Your Local RPG/Comic Store

[Imperator D]

I've been toying with the idea of opening my own place off and on the last few years. I've been wondering if an idea I have has any marketability. Figured I'd test it here.

The service is this: Access to a library of RPG books (so you don't necessarily have to buy all the books you might want to use, or could try a system on a whim). Also a key card that grants access to a separate area stocked with tables, chairs, and vending machines available to card holders 24hrs a day so you'll always have a place to game, and snacks to munch. Depending on space and location you'd also get a certain amount of time monthly on a PC bank to game on. Or possibly provide the LAN/WLAN infrastructure for you and friends to bring your own PCs/Laptops instead of providing the computers themselves...

I've also gone back and forth as to weather or not to have a restaurant attached to the gaming store (Not 24hrs though).

Would you pay for this? If so how much?

 

[Condor219]

The biggest issue here would be getting the clientele. If you could establish the old sort of "going to the arcade" mentality that used to exist before consoles, with your members, then the business would flourish. The idea seems fun enough; get a few friends and game with each other.

But why we couldn't just go to the friend's house and do so ourselves?

That's the one flaw I see. However, you could rectify this by creating a sort of more hardcore Dave and Buster's. Set up a gaming area with a very large collection of games across multiple platforms with most of the major peripherals, connect a restaurant to it so that gamers could order while they play, and make it a gamer's haven. This is what I think you'd have to go off of.

But again, clients, clients, clients. You'd have to get an area with a pretty solid gamer base, and you'd have to get the word out as much as you could. If you did that, I could see the idea working.

 

[silversnake4133]

Have you made a business plan yet? I would suggest you write one up or have an appraiser whip one up for you. Of course you're going to have to provide every aspect and service you plan on offering to the general public for the appraiser to help you figure out monthly costs. But from what you described that you want to do, you'd be better off opening up an internet cafe kind of service.

Otherwise the banks wouldn't lend you money because you wouldn't manage to break even in the first three years of your business unless you charged a small fortune for access to not only your property, but your internet. And people don't really buy comics anymore, a lot of comic book stores in my local area are being liquidated. So I'd recommend that you just shoot for an internet/gaming cafe.

 

[Hollock]

I think having a resturaunt you actually ran would be way too much. But if it was an attached coffee shop with it's own manager or something that might work. Also, just a note of ones in the town next to mine. There are 2 comic shops one that's comics and rpgs period, And one that sells a bit of everything, like music, movies, t-shirts, ect. The latter is waaaay more successful, when I went into the straight up comics shop it was always empty, and the other one was always full.

 

[Gaiseric]

All the places around me have closed. No comic shops. No manga/anime stores. And the RPG/gaming store closed as well. Maybe business sucks. You might want to think about the other people posts very carefully. The stores around me went out of business so the lack of customers was a serious issue.

 

[Imperator D]

Thanks for the input. The PC gaming would be secondary, not primary. The primary market is a place where PnP gamers can always come to and game. The library is a big draw as well. And Yes, Diversification is key. My product list would include most if not all PnPRPGs, collectable card games (MAGIC, Pokemon etc), board games (Risk, Monopoly all the standards revamped for the other IPs in stock) As well as War Hammer and other miniatures games . I'm not really confident my area has the customer base to support a store, but I haven't done the market research locally to find out. I was hoping to get an idea of pricing (from the internet community) my library/space rental idea so that I could identify how many subscribers I would need and identify my break even point. If I can identify a service-price structure then I can look for a location that could accommodate my idea.
To me the ability for my customers to come and go at all hours is a big part of the plan.

 

[Imperator D]

I've run a restaurant before so I'm familiar with that part of the idea. It's the retail I'm unfamiliar with.

 

[Wierdguy]

All I have in my area as far as gaming and stuff like it goes is 2 GAME stores and a Game Stop one... Have had several stores with similar concept as yours but they have closed down due to a lack of customers.
I think what you want to do before desiding anything is to do some research on your local area and see how many would be interesed and how often they would visit. Also competition. What stores are already in place that offers competition? What do they specalize in? Can a dialogue and co-operation between yours and their store take place? Ect.

