Well, I must say that Wonderland's approach is not at all that bad from a business point of view. I have myself thought hard various times about becoming an e-tailer only. Game stores are first  a small business and after a lovely place to work and a community hangout. Economic downturn is hard on us. The proliferation of websites selling games at a big discount because they have far smaller overhead costs is hard on us too. There is nothing I hate more (besides taxes, politicians and civil servants...   ) that seeing gamers using the store as a showroom for games to be purchased on line. I still like games and I love playing, but I have virtually stopped any demos for boardgames for example after detecting a infuriating trend: gamers trying the games and, if they liked them, buying them on line    Ditto for boardgaming championships: they attracted just that kind of people. And the crisis has exacerbated this problem. Being a game store is really hard...  

Alexander1968 wrote:I still like games and I love playing, but I have virtually stopped any demos for boardgames for example after detecting a infuriating trend: gamers trying the games and, if they liked them, buying them on line    Ditto for boardgaming championships: they attracted just that kind of people. And the crisis has exacerbated this problem. Being a game store is really hard...  

I sometimes wonder how brick & mortar game stores are able to make any money nowadays when a lot of the time you can buy games at a discount through Ebay or other online retailers.  For instance, the new Warhammer 3rd edition set is $99.99 at my local game store.  Same price that Fantasy Flight has it for in their online store.  But you can easily save about 20 - 30 dollars if you buy it on Ebay:



http://cgi.ebay.com/Warhammer-Fantasy-R ... 5886b26bb5



Makes me wonder just what the markup is on this sucker?  

Well, if they are totally set on eBay sales they could close the space to the public completely. But even in this way, having the stock put that way (with no order at all) is bad business...  

That's how Troll and Toad employs so many people.

FormCritic wrote:To answer your question, on most items you would find in almost any store, the retail markup is 100%.

In the gaming market, that's not completely accurate. There is a three-tier system in place (the manufacturer sells to a distributor who then sells to the retailer... actually, the printing company sells to the manufacturer first, but that's a whole 'nother story).

The distributor pays the manufacturer 40% of the retail cost (with the manufacturer paying shipping costs usually). The distributor then has to pay for warehousing (rent/mortgage, electric, insurance, employees, etc), advertising (website, mailings, phone calls, however they get the word out to their stores),

The store pays somewhere between 30-40% off of retail (i.e. that $100 game costs the store $70, and the store often pays shipping from the distributor). The store then has to pay for their overhead (store rental or mortgage, electric, employees, insurance, etc).

Honestly, sometimes I wonder how the gaming industry stays in business. As a manufacturer, if I want to get my product into the stores, I have to set the retail price at like 5 times what I pay for it in order to make any money on the product. And the cost of getting things printed (especially considering the minimum runs required by most printers) is skyrocketing.

So, the price of gaming products goes up, and as consumers, we don't have as much to spend as we did a decade ago, so we complain about the higher cost of products, and in order to afford them, search to find them as cheaply as we can, which often means online (from the places that don't have the overhead a physical store does, so can give some discount off the suggested retail).

I will admit to buying mostly online myself, so I'm as guilty as anyone else. The one local store that provides some added value (WotC Encounters, local HeroScape games, etc) gets some of my business every time I'm there for one of those events (but it feels a bit like making a donation to a charity). However, I rarely make a trip to any store to buy gaming product.

OK, I'll climb off my soap box now. Sorry about that tangent...

Doug Williams wrote:
I rarely make a trip to any store to buy any product, except groceries.

The world, she is a-changin'

I don't know how game stores stay open either unless they are very diversified.  We have two gamestores in town and 1 is very diversified with RPGs probably being a small part of their business.

The other is more a Games Workshop store with some other stuff.  Their markup is usually more than cover price which compared with 30-40% off cover price from Amazon makes it very difficult to buy from.

I have bought groceries online once but I find those places are very expensive compared with local supermarkets or farmers markets.  The only time I did purchase groceries online was because they had a spend $100 and save $50 coupon which probably made things about the same price as the grocery store.

Alexander1968 wrote:I don't know what kind of markup exists in the US, but most surely in Italy is NOT 100% but far lower (averaging 40%)...

One thing to keep in mind is the different terminology - a 100% markup means that the store is buying the product for 50% off of the retail price. Figuring this stuff can drive you crazy sometimes! (Well, at least it can for me, ymmv.)

ashmire13 wrote:And how...
But, I have yet to buy food online based on the fact that so many UK supermarkets replace items with 'something similar' if they are out of stock.  In the same way coal & diamonds are similar...

Hi,

Tescos online has a box that you can tick for "no substitutions". Dunno about the other supermarkets.

Business rents in the UK are a lot higher than in the USA. That is why fewer games shops here have playing space - they just can't afford the extra square feet.

35% markup is "normal" on full-priced rpgs in the UK.

While I agree about the shopping "fix", I ordered a blu-ray from Tescos yesterday, and it arrived this morning. Can't beat the service...

Cheers,
Malc