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QUEST FOR FUN!: I'M SUCCESSFUL, NOW WHAT? 1 day ago · I've been thinking about a trade show presentation based on the Harvard Business Review article on how successful small businesses eventually reach an impasse. QUEST FOR FUN!: DELEGATION AND THE MAUI BEACH HOUSE The beach house on Maui represents outside interests you pursue instead of mucking up your business. Maybe it's coaching kids soccer or painting all those unpainted miniatures. This problem came to a head when I was handed a quarter million dollar, thirty year, government loan. Having all the money in the world, in the form ofgovernment money
QUEST FOR FUN!: THE PHANTOM BUSINESS AND THE PLACEHOLDER It's because he is the product, not the consumer. His living corpse is being used as a placeholder for actual customers who wish to engage in that stores value proposition, which is community. His role is filler, a cardboard stand in. He's more Facebook user than Amazon consumer. Unfortunately, store owners have a difficult time sifting the QUEST FOR FUN!: SCARCITY AND PROFITAUTHOR: GARY RAY Scarcity and Profit. It's a time of unprecedented scarcity in the game trade, combined with some rather unprecedented demand. We are allocated product from most of our major supplies: Wizards of the Coast, Games Workshop, Pokemon, and even Ravensburger, who is insisting we buy cases of their choice of games if we want extendedterms.
QUEST FOR FUN!: STAGES OF STOCKINGAUTHOR: GARY RAY Stages of Stocking. I've watched the game trade nearly double in sales velocity since I started in 2004. It wasn't uncommon to consider a three turn a year game store a success, and now that number seems to hover around six. That means if I had $100,000 in inventory at retail, I was seeing $300K in sales in 2004, and $600K in sales in 2020. QUEST FOR FUN!: GAME STORE ON A BUDGET (THE BOOM) CCG's which account for 50% or more of a lot of store's income right now, turn in the 8-16 range. Now lets look at our calculations, assuming 50% of our sales are CCGs: Look at that! Your average $200,000/year store is now at $366,663/year. Your average salary is now well over $55,000/year. QUEST FOR FUN!: PATHFINDER CHRONICLES: GODS AND MAGIC (REVIEW) Gods and Magic strikes a balance. First, it's a small softcover book of 62 pages, compared to the 320 page tome that's Book of the Righteous. You honestly shouldn't expect much from this small book (also with a small $17.99 price tag), which is one reason why it's so surprisingly good. It's concise. QUEST FOR FUN!: BUILDING A WAR OF THE RING ARMY War of the Ring is the new miniature battle game that comes out April 4 th. It uses the exiting line of Lord of the Rings minis, which to date, has been attached to a skirmish rule set that nobody plays, but everybody seems to have tried. The first step in creating an army list is figuring out point values. GW is rather coy about this. QUEST FOR FUN!: GAME STORE RESOURCES (TRADECRAFT) A Specialty Retailers Handbook: Games and Comics, by Dave and Kelli Wallace. There are some core chapters in this book that will save your business, especially the ones on negotiating your lease and the perils of discounting. The book isn't online, but you can get it by calling The Fantasy Shop at 636-947-8646 or FantasyShopInc@Gmail.com. QUEST FOR FUN!GTI OWNERSHIPFATE OF TARA All good motivations. Really, anything you would rather do is a fine motivation. What you can't do is have nothing to do. You can't delegate and twiddle your thumbs, because I know you, business owner, you are not a thumb twiddler. Idle hands results in weird projects, atleast for me.
QUEST FOR FUN!: I'M SUCCESSFUL, NOW WHAT? 1 day ago · I've been thinking about a trade show presentation based on the Harvard Business Review article on how successful small businesses eventually reach an impasse. QUEST FOR FUN!: DELEGATION AND THE MAUI BEACH HOUSE The beach house on Maui represents outside interests you pursue instead of mucking up your business. Maybe it's coaching kids soccer or painting all those unpainted miniatures. This problem came to a head when I was handed a quarter million dollar, thirty year, government loan. Having all the money in the world, in the form ofgovernment money
QUEST FOR FUN!: SCARCITY AND PROFITAUTHOR: GARY RAY Scarcity and Profit. It's a time of unprecedented scarcity in the game trade, combined with some rather unprecedented demand. We are allocated product from most of our major supplies: Wizards of the Coast, Games Workshop, Pokemon, and even Ravensburger, who is insisting we buy cases of their choice of games if we want extendedterms.
QUEST FOR FUN!: STAGES OF STOCKINGAUTHOR: GARY RAY Stages of Stocking. I've watched the game trade nearly double in sales velocity since I started in 2004. It wasn't uncommon to consider a three turn a year game store a success, and now that number seems to hover around six. That means if I had $100,000 in inventory at retail, I was seeing $300K in sales in 2004, and $600K in sales in 2020. QUEST FOR FUN!: GAME STORE ON A BUDGET (THE BOOM) CCG's which account for 50% or more of a lot of store's income right now, turn in the 8-16 range. Now lets look at our calculations, assuming 50% of our sales are CCGs: Look at that! Your average $200,000/year store is now at $366,663/year. Your average salary is now well over $55,000/year. QUEST FOR FUN!: BUILDING A WAR OF THE RING ARMY War of the Ring is the new miniature battle game that comes out April 4 th. It uses the exiting line of Lord of the Rings minis, which to date, has been attached to a skirmish rule set that nobody plays, but everybody seems to have tried. The first step in creating an army list is figuring out point values. GW is rather coy about this. QUEST FOR FUN!: GAME STORE RESOURCES (TRADECRAFT) A Specialty Retailers Handbook: Games and Comics, by Dave and Kelli Wallace. There are some core chapters in this book that will save your business, especially the ones on negotiating your lease and the perils of discounting. The book isn't online, but you can get it by calling The Fantasy Shop at 636-947-8646 or FantasyShopInc@Gmail.com. QUEST FOR FUN!: KICKSTARTER LESSONS LEARNED Since our Kickstarter funded, I've been asked to write magazine articles, speak on a blue ribbon panel (whatever that is), and talk about my experience on a podcast. QUEST FOR FUN!: TAIL WAGGING DOG Our Magic 2013 Core Set release was very strong yesterday, and other stores across the country also reported good sales and strong Friday Night Magic turnout. QUEST FOR FUN!: LIFT OFF I am betting on the U recovery, a downgrade from a V, hopes dashed by a uniquely American belief in personal freedom. A U is a V with a trough filled with the corpses of QUEST FOR FUN!: THE HOLIDAYS WERE NICE Nice is not what the last two years have been for us, especially the whirlwind holiday season of 2018. Really, I felt like we were hanging on for dear life with stratospheric, never before imagined sales. QUEST FOR FUN!: STARTING A NEW GAME STORE: FURNITURE Lets look at FFE, Furniture, Fixtures and Equipment in detail: Furniture: You'll need a couple chairs, a desk and your game center furniture. A 1,000 square foot game center can seat a max of about 66 people (I'm using multiples of 6 since our tables will fit 6). So figure 66 chairs and 11 tables that fit 6 QUEST FOR FUN!: LOGO So the color of the staircase and thus the logo got their color from a Jeep. The Jeep is in a Chrysler color called Amp'd. And thus our staircase became Amp'd, and our logo became Amp'd. And for the foreseeable future, we shall be Amp'd. Most people like the new logo, once they've accepted (or more often overlooked) the diamond isn'tblack.
