi opened a store in Bristol in what seemed like a nice enough area. By day, when he viewed it. It turned out to be the Red Light District at night. There are people who are prepared to step over that couple having sex in your doorway or are prepared to risk their car being broken into on your lot every week, but I pretty much guarantee they aren’t bringing their kids to play Pokemon in you.

Now, you can build any type of store anywhere. You don’t have to stick to your natural demographic. It just makes it slightly harder. What you are instead building is a destination store. People are prepared to travel to Games n Stuff or Sentry Box because they have a reputation, and they would have that reputation wherever they were. But most of the time if you’ve aligned with the natural demographic in your area, you’ll get better catchment, more customers and more customer satisfaction. Quicker.

In Basic D&D, your race was also your class. But in all other versions, the two are separate. Which is the model we are following – Mystara be damned! Before we determine our class, we need to look at our six attributes. Yes, your store has Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Wisdom, Intelligence and Charisma, just like a D&D character. We just don’t get to roll them.

Your strength is your sales. At the end of the day, how hard you hit is how much stuff you shift. We’ll take human average here as 10, and we’ll equate that with being able to generate enough sales to pay for a full time staff member. Yup, setting that average pretty low. On the top end, Cool Stuff do $25 million a year just on boardgames. Most of us will probably be in the middle. $1 million in turnover is a target a lot of stores aim for – that’s chickenfeed for most industries, but let’s slot that in as Strength 16. Something that gives us punch, but gives us space below and above to work a scale out of.

Constitution is your stock levels. Most stores aim to turn stock pretty often – because turning stock generates turnover and hopefully profit. If you have a month’s worth of sales on your shelves, you have a CON of 10. For each extra month, add a point of CON.

Most of the time, Dexterity is the opposite of Constitution. This is your flexibility, your cash reserves. With 10 – human average – you can pay your next months’ bills. The more cash on hand you have, the higher your Dexterity. The more flexible you are. Suddenly Transformers is huge, and you need stock, and you have this pool of cash another store doesn’t. You can pivot. For each month you have cash in hand, you can add a point of DEX.   

Intelligence is your product knowledge. So this is more about what you don’t know. Start with 20 and knock a point off for every question you feel you don’t know the answer to in a day.

Wisdom is your outreach. How you interact with others and bring in customers. Customers rarely generate themselves, rarely wake up struck with a divine spark to realise they should dedicate their lives to Dungeons and Dragons and knowing the name of your store. How many new faces do you see in store? That’s the benchmark here. One or two, you are WIS 10. If you answered ‘New faces?’ Wisdom is probably your dump stat.

Charisma is a function of your Organised Play portfolio. Yup, we are talking events. The gilding on your game store lily. If you just run Magic? You’re a 10 – unless you make some extra special effort. Basic game store average. The more diverse you are in your events – types, formats, game systems – the more diverse you will be in terms of clientele. Because honestly, D&D players and magic players are not identical. Yugioh and Pokemon are not interchangeable. Fallout, Dust: 1947, Warmachine, Warhammer, HeroClix, Infinity, Kill Team, Warcry, Necromunda, Bloodbowl, Marvel Champions, X-Wing, Armada, Legion – all of them, marginally different demographics.

And that’s just miniatures.

There’s a reason Dwarves – and by extension Dwarf stores – traditionally have low Charisma. If you don’t play the monoculture game the Dwarf store supports, they’ll just stare blinking at you. Like the bar in Blues Brothers where they like both types of music – country AND western.

Now you have a race and you have a stat. And you have a gender. Your gender is not yours. Though if you have decorated your store in red and black and all your staff have neckbeards I think we can safely write male in here. It’s possible to make your store less gendered, or more gender friendly through decor and hiring choices, but ultimately you don’t really get to decide who your clientele are or how they interact with you. But you’ll know.

And so it’s time to choose our class.

Class is the single biggest defining thing about your character in D&D. But did you realise that it’s not about your strengths? No, your D&D class is about choosing your weakness, and your class features are how your character compensates for not being able to do everything well.

Barbarian. You are all about the Strength and the sales. You need Con to capitalise on those sales. A sales driven strategy probably focuses you along one particular product path, so your Dex may be low. Along with your Int, Wis and Charisma. Who needs those, right? Social stats are for losers.

A Barbarian store’s weakness is that rage. If it’s all about the sales its harder sometimes to work with others. Until their rage runs out in a room full of angry goblins because they oversold. 

Cleric. Outreach is Wisdom. Your tireless devotion to the gods of gaming attracts new converts all the time. But sometimes it is hard to see your neophytes shopping with the Fighter or the Wizard, only for them to come back and tell you all their problems.  

Druid. Look, I know the counter culture store owner is a stereotype, but the bong is often mightier than the sword. Druids don’t have to be about drugs – Druids are more about lifestyle, where games and gaming are part of that lifestyle. And remember, the Druid is a pet class too – and likely to come with a whole coterie of lifestyle followers.