 

[Zaik]

I've been toying with the idea of opening my own place off and on the last few years. I've been wondering if an idea I have has any marketability. Figured I'd test it here.

The service is this: Access to a library of RPG books (so you don't necessarily have to buy all the books you might want to use, or could try a system on a whim). Also a key card that grants access to a separate area stocked with tables, chairs, and vending machines available to card holders 24hrs a day so you'll always have a place to game, and snacks to munch. Depending on space and location you'd also get a certain amount of time monthly on a PC bank to game on. Or possibly provide the LAN/WLAN infrastructure for you and friends to bring your own PCs/Laptops instead of providing the computers themselves...

I've also gone back and forth as to weather or not to have a restaurant attached to the gaming store (Not 24hrs though).

Would you pay for this? If so how much?

I assume the bolded section is intended to be an area to play tabletop games, right? Make sure you include some soundproofed smaller rooms, the buzz of twenty different conversations going on all at once tends to drive me freaking insane and have to leave to keep from shouting down everyone in the room, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. You could probably rent them out hourly and let people reserve them for various periods of time and such. I'd definitely pay $5/hour on top of whatever the other fee is(assuming it's not outrageous) to rent one of those. Assuming you had a group of 4 in there, you could probably go with $20/hour on them no problem.

 

[Imperator D]

I assume the bolded section is intended to be an area to play tabletop games, right? Make sure you include some soundproofed smaller rooms, the buzz of twenty different conversations going on all at once tends to drive me freaking insane and have to leave to keep from shouting down everyone in the room, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. You could probably rent them out hourly and let people reserve them for various periods of time and such. I'd definitely pay $5/hour on top of whatever the other fee is(assuming it's not outrageous) to rent one of those. Assuming you had a group of 4 in there, you could probably go with $20/hour on them no problem.[/quote]

Yes, for PnPRPGs, or card, or miniatures. I hadn't considered an hourly rate for nonmembers or 'private space.' The multiple games going on is a problem solvable only with more square-footage, but I could definitely see charging a premium for a 'private space.'

I don't think a membership fee of $10-20 per Month for access to the library, and key-card access is too outrageous. With an occasional sale for members only thrown in. Or a rewards system: Be a member for a year get 25% off purchases on your anniversary, a discount that grows 5% a year?

 

[TheAbominableDan]

The service is this: Access to a library of RPG books (so you don't necessarily have to buy all the books you might want to use, or could try a system on a whim). Also a key card that grants access to a separate area stocked with tables, chairs, and vending machines available to card holders 24hrs a day so you'll always have a place to game, and snacks to munch. Depending on space and location you'd also get a certain amount of time monthly on a PC bank to game on. Or possibly provide the LAN/WLAN infrastructure for you and friends to bring your own PCs/Laptops instead of providing the computers themselves...

I've also gone back and forth as to weather or not to have a restaurant attached to the gaming store (Not 24hrs though).

Would you pay for this? If so how much?

Okay here are some issues I can think of. First is you didn't mention comics at all. Second rpg books are always secondary. They will never be a driving factor in a store. Third a system in which people come and just browse rpg books has two flaws. They get worn out, I don't know if you've ever seen what happens to the average D&D player's books in the course of a couple of years but it isn't pretty. The same thing happens with the store copies at my local Games Workshop.

Also just being able to look through the books isn't all that helpful. I at first thought of a scenario why this would be good. Someone in my D&D party wants to play say a Monk, who's rules are not in a book I currently own. So maybe we'd go down to your thing and check it out. Now we have to come back every time that person levels up. So we downloaded the book until we got around to buying it. I get that you want to promote an atmosphere of people coming in to play at your tables a lot but that requires tons of space and possibly separate rooms because rpg groups tend to get loud. Also the group may feel more comfortable playing in their own house.

And one last point. I used to work in a comic shop and we thought of carrying snacks or drinks. We didn't do it because you needed to get licensed to serve food. And it was a hassle.