QUEST FOR FUN!: TUMULTUOUS WITH A T My store has had a tumultuous year so far. Our sales are up 23%, with net income up 230%, which is easy to do when we were at a negative net income a year ago at this time. QUEST FOR FUN!: WEST MARCHES STYLE D&D The campaign goal is to colonize a region inhabited by indigenous peoples, bandits, and monsters, at which time they'll use Colville's Strongholds and Followers to hopefully defend themselves from an angry empire from which their new colony is seceding. All of this implies a timeline of various political actors and it will be interesting to see how that interacts with the various adventurers QUEST FOR FUN!: GAME STORE RESOURCES (TRADECRAFT) A Specialty Retailers Handbook: Games and Comics, by Dave and Kelli Wallace. There are some core chapters in this book that will save your business, especially the ones on negotiating your lease and the perils of discounting. The book isn't online, but you can get it by calling The Fantasy Shop at 636-947-8646 or FantasyShopInc@Gmail.com. QUEST FOR FUN!: KICKSTARTER LESSONS LEARNED Since our Kickstarter funded, I've been asked to write magazine articles, speak on a blue ribbon panel (whatever that is), and talk about my experience on a podcast. QUEST FOR FUN!: JULY 2018 I've been on vacation for nearly a month now, exploring Mexico and Guatemala and later this week, Honduras. Along the way I'm visiting game stores, which in Mexico has meant stores that specialize in Magic: The Gathering almost exclusively, but with some green shoots in other categories, like board games and D&D.I'm documenting some of this on my author Facebook page. QUEST FOR FUN!: THREE FACTORS OF RISK MANAGEMENT (TRADECRAFT) I'm meticulous about vehicle maintenance and that's because I believe most accidents and mishaps happen when three negative factors areinvolved.
QUEST FOR FUN!GTI OWNERSHIPFATE OF TARA All good motivations. Really, anything you would rather do is a fine motivation. What you can't do is have nothing to do. You can't delegate and twiddle your thumbs, because I know you, business owner, you are not a thumb twiddler. Idle hands results in weird projects, atleast for me.
QUEST FOR FUN!: I'M SUCCESSFUL, NOW WHAT? 21 hours ago · I've been thinking about a trade show presentation based on the Harvard Business Review article on how successful small businesses eventually reach an impasse. QUEST FOR FUN!: DELEGATION AND THE MAUI BEACH HOUSE The beach house on Maui represents outside interests you pursue instead of mucking up your business. Maybe it's coaching kids soccer or painting all those unpainted miniatures. This problem came to a head when I was handed a quarter million dollar, thirty year, government loan. Having all the money in the world, in the form ofgovernment money
QUEST FOR FUN!: THE PHANTOM BUSINESS AND THE PLACEHOLDER It's because he is the product, not the consumer. His living corpse is being used as a placeholder for actual customers who wish to engage in that stores value proposition, which is community. His role is filler, a cardboard stand in. He's more Facebook user than Amazon consumer. Unfortunately, store owners have a difficult time sifting the QUEST FOR FUN!: SCARCITY AND PROFITAUTHOR: GARY RAY Scarcity and Profit. It's a time of unprecedented scarcity in the game trade, combined with some rather unprecedented demand. We are allocated product from most of our major supplies: Wizards of the Coast, Games Workshop, Pokemon, and even Ravensburger, who is insisting we buy cases of their choice of games if we want extendedterms.
QUEST FOR FUN!: STAGES OF STOCKINGAUTHOR: GARY RAY Stages of Stocking. I've watched the game trade nearly double in sales velocity since I started in 2004. It wasn't uncommon to consider a three turn a year game store a success, and now that number seems to hover around six. That means if I had $100,000 in inventory at retail, I was seeing $300K in sales in 2004, and $600K in sales in 2020. QUEST FOR FUN!: GAME STORE ON A BUDGET (THE BOOM) CCG's which account for 50% or more of a lot of store's income right now, turn in the 8-16 range. Now lets look at our calculations, assuming 50% of our sales are CCGs: Look at that! Your average $200,000/year store is now at $366,663/year. Your average salary is now well over $55,000/year. QUEST FOR FUN!: PATHFINDER CHRONICLES: GODS AND MAGIC (REVIEW) Gods and Magic strikes a balance. First, it's a small softcover book of 62 pages, compared to the 320 page tome that's Book of the Righteous. You honestly shouldn't expect much from this small book (also with a small $17.99 price tag), which is one reason why it's so surprisingly good. It's concise. QUEST FOR FUN!: BUILDING A WAR OF THE RING ARMY War of the Ring is the new miniature battle game that comes out April 4 th. It uses the exiting line of Lord of the Rings minis, which to date, has been attached to a skirmish rule set that nobody plays, but everybody seems to have tried. The first step in creating an army list is figuring out point values. GW is rather coy about this. QUEST FOR FUN!: GAME STORE RESOURCES (TRADECRAFT) A Specialty Retailers Handbook: Games and Comics, by Dave and Kelli Wallace. There are some core chapters in this book that will save your business, especially the ones on negotiating your lease and the perils of discounting. The book isn't online, but you can get it by calling The Fantasy Shop at 636-947-8646 or FantasyShopInc@Gmail.com. QUEST FOR FUN!GTI OWNERSHIPFATE OF TARA All good motivations. Really, anything you would rather do is a fine motivation. What you can't do is have nothing to do. You can't delegate and twiddle your thumbs, because I know you, business owner, you are not a thumb twiddler. Idle hands results in weird projects, atleast for me.
QUEST FOR FUN!: I'M SUCCESSFUL, NOW WHAT? 21 hours ago · I've been thinking about a trade show presentation based on the Harvard Business Review article on how successful small businesses eventually reach an impasse. QUEST FOR FUN!: DELEGATION AND THE MAUI BEACH HOUSE The beach house on Maui represents outside interests you pursue instead of mucking up your business. Maybe it's coaching kids soccer or painting all those unpainted miniatures. This problem came to a head when I was handed a quarter million dollar, thirty year, government loan. Having all the money in the world, in the form ofgovernment money
QUEST FOR FUN!: THE PHANTOM BUSINESS AND THE PLACEHOLDER It's because he is the product, not the consumer. His living corpse is being used as a placeholder for actual customers who wish to engage in that stores value proposition, which is community. His role is filler, a cardboard stand in. He's more Facebook user than Amazon consumer. Unfortunately, store owners have a difficult time sifting the QUEST FOR FUN!: SCARCITY AND PROFITAUTHOR: GARY RAY Scarcity and Profit. It's a time of unprecedented scarcity in the game trade, combined with some rather unprecedented demand. We are allocated product from most of our major supplies: Wizards of the Coast, Games Workshop, Pokemon, and even Ravensburger, who is insisting we buy cases of their choice of games if we want extendedterms.