Fighter. You are all about the Con. You specialise in depth of stock, because depth of stock is like retail armour class and hit points rolled into one. But all that armour makes you slow and cumbersome. Every party needs a good solid Fighter, who can take the lumps and still deliver because they still had stock when everyone else ran out. But let’s face it, Fighters are boring. Keep telling yourself you are cool because you fight with a glaive guisarme rather than a longsword.  

Monk is the most agile and ineffective of all the classes. You don’t even need a store – just a backpack and a trade account. This is how many monks start and almost all monks stay that way. Andrew Zorowitz is their Grand Master of Flowers – nobody does more shows with a larger team than Andrew, proving that it’s not just a Zen thing. It can be big money too.

Paladin is a social justice warrior class. Fusing Charisma, Wisdom and Strength together to stand up and be counted for what is right and just and good and decent. I mean, diverse, inclusive stores full of women and minorities. But there are anti-paladin stores too. And sometimes, as the culture wars rage outside with the intensity of the Blood War from Planescape, you can find yourself boycotted from both sides.

(Anti paladins are wankers though).

Ranger. The Ranger is the Dexterity class. Two weapon fighting is literally focussing on Warhammer and Magic at the same time. This may make things a bit tricky unless you have very deep pockets or a bear as a pet.

Sorcerer. The Charisma based Wizard is able to summon Organised Play events out of the aether. Most sorcerers specialise in illusion spells. Having a shop full of people is great, but having a shop full of paying customers is like hitting with a real elephant rather than an illusionary one. Much, much more satisfying.

Thief. I know that its politically correct to call these people rogues now, but let’s be honest. In the real world, the Thief is less useful. There are no traps to detect, no locks to pick. A Thief store – a rogue store – compensates for that by stealing your sales and your customers. That’s the thing they are good at. They will deep discount and take your sales, or undercut your events and take your players. Thief store doesn’t care

Wizard. Knowledge is power. Whether it is every Magic card ever printed or the entire contents of Boardgame Geek, you are a walking encyclopaedia of information. Wizards are often poor at sales – STR is traditionally their dump stat. They don’t always like to part with their knowledge to those they deem unworthy. But the Wizards actual weakness is a habit of training hundreds of apprentices and then hiring them all because they also play Runequest.

Warlock has the backing of a powerful supernatural entity. Most often a parent or a trust fund. They are unpredictable. They have plenty of money they can burn on powerful spells and then suddenly the ground opens up to swallow them whole like they never existed. Warlocks are much, much better as an ally than as an enemy. Did I mention they were unpredictable? Wildly, wildly unpredictable.

Me, I’m a Bard store. I run groups dedicated to teaching other stores how to be better. How to bring Kickstarter companies and retailers together for mutual profit. I run national level Organised Play programs. For me it’s all about the connections, the friendships, the contacts, the networks. In store I want to make sure everyone is having a good time, like the maitre d’ in a fine restaurant.

Now, here’s the thing.

Since every store is different and every store has a weakness and some strengths, it’s natural that stores can and should work together. If you have a Dwarf Fighter store and an Elf Wizard store in the same city, I guarantee you they do not share the same clientele. I mean, it’s possible not even two Dwarf stores share the same clientele – one could run Warhammer and the other Magic and never the twain mix.

But you can literally build a party out of stores with non-overlapping USP’s for mutual support and profit. It’s pointless me advertising to your Dwarves, as they will not leave town. But we can support each other. Thief stores? Barbarian stores? Warlock stores? just like in an actual D&D party, if these are your local competitors, now you know why you need to keep them at arm’s length. I had a good working relationship with one UK Warlock store – until they scheduled a series of Magic events in the venue I used when they were my singles dealer and froze out my involvement. That’s the kind of dick move a Warlock store does, because they think business is acting like Donald Trump and not an interconnected web of interbusiness relationships based on mutual trust and support.

They would sacrifice you to their elder god in a heartbeat.

Lastly, you have a level. Your level is based on the number of full time employees your store has. Each level – each employee – allows you to multiclass. You can buy in expertise and gain a level in another class, or double down on folks like you. You can hire a Cleric for your outreach, a Sorcerer to work on your Organised Play portfolio, or another Wizard. Traditionally Wizard stores hire more Wizards – apprentice Wizards – until they have this huge magical college thing going on. We’ve all been in stores like that. You can play to your strengths or bolster your weaknesses.

Or you can work with others.

You have a race, a class, a gender, a level and six attributes. Maybe those attributes no longer suit the class you are playing. Maybe you’d be better opening that Gnome Bard store in a better part of town. Maybe there are three Gnome Bard stores already. Our industry tends to think of all game stores as THE SAME. The lowest common denominator of store. Some dingy clubhouse in podunksville. Others think we should all aspire to be Mox Boarding House. That the only thing that separates us from achieving our goals is our professionalism. But when most folks do this exercise, every store comes out different.

And like Dungeons and Dragons, that’s our strength.

Now let’s grab some dice and roll for initiative!