QUEST FOR FUN!: STAGES OF STOCKINGAUTHOR: GARY RAY Stages of Stocking. I've watched the game trade nearly double in sales velocity since I started in 2004. It wasn't uncommon to consider a three turn a year game store a success, and now that number seems to hover around six. That means if I had $100,000 in inventory at retail, I was seeing $300K in sales in 2004, and $600K in sales in 2020. QUEST FOR FUN!: GAME STORE ON A BUDGET (THE BOOM) CCG's which account for 50% or more of a lot of store's income right now, turn in the 8-16 range. Now lets look at our calculations, assuming 50% of our sales are CCGs: Look at that! Your average $200,000/year store is now at $366,663/year. Your average salary is now well over $55,000/year. QUEST FOR FUN!: PATHFINDER CHRONICLES: GODS AND MAGIC (REVIEW) Gods and Magic strikes a balance. First, it's a small softcover book of 62 pages, compared to the 320 page tome that's Book of the Righteous. You honestly shouldn't expect much from this small book (also with a small $17.99 price tag), which is one reason why it's so surprisingly good. It's concise. QUEST FOR FUN!: BUILDING A WAR OF THE RING ARMY War of the Ring is the new miniature battle game that comes out April 4 th. It uses the exiting line of Lord of the Rings minis, which to date, has been attached to a skirmish rule set that nobody plays, but everybody seems to have tried. The first step in creating an army list is figuring out point values. GW is rather coy about this. QUEST FOR FUN!: GAME STORE RESOURCES (TRADECRAFT) A Specialty Retailers Handbook: Games and Comics, by Dave and Kelli Wallace. There are some core chapters in this book that will save your business, especially the ones on negotiating your lease and the perils of discounting. The book isn't online, but you can get it by calling The Fantasy Shop at 636-947-8646 or FantasyShopInc@Gmail.com. QUEST FOR FUN!: LIFT OFF I am betting on the U recovery, a downgrade from a V, hopes dashed by a uniquely American belief in personal freedom. A U is a V with a trough filled with the corpses of QUEST FOR FUN!: THE HOLIDAYS WERE NICE Nice is not what the last two years have been for us, especially the whirlwind holiday season of 2018. Really, I felt like we were hanging on for dear life with stratospheric, never before imagined sales. QUEST FOR FUN!: STARTING A NEW GAME STORE: FURNITURE Lets look at FFE, Furniture, Fixtures and Equipment in detail: Furniture: You'll need a couple chairs, a desk and your game center furniture. A 1,000 square foot game center can seat a max of about 66 people (I'm using multiples of 6 since our tables will fit 6). So figure 66 chairs and 11 tables that fit 6 QUEST FOR FUN!: LOGO So the color of the staircase and thus the logo got their color from a Jeep. The Jeep is in a Chrysler color called Amp'd. And thus our staircase became Amp'd, and our logo became Amp'd. And for the foreseeable future, we shall be Amp'd. Most people like the new logo, once they've accepted (or more often overlooked) the diamond isn'tblack.
QUEST FOR FUN!: TUMULTUOUS WITH A T My store has had a tumultuous year so far. Our sales are up 23%, with net income up 230%, which is easy to do when we were at a negative net income a year ago at this time. QUEST FOR FUN!: WEST MARCHES STYLE D&D The campaign goal is to colonize a region inhabited by indigenous peoples, bandits, and monsters, at which time they'll use Colville's Strongholds and Followers to hopefully defend themselves from an angry empire from which their new colony is seceding. All of this implies a timeline of various political actors and it will be interesting to see how that interacts with the various adventurers QUEST FOR FUN!: GAME STORE RESOURCES (TRADECRAFT) A Specialty Retailers Handbook: Games and Comics, by Dave and Kelli Wallace. There are some core chapters in this book that will save your business, especially the ones on negotiating your lease and the perils of discounting. The book isn't online, but you can get it by calling The Fantasy Shop at 636-947-8646 or FantasyShopInc@Gmail.com. QUEST FOR FUN!: KICKSTARTER LESSONS LEARNED Since our Kickstarter funded, I've been asked to write magazine articles, speak on a blue ribbon panel (whatever that is), and talk about my experience on a podcast. QUEST FOR FUN!: JULY 2018 I've been on vacation for nearly a month now, exploring Mexico and Guatemala and later this week, Honduras. Along the way I'm visiting game stores, which in Mexico has meant stores that specialize in Magic: The Gathering almost exclusively, but with some green shoots in other categories, like board games and D&D.I'm documenting some of this on my author Facebook page. QUEST FOR FUN!: THREE FACTORS OF RISK MANAGEMENT (TRADECRAFT) I'm meticulous about vehicle maintenance and that's because I believe most accidents and mishaps happen when three negative factors areinvolved.
QUEST FOR FUN!GTI OWNERSHIPATOMFATE OF TARA All good motivations. Really, anything you would rather do is a fine motivation. What you can't do is have nothing to do. You can't delegate and twiddle your thumbs, because I know you, business owner, you are not a thumb twiddler. Idle hands results in weird projects, atleast for me.
QUEST FOR FUN!: DELEGATION AND THE MAUI BEACH HOUSE The beach house on Maui represents outside interests you pursue instead of mucking up your business. Maybe it's coaching kids soccer or painting all those unpainted miniatures. This problem came to a head when I was handed a quarter million dollar, thirty year, government loan. Having all the money in the world, in the form ofgovernment money
QUEST FOR FUN!: SCARCITY AND PROFIT Scarcity and Profit. It's a time of unprecedented scarcity in the game trade, combined with some rather unprecedented demand. We are allocated product from most of our major supplies: Wizards of the Coast, Games Workshop, Pokemon, and even Ravensburger, who is insisting we buy cases of their choice of games if we want extendedterms.
QUEST FOR FUN!: GAME STORE ON A BUDGET (THE BOOM) CCG's which account for 50% or more of a lot of store's income right now, turn in the 8-16 range. Now lets look at our calculations, assuming 50% of our sales are CCGs: Look at that! Your average $200,000/year store is now at $366,663/year. Your average salary is now well over $55,000/year. QUEST FOR FUN!: BUILDING A WAR OF THE RING ARMY War of the Ring is the new miniature battle game that comes out April 4 th. It uses the exiting line of Lord of the Rings minis, which to date, has been attached to a skirmish rule set that nobody plays, but everybody seems to have tried. The first step in creating an army list is figuring out point values. GW is rather coy about this. QUEST FOR FUN!: LOGO So the color of the staircase and thus the logo got their color from a Jeep. The Jeep is in a Chrysler color called Amp'd. And thus our staircase became Amp'd, and our logo became Amp'd. And for the foreseeable future, we shall be Amp'd. Most people like the new logo, once they've accepted (or more often overlooked) the diamond isn'tblack.
QUEST FOR FUN!: PATHFINDER CHRONICLES: GODS AND MAGIC (REVIEW) In preparation for a Pathfinder campaign, I've been reading Sean K. Reynold's Gods and Magic.This book is designed to be the pantheon for the Pathfinder world. QUEST FOR FUN!: THE INNER SEA WORLD GUIDE (REVIEW) In this sense, The Inner Sea World Guide is an ideal "core book" for running a Golarion campaign, including the adventure paths. It puts a lot of the rules and options into cultural perspective, which can get lost, especially amongst your power gamers. Besides being the definitive resource on geography and culture, you also get about 50pages
QUEST FOR FUN!: STARTING A NEW GAME STORE: SALARY (PART 2) Starting a New Game Store: Salary (Part 2) As discussed in part one, our goal is to get you to your $51,939 annual income running your game store. Your income is distinct from your salary, which you will draw from day one. You won't get to this higher income level for years, while your business grows, but you will begin paying yourself your QUEST FOR FUN!: RPG SALES YTD It shows our year to date RPG sales up 60%, led by Pathfinder up 300%. Of course, the usual caveat applies that this is our store and the RPG industry or game stores in general may not be doing as well. There was a rising tide of RPG sales for us, with most of our top ten publishers increasing. To answer the most common question: D&D miniatures QUEST FOR FUN!GTI OWNERSHIPATOMFATE OF TARA All good motivations. Really, anything you would rather do is a fine motivation. What you can't do is have nothing to do. You can't delegate and twiddle your thumbs, because I know you, business owner, you are not a thumb twiddler. Idle hands results in weird projects, atleast for me.
QUEST FOR FUN!: DELEGATION AND THE MAUI BEACH HOUSE The beach house on Maui represents outside interests you pursue instead of mucking up your business. Maybe it's coaching kids soccer or painting all those unpainted miniatures. This problem came to a head when I was handed a quarter million dollar, thirty year, government loan. Having all the money in the world, in the form ofgovernment money
QUEST FOR FUN!: SCARCITY AND PROFIT Scarcity and Profit. It's a time of unprecedented scarcity in the game trade, combined with some rather unprecedented demand. We are allocated product from most of our major supplies: Wizards of the Coast, Games Workshop, Pokemon, and even Ravensburger, who is insisting we buy cases of their choice of games if we want extendedterms.
QUEST FOR FUN!: GAME STORE ON A BUDGET (THE BOOM) CCG's which account for 50% or more of a lot of store's income right now, turn in the 8-16 range. Now lets look at our calculations, assuming 50% of our sales are CCGs: Look at that! Your average $200,000/year store is now at $366,663/year. Your average salary is now well over $55,000/year. QUEST FOR FUN!: BUILDING A WAR OF THE RING ARMY War of the Ring is the new miniature battle game that comes out April 4 th. It uses the exiting line of Lord of the Rings minis, which to date, has been attached to a skirmish rule set that nobody plays, but everybody seems to have tried. The first step in creating an army list is figuring out point values. GW is rather coy about this. QUEST FOR FUN!: LOGO So the color of the staircase and thus the logo got their color from a Jeep. The Jeep is in a Chrysler color called Amp'd. And thus our staircase became Amp'd, and our logo became Amp'd. And for the foreseeable future, we shall be Amp'd. Most people like the new logo, once they've accepted (or more often overlooked) the diamond isn'tblack.
QUEST FOR FUN!: PATHFINDER CHRONICLES: GODS AND MAGIC (REVIEW) In preparation for a Pathfinder campaign, I've been reading Sean K. Reynold's Gods and Magic.This book is designed to be the pantheon for the Pathfinder world. QUEST FOR FUN!: THE INNER SEA WORLD GUIDE (REVIEW) In this sense, The Inner Sea World Guide is an ideal "core book" for running a Golarion campaign, including the adventure paths. It puts a lot of the rules and options into cultural perspective, which can get lost, especially amongst your power gamers. Besides being the definitive resource on geography and culture, you also get about 50pages
QUEST FOR FUN!: STARTING A NEW GAME STORE: SALARY (PART 2) Starting a New Game Store: Salary (Part 2) As discussed in part one, our goal is to get you to your $51,939 annual income running your game store. Your income is distinct from your salary, which you will draw from day one. You won't get to this higher income level for years, while your business grows, but you will begin paying yourself your QUEST FOR FUN!: RPG SALES YTD It shows our year to date RPG sales up 60%, led by Pathfinder up 300%. Of course, the usual caveat applies that this is our store and the RPG industry or game stores in general may not be doing as well. There was a rising tide of RPG sales for us, with most of our top ten publishers increasing. To answer the most common question: D&D miniatures QUEST FOR FUN!: STAGES OF STOCKING Stages of Stocking. I've watched the game trade nearly double in sales velocity since I started in 2004. It wasn't uncommon to consider a three turn a year game store a success, and now that number seems to hover around six. That means if I had $100,000 in inventory at retail, I was seeing $300K in sales in 2004, and $600K in sales in 2020. QUEST FOR FUN!: RATIONAL CONSUMER Rational Consumer. One of my main hobbies is what's called overlanding. It's a kind of off road, road trip through the most remote areas of wilderness with camping along the way. It's really just a fancy word for car camping used in places like Australia and Africa. My motivation for overlanding is so I can spend more qualitytime with my son
QUEST FOR FUN!: LOGO So the color of the staircase and thus the logo got their color from a Jeep. The Jeep is in a Chrysler color called Amp'd. And thus our staircase became Amp'd, and our logo became Amp'd. And for the foreseeable future, we shall be Amp'd. Most people like the new logo, once they've accepted (or more often overlooked) the diamond isn'tblack.
QUEST FOR FUN!: MODEL FOR THE GOOD STORE "And here is where we thought about putting in a cafe." This business is one of constant brainstorming for the successful. For most stores, which I will maintain are not very good (fight me), the answer to all questions is often doing the thing you're doing now, but better. QUEST FOR FUN!: THE INNER SEA WORLD GUIDE (REVIEW) In this sense, The Inner Sea World Guide is an ideal "core book" for running a Golarion campaign, including the adventure paths. It puts a lot of the rules and options into cultural perspective, which can get lost, especially amongst your power gamers. Besides being the definitive resource on geography and culture, you also get about 50pages
QUEST FOR FUN!: THE POCKET KNIFE My son passed his knife safety "whittling chip" class at scout camp this weekend. They learn the "blood circle," how to safely pass your knife to someone else, and how to sharpen and store their knife whennot in use.
QUEST FOR FUN!: THE TALK If I had to give a presentation to a class about my job, my profession, my possibly foolish choice of becoming a small business owner, my main concern is this: I QUEST FOR FUN!: RELIGION AND ROLE-PLAYING Give them a secret vice. Perhaps plan a crisis of faith and work towards it, ending with a character class change or a re-invigoration of their faith. Fallen Religion. Sometimes religions are expelled or discredited, often because their priests get too involved in politics. A disgraced cleric is an excellent role-playing opportunity. QUEST FOR FUN!: ARMAGEDDON PATTERN ENCLOSED BASILISK Armageddon Pattern Enclosed Basilisk. I was going to write a post on how rent works (yawn), but the bassie is just too pretty. This model was interesting. It's a bit like a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces don't actually fit together but you can clearly see QUEST FOR FUN!: FRIENDLY LOCAL GAME STORE The premise for this build is getting the owner to a middle class income in five years. That income is roughly $55K a year, a number that might seem overly ambitious to an existing store owner, but is the median household income in this country. QUEST FOR FUN!GTI OWNERSHIPATOMFATE OF TARA All good motivations. Really, anything you would rather do is a fine motivation. What you can't do is have nothing to do. You can't delegate and twiddle your thumbs, because I know you, business owner, you are not a thumb twiddler. Idle hands results in weird projects, atleast for me.
QUEST FOR FUN!: DELEGATION AND THE MAUI BEACH HOUSE The beach house on Maui represents outside interests you pursue instead of mucking up your business. Maybe it's coaching kids soccer or painting all those unpainted miniatures. This problem came to a head when I was handed a quarter million dollar, thirty year, government loan. Having all the money in the world, in the form ofgovernment money
QUEST FOR FUN!: SCARCITY AND PROFIT Scarcity and Profit. It's a time of unprecedented scarcity in the game trade, combined with some rather unprecedented demand. We are allocated product from most of our major supplies: Wizards of the Coast, Games Workshop, Pokemon, and even Ravensburger, who is insisting we buy cases of their choice of games if we want extendedterms.
QUEST FOR FUN!: GAME STORE ON A BUDGET (THE BOOM) CCG's which account for 50% or more of a lot of store's income right now, turn in the 8-16 range. Now lets look at our calculations, assuming 50% of our sales are CCGs: Look at that! Your average $200,000/year store is now at $366,663/year. Your average salary is now well over $55,000/year. QUEST FOR FUN!: BUILDING A WAR OF THE RING ARMY War of the Ring is the new miniature battle game that comes out April 4 th. It uses the exiting line of Lord of the Rings minis, which to date, has been attached to a skirmish rule set that nobody plays, but everybody seems to have tried. The first step in creating an army list is figuring out point values. GW is rather coy about this. QUEST FOR FUN!: LOGO So the color of the staircase and thus the logo got their color from a Jeep. The Jeep is in a Chrysler color called Amp'd. And thus our staircase became Amp'd, and our logo became Amp'd. And for the foreseeable future, we shall be Amp'd. Most people like the new logo, once they've accepted (or more often overlooked) the diamond isn'tblack.
QUEST FOR FUN!: PATHFINDER CHRONICLES: GODS AND MAGIC (REVIEW) In preparation for a Pathfinder campaign, I've been reading Sean K. Reynold's Gods and Magic.This book is designed to be the pantheon for the Pathfinder world. QUEST FOR FUN!: THE INNER SEA WORLD GUIDE (REVIEW) In this sense, The Inner Sea World Guide is an ideal "core book" for running a Golarion campaign, including the adventure paths. It puts a lot of the rules and options into cultural perspective, which can get lost, especially amongst your power gamers. Besides being the definitive resource on geography and culture, you also get about 50pages
QUEST FOR FUN!: STARTING A NEW GAME STORE: SALARY (PART 2) Starting a New Game Store: Salary (Part 2) As discussed in part one, our goal is to get you to your $51,939 annual income running your game store. Your income is distinct from your salary, which you will draw from day one. You won't get to this higher income level for years, while your business grows, but you will begin paying yourself your QUEST FOR FUN!: RPG SALES YTD It shows our year to date RPG sales up 60%, led by Pathfinder up 300%. Of course, the usual caveat applies that this is our store and the RPG industry or game stores in general may not be doing as well. There was a rising tide of RPG sales for us, with most of our top ten publishers increasing. To answer the most common question: D&D miniatures QUEST FOR FUN!GTI OWNERSHIPATOMFATE OF TARA I didn't know it existed. There are 600 live Kickstarter game projects at this moment. I'm currently backing 29 Kickstarter projects that could be anywhere from a day old to over a year old. 29 is about 5% of what's live right now, but since my 5% represents a QUEST FOR FUN!: DELEGATION AND THE MAUI BEACH HOUSE Since my store closed in March of last year, I've taken on all the office work and data entry. The employees have come back to work, but I've retained my work load. QUEST FOR FUN!: SCARCITY AND PROFIT It's a time of unprecedented scarcity in the game trade, combined with some rather unprecedented demand. We are allocated product from most of our major supplies: Wizards of the Coast, Games Workshop, Pokemon, and even Ravensburger, who is insisting we buy cases of their choice of games if we want extended terms. QUEST FOR FUN!: GAME STORE ON A BUDGET (THE BOOM) So is there a down side? Well, if you built your store to be a $200,000 store, no. You've just gotten a kick start for your small business. However, if you built a $366,663 store, with $366,663 expenses, expecting the CCG boom to continue, assuming it's your baseline, you will, without a doubt, have serious trouble down theroad.
QUEST FOR FUN!: PATHFINDER CHRONICLES: GODS AND MAGIC (REVIEW) In preparation for a Pathfinder campaign, I've been reading Sean K. Reynold's Gods and Magic.This book is designed to be the pantheon for the Pathfinder world. QUEST FOR FUN!: BUILDING A WAR OF THE RING ARMY Josh - Gondor Warriors with Hand weapon & Shield are 25pts per "company". Gondor Archers are 30 pts per "company". The first company in a formation may have a Captain (+50 for either of these unit types), Banner (+35 for either of these unit types), and horn (+15 for either of these unit types). QUEST FOR FUN!: LOGO When a company changes their logo, it's generally a group exercise in self pleasuring. It's rarely necessary. If you look at the Starbucks logo, the 1987 or 1992 logo is in color, a big transformation, but I personally wouldn't change my coffee drinking decisions based on anyof their logos.
QUEST FOR FUN!: STARTING A NEW GAME STORE: SALARY (PART 2) As discussed in part one, our goal is to get you to your $51,939 annual income running your game store.Your income is distinct from your salary, which you will draw from day one. You won't get to this higher income level for years, while your business grows, but you will begin paying yourself your smaller salary right away, even when it means borrowing from startup losses to do so. QUEST FOR FUN!: THE INNER SEA WORLD GUIDE (REVIEW) My gaming world of choice, like many people, is the one I started with. In my case, that was Greyhawk. I recall staring for hours at the giant fold out map from the Greyhawk Gazetteer that was taped to mybedroom wall.
QUEST FOR FUN!: RPG SALES YTD This was posted to Facebook on the Black Diamond Games page last week, if it looks familiar. It shows our year to date RPG sales up 60%, led by Pathfinder up 300%. QUEST FOR FUN!: STAGES OF STOCKING Stages of Stocking. I've watched the game trade nearly double in sales velocity since I started in 2004. It wasn't uncommon to consider a three turn a year game store a success, and now that number seems to hover around six. That means if I had $100,000 in inventory at retail, I was seeing $300K in sales in 2004, and $600K in sales in 2020. QUEST FOR FUN!: RATIONAL CONSUMER Rational Consumer. One of my main hobbies is what's called overlanding. It's a kind of off road, road trip through the most remote areas of wilderness with camping along the way. It's really just a fancy word for car camping used in places like Australia and Africa. My motivation for overlanding is so I can spend more qualitytime with my son
QUEST FOR FUN!: LOGO So the color of the staircase and thus the logo got their color from a Jeep. The Jeep is in a Chrysler color called Amp'd. And thus our staircase became Amp'd, and our logo became Amp'd. And for the foreseeable future, we shall be Amp'd. Most people like the new logo, once they've accepted (or more often overlooked) the diamond isn'tblack.
QUEST FOR FUN!: MODEL FOR THE GOOD STORE "And here is where we thought about putting in a cafe." This business is one of constant brainstorming for the successful. For most stores, which I will maintain are not very good (fight me), the answer to all questions is often doing the thing you're doing now, but better. QUEST FOR FUN!: THE INNER SEA WORLD GUIDE (REVIEW) In this sense, The Inner Sea World Guide is an ideal "core book" for running a Golarion campaign, including the adventure paths. It puts a lot of the rules and options into cultural perspective, which can get lost, especially amongst your power gamers. Besides being the definitive resource on geography and culture, you also get about 50pages
QUEST FOR FUN!: THE POCKET KNIFE My son passed his knife safety "whittling chip" class at scout camp this weekend. They learn the "blood circle," how to safely pass your knife to someone else, and how to sharpen and store their knife whennot in use.
QUEST FOR FUN!: THE TALK If I had to give a presentation to a class about my job, my profession, my possibly foolish choice of becoming a small business owner, my main concern is this: I QUEST FOR FUN!: RELIGION AND ROLE-PLAYING Give them a secret vice. Perhaps plan a crisis of faith and work towards it, ending with a character class change or a re-invigoration of their faith. Fallen Religion. Sometimes religions are expelled or discredited, often because their priests get too involved in politics. A disgraced cleric is an excellent role-playing opportunity. QUEST FOR FUN!: ARMAGEDDON PATTERN ENCLOSED BASILISK Armageddon Pattern Enclosed Basilisk. I was going to write a post on how rent works (yawn), but the bassie is just too pretty. This model was interesting. It's a bit like a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces don't actually fit together but you can clearly see QUEST FOR FUN!: FRIENDLY LOCAL GAME STORE The premise for this build is getting the owner to a middle class income in five years. That income is roughly $55K a year, a number that might seem overly ambitious to an existing store owner, but is the median household income in this country. TUESDAY, AUGUST 13, 2019 THE WAGE RACE (TRADECRAFT) Let's look at minimum wage from a micro economic perspective, meaning how you, as a business owner, manage rising wages. This post mostly applies to businesses in states with much higher, mandated minimum wages. Here's what mine looks like in California, the second column over for businesses under 25 employees. From San Jose Mercury News You can see here I'm seeing 7-9% mandated wage increases annually for minimum wage. If you want to scold me for paying minimum wage, I've got two things to say about that: A) Employees who once made _well above_ minimum wage are now at or slightly above minimum wage (mostly above). I was once in a commendable position, as opposed to now, where I'm heckled for offering part time jobs at $12/hour. This steeply rising minimum sweeps up a lot of low wage workers. In fact, to get macro for a moment, HALF of American workers make $15 an hour or less. When we were talking a few years ago about the federal minimum or even the old state minimum, the number of people that included was pretty small. On the plus side, as it reaches that $15+ minimum, there should be some rising tide of economic activity. It's also where the inflation will hit, if it exists at all. The second part of this is: B) Minimum wage raises all boats, meaning higher wage hourly workers, rewarded for their superior service or skills, also see their wages increase to keep up. And when a city next to me raises their wage even higher than the state minimum, I'm competing against them for an even higher de facto minimum. What what was once a managers position with a bump slightly over what everyone else made, we now have the question of when can this position be a "living wage" position at $20/hour or more? Not if we can do it, or how we can do it, but when can it be done? Now is good, if you happen to ask. When your town next door has a minimum wage 40% higher than yours, these questions come up. So all the wages in my business are going up 7-9% until they hit a $15 target, at which time they're increased based on a moving target, the CPI-W (Consumer Price Index - Western Region). I should mention I also boost my salary each year by the inflation rate. That rate is around 3%. So if inflation is 3% and wages are going up 7-9% what is the solution for small businesses in this area? Well, your first 3% of growth, which is the average baseline for growth, goes right to inflation. How much more growth do you need just to stay current with wages? We'll get to that, but let's look at what's considered normal. What is a good percentage of labor for a retail business, especially a hobby game store? Can it be too low or too high? I get asked this question a lot by new store owners who've read my book.
They see the three bucket approachand
worry they're not on target. I should first say it varies wildly and the three buckets stop making sense as your store gets much larger. My rent is very high, but my wages are twice my rent, so I have two wage buckets, kinda. These buckets must have been made in the Midwest because the theory doesn't hold water in California. Ha! You can have too low a labor rate. I once bragged about my low labor rate, mostly because we were understaffed without knowing it, and was asked, "Do you not like money?" A good staff, useful labor, is ALWAYS SELLING. Too low a labor rate and you've got a passive sales force that is being acted upon. They are clerks, standing and waiting, not sales people. They have no time to do a sales persons job. That does not mean adding labor fixes your problem. Larger operations very much need strong sales training and good management so you don't have two schmoes castling behind the counter instead of one schmoe. You can't get there without strong management, which is where a lot of stores run into problems. You can't just throw labor at a problem. If your key man, which may be you, is only there in the day time, don't expect a lot of efficiency when employees are left to themselves in the evenings. I think this is the largest impediment growing frommedium to large.
You can also have a too high labor rate, obviously. When we expanded our store, we had a wage bubble as we threw employees at the store to see what would stick, what was needed to manage two stories and a big sales increase. It was far too high and we cut shifts the followingyear.
The general rule of thumb is wages should be around 13% of your gross sales. I think 13-15% is what you get with the bucket strategy, but we'll use 13%. So you have this fun little math problem of how much does X, your gross sales, need to grow, to cover a 7-9% increase of 13%. Here's a spreadsheet that looks at that, based on a gross sales number starting at $500K a year, which I know is high for most: CLICK GRAPHIC TO EMBIGGEN This is for California, so it has our mandated wages through 2023 followed by a CPI-W increase after $15/hour. That's why it goes from a clear $15/hour to a weird $15.40. By law, with a 2.5% average CPI-W, that's what it would be. This also assumes all this wage inflation doesn't adversely impact overall inflation. What you see is a pretty modest 1% increase in sales needed to cover increased wages. Add that to your 3% inflation rate and the first 4% of your sales increases is just covering all manner of inflation. That is not a lot, but also remember this is a snapshot of your business standing still, not growing, not adding profit, and not providing anyone a living wage! The answer to how much higher should we pay people will always be more. Pay them more. There will never be satisfaction, because there will never really be a minimum wage asliving wage.
See how I've got 2035 highlighted? It's the desired $20/hour "living wage" target. However, if you look back 17 years from now, that $20 is degraded quite a bit and would need to be $28. If there is a time minimum wage hits the living wage target, adjusted for inflation, I'm pretty sure I'll be dead in the ground when it happens. Minimum wage will always be a poverty wage. Always. Even with these steep increases. It's why I have a part time work force of students and people transitioning in their lives. Hopefully at some point I can have fewer, full time workers making a living wage, but as costs of everything increase, I don't know when that will be, if ever. Anyway, the good news is chill, it's all achievable. Just be aboveaverage.
Posted by Gary Ray
at Tuesday,
August 13, 2019
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MONDAY, AUGUST 5, 2019 CLEANING UP THE BOOKS (TRADECRAFT) I am not an accountant. I can barely keep up during my annual conversation with my accountant. I had a year of accounting in high school, probably to avoid some nastier math requirement. I know just enough to understand double entry and the difference between receivables and payables. From talking with my accountant and a business broker, there are a few areas I'm now a bit more cognizant about, things that show value or indicate problems that are often about something simple, like categorization of expenses in your accounting software. That's the exciting topic for today. Let's cleanup your books.
COST OF GOODS used to be my dump stat. If you have a high cost of goods, it shows your business is not very efficient. It indicates maybe you don't have a handle on shrink, or you haven't negotiated good terms with your suppliers. It might mean you're a bad buyer. A high cost of goods may indicate an industry problem, which is bad if you're trying to sell your hobby game store to someone uninitiated as a kind of toy store thingy with tables. I actually track my cost of goods daily, so when I saw the difference between my _real_, spreadsheet cost of goods, and my _fake_, Quickbooks cost of goods, I had to figure this out (also Quickbooks is always _realler_). When I presented my income statement, my business broker gave me a disapproving look with my high COGS. What happened? What happened was I was dumping miscellaneous charges into cost of goods, which is a major no no. Be extra careful about what goes in this category, since it indicates so many possible problems with your business. If you have to dump something into a category, do it into a discretionary one like office supplies. OFFICE SUPPLIES are pretty discretionary. Everyone thinks they could come in as a new owner and reduce waste of office supplies. My accountant encourages me to put anything consumable, anything not clearly durable, into office supplies. Office supplies also gets depreciated immediately, unlike durable goods, which are depreciated over years. so if it's in a gray area, it's office supplies. Not sure what it is? Office supply. Never use miscellaneous. Miscellaneous is a question mark. You don't want questions in your books. Answer thequestion!
PAYROLL should be broken into multiple categories. Payroll expense, taxes, payroll processing and insurance. Each of these have different tax consequences. Each expense can be attacked to drive them down in a different way. Speaking of payroll, have you given yourself a raise recently? Your pay is a discretionary expense so brokers don't care. It reduces your end of year tax burden and saves for your retirement with social security payments. It forces your business to compensate you first, unlike profit distributions which happen last, when it's convenient. You deserve a raise. You're welcome. RENT is one category that should only ever include rent expenses. Your business value is backstopped or dragged down by your lease. No successful business can predict continued success if it has to make a costly and unpredictable move, and if your rent expense is dragging you down, there's likely nothing to be done about it. Personally, I can't imagine any business would sell with a month to month lease. I would insist on a lease as long as your earnings multiple from the valuation. If your business is valued at 3x your earnings, I would want to see at least three years left on the years. I wouldn't invest in a business until I saw a copy of the lease. Someone believed in you to be around for years. I want to see that. Heck, I want to at least see _your name_ on that contract, especially if I have to approach the landlord to assume it. The main take aways here are be meticulous with your books. Make sure fixed expenses and discretionary expenses are not mixed. It's easy to get sloppy. My credit card bill averages around $15,000 a month and it's painstaking to make sure every line item is categorized properly. I download reports, try to figure out each charge, and I'm especially careful with those cost of goods, since they can look like other things. It doesn't really matter if it's just you in the business, if you ever want to sell or bring on partners, you'll want to be meticulous and you'll wish you had done it years before.Posted by Gary Ray
at Monday,
August 05, 2019
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SATURDAY, AUGUST 3, 2019TUMULTUOUS WITH A T
My
store has had a tumultuous year so far. Our sales are up 23%, with net income up 230%, which is easy to do when we were at a negative net income a year ago at this time. The San Francisco Bay Area is on fire, thankfully only figuratively. The Bay Area would be the world’s 19thlargest economy
,
if it were tracked that way. I just want to crow about how well we’re doing, how well everyone here is doing, so this post doesn’t sound like a pity party. We have transitioned nearly our entire staff this year, a staff that averages a turnover every three years. It has been a huge hit to our institutional knowledge, which means training has been a huge expense. Training means overlapping, unproductive shifts, and it’s is our single largest expense this year, when you also include the tremendous wage inflation we've got here in California (at the bottom tier of employment). Starting wages for part timers are going up a dollar a year, but it’s not fast enough for many, who criticize us for not having every job starting at a living wage (likely in the $20+ range). We’ll get there Felicia, just give it a minute. Enthusiastic new staff are a strong reason for that 23% growth, most of it really, so you get what you pay for. I will refer to 2019 as my Year of Entropy, assuming my store makes it out alive. Besides expensive staff transitions, our drink cooler died ($2,000). One of our two, multi ton air conditioning units gave up the ghost a couple weeks ago, requiring a new compressor ($3,000). By the end of the year, we’ll need two new computers, including a replacement of our six year old POS system which will need the POS software and hardware reinstalled ($5,000). Overall, add these expenses to the usual entropy of plumbing problems and CAM increase and it’s about $20,000 out of pocket. We’re still a profitable business. About half that profit goes towards construction loans, so I feel we’re investing in the business each month when those checks get processed, even if nothing new arrives. I’m thankful to have windfall profits in a year with crazy high expenses. Imagine having flat sales and all these expenses start beating you down. It’s why the threat of failure never goes away for small businesses, never reduces the chance of closing no matter how many years you’ve been in business. Are new expenses hitting us while we’re on an upward trajectory or downward? It becomes a simple calculation. Should we cut bait or cast out again? Some of our competitors disappeared this year after doing that calculation. This has added a lot of unexpected energy to our store as the displaced seek new homes. Thankfully there’s light at the end of the tunnel. We haven’t really been walking in darkness, since it's a profitable business. Having debt while encountering the usual entropy is like walking through a dim tunnel while bats fly overhead and muss your hair. You’ll make it, it’s justdisconcerting.
Meanwhile we’ll enjoy a little money thrown at re-branding and selling our updated image. We’ve had enthusiasm for our new logo, sold some stickers, and talked with people who were unaware of our previous brand identity, which is currently limited to our website andbusiness cards.
Posted by Gary Ray
at Saturday,
August 03, 2019
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SATURDAY, JULY 27, 2019LOGO
When a company changes their logo, it's generally a group exercise in self pleasuring. It's rarely necessary. If you look at the Starbucks logo, the 1987 or 1992 logo is in color, a big transformation, but I personally wouldn't change my coffee drinking decisions based on any of their logos. As for 1971, I'm not sure what's more offensive nowadays, bare mermaid breasts or a black and white logo. And what in the hell is she holding? Are those her mermaid legs? What exactly does this imply? Is this a coffee shop or a brothel? Sick bastards. Logos are ridiculous and nobody cares. When I was told we needed to change our logo, my first concern was the circle jerk of pointless design and then cost. Clearly there's no financial benefit to the exercise. We've had the same logo for 15 years. Is it a good logo? It looks good. I like the colors. I like the knight. As for the design itself, I have to admit, it's a giant pain in the ass. Our original logo is terrible, practically speaking. It's an impediment to its very purpose. The use of black means it looks great on screen with a white background, but it's problematic with other forms of media, which require a very light background. It's so difficult to use, we tend either not to use it at all, making the brand identity somewhat weak, or we reverse the colors to put it on a black background with the logo in white. We mutilate the logo to make it work. It's a problem. But is it worth fixing? Enter the business case. When it came to staff shirts, we resorted to white embroidery on black shirts. originally I had white shirts with a full color logo, but those were loathed by everyone, and they were hard to keep clean. You may not know this but everything we sell sits in a dirty warehouse before getting to us and gets even dirtier as it sits on our shelves. Keeping a retail store clean is a major feat, as it starts dirty and only gets worse. White shirts were always getting stained and lookingbad.
The black, embroidered shirts we currently use, with a boring plain white stitched logo, turned out to be incredibly expensive. Each shirt costs $70 with embroidery. They also need to be made in batches in various sizes, so we're almost always buying more than we need, in sizes we hope will be useful. Invariably, those sizes don't match our diverse staff. So over time, we've been stuck with a box of very expensive shirts in the wrong sizes. The cost of bad design turns outto be very high.
Our new shirt design features a full color patch that can be sewn onto a variety of shirts. We choose the shirt from the _Work Wear_ store next door, grab a patch, and sew it on. No big batches of variable sized, expensive, embroidered, logo perverting shirts. Also, if I want one of my robust, tactical shirts from 5.11, I buy it in the right color and sew on the patch, something not available before. Total cost per shirt for employees will be $25 or so, with no waste. Then there's the increased merchandising we tend to avoid with the old logo. We've already ordered new patches, pins, stickers, and more. We'll have hats and t-shirts eventually. These were difficult to design with the old logo requirements and they sold poorly. Now let's get onto the minor controversy of our design choices. We spent about a month defining the needs of the new logo with half a dozen designers. We identified core requirements. It should maintain the design elements of the old logo: the knight, the horse, the lance, the direction it's all headed (very symbolic) and of course, a diamond. The logo needed to remain fairly simple. The name needed an updated font that was compact with the design. The previous font used long, horizontal text and has been nothing but trouble for 15 years. The color black is problematic. It goes with nothing but white. Those who use black in their logos hamstring themselves design wise, so we omitted that. In fact, I would probably pick a different store name without a color in the title if I were to do it over. I have few regrets, but "black" is one. Let's take a look at the new design: I think it pops. Rather than black, we have a dark blue, which works much better and represents one of our colors. It's a darker blue than our original logo (which some say was purple, a color I love). The diamond color, away from black, represents a shift in store colors that came about with our big construction project, three years ago. This orangish yellow is called _Curry_ in Sherwin Williams colors, which is the color we painted our staircase. It's a color that matches our birch fixtures. It provides a pleasing blue and gold ambience, the colors of the local university, UC Berkeley. This shift in store colors came in a moment of crisis. The Curry color came from a decision I made with the architects when it was clear our paint color choices weren't working in practice. I was distracting myself at the time with another project, a used Jeep I was about to buy in Utah, because Utah was the closest location of a Jeep in this exact color I was smitten with. I _had_ to have not only the features I was looking for, but it had to be in that color. It was clearly on my mind. Originally the Curry color was white, but when we painted it on on the staircase, it looked terrible. So the color of the staircase and thus the logo got their color from a Jeep. The Jeep is in a Chrysler color called Amp'd. And thus our staircase became Amp'd, and our logo became Amp'd. And for the foreseeable future, we shall be Amp'd. Most people like the new logo, once they've accepted (or more often overlooked) the diamond isn't black. It's a tough ask, but if people can accept the Starbucks mermaid isn't holding up her legs suggestively any longer, I think this can be overlooked. Personally I love the direction of the logo. I especially love I won't be paying $70 each for a box of uselessshirts.
Posted by Gary Ray
at Saturday,
July 27, 2019
No
comments:
WEDNESDAY, JULY 17, 2019 MODEL FOR THE GOOD STORE "And here is where we thought about putting in a cafe." This business is one of constant brainstorming for the successful. For most stores, which I will maintain are not very good (fight me), the answer to all questions is often doing the thing you're doing now, but better. More inventory, better trained staff, better events, an improvement process and an upgraded look. Most stores don't need a cafe to be relevant. They should know by looking around where they could spend the time or money. You could expand and upgrade for quite some time, really, but most stores struggle on a daily basis and never get the chance. It's the curse of under capitalization in a low barrier to entry market. Often it's not even about money. Visit enough stores and there are simple improvements that just take elbow grease. For many it's as simple as picking up the trash you can see when you look in the window, or re-arranging the product on the damn shelves. Basic retail. Problems I saw throughout Pennsylvania and New York this month. One or two of those stores ran a super tight operation on what you could tell was a low budget operation. One was scrappy and organized and had family and part time staff stocking shelves on a Sunday. That made me happy. The idea we need to diversify into some new business model is compelling, mostly because successful business owners look for trouble. We want new problems to solve, not the same old problems. I preach how a Unique Value Proposition, over time, eventually becomes only a Useful Value Proposition and then No Value Proposition. The _next thing_ is a real struggle. But I'm also thinking now that running a really, really good retail model that focuses on serving the community can be _Unique_. I'm loathe to say this, really, because most of my peers think very highly of themselves. Most store owners think their stores are much better than they actually are. This is often because we don't know how to measure. We don't know how to look at our stores with clear eyes. Most store owners often don't get outside of their local bubble (why I like to visit stores). We also can't even decide what _good_ is. Get a dozen game store owners together (if you can decide what that means) and they'll argue, Clintonesque style, about the meaning of the word _good_. Good for one is the most profitable, while other owners will argue that stores aesthetic hold it back from that desired profitability. Some will claim they only meant to serve a small market when they made their polarizing choices. Good to you may just mean asteady paycheck.
The debate about Wizards of the Coast Premium stores elucidated much of this. Other people, not even store owners, are telling you what they believe is good, with rewards attached. Store owners _hate_ this. Try to help one of these store owners with their problems and they will quickly produce _reasons_ for why they do a thing badly. Alright, alright. Maybe you need a cafe after all. I should mention Premium rewards a type of existing store and there are plenty of good stores that don't meet that criteria. It doesn't make them less good. All Premium stores should be good (a debate in itself), but not all good stores are Premium. This leads up to my visit with Millennium Games in Rochester New York this week. It's an example of doing the standard model, for a long time, really, really, well. It's notable to me because it's a large store that clearly engages in best practices and a constant improvement process, rather than some unique, large store model. Also, when I say standard model, I'm talking about a basket of game retail best practices, since baseline game stores, as I've postulated, kind of suck. Millennium is unique as a large store because most large stores appear to have teleported from the past, their inventory, and unique practices, not particularly replicable intact. Other stores appear to have been built from whole cloth with buckets full of money. Millennium is a best practices store, only much, much bigger. As I can't time travel and I don't have buckets of money, this is compelling as a model. As you walk in, it looks brand new, because they have a process and budget for constant improvement. The retail space is vast and the game space comfortable. There are about 100 photos on my Facebook author page (please subscribe). If I sound like I'm heaping on praise, it's because it's a model for the future, unlike other big stores which are great, but mostly as interesting anomalies. Millennium got there by doing the thing, year after year, only better each time. It's the same thing _I_ do at a smaller scale, and you might be doing. That gives me hope both for myself and for retailers in this trade.Suck Less
Posted by Gary Ray
at Wednesday,
July 17, 2019
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THURSDAY, JULY 4, 2019INDEPENDENCE
I saw this today. I can't authenticate if this actually exists or if it's just a clever meme, but it struck me as important for a couplereasons.
As a lesser reason, I'm running a D&D campaign where the characters seek independence from a powerful empire. The stone reminded me there is a price to pay for such a lofty goal, and being a role playing gaming, that price needs be paid to accentuate the degree of risk and reward. Empires don't go softly into the night. The main reason is this struck me as something understood by small business owners. Declaring your independence from working for others is a glorious thing. However, the price to be paid for such a decision can be high. I know many who lost homes, spouses, or eventually declared bankruptcy. Many forgo higher income levels, shifting down in socioeconomic class, often at the expense of their family. Education for your kids will suffer if you live in a highly unequal state like California, where you home value is dramatically linked to education opportunities. An early death is not unlikely, if you look around, as the hours and the gamer lifestyle is not exactly healthy. We lose themyoung all the time.
Going back to the stone, I wonder how many founding fathers owned small businesses? It seemed like the kind of risk a small business owner would undertake, and of course be criticized later for being an elite who owned a business. That data is thankfully available. Merchantcomes
right after lawyer if you look at the list, with 30% of the 56 signers being sellers of stuff. These were men accustomed to taking risks. Some eventually paid the ultimate price, but as a small business owner, I understand the rather unique live free or die mindset. I'm thankful for these 56 who gave me the opportunity.Posted by Gary Ray
at Thursday,
July 04, 2019
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comments:
TUESDAY, JUNE 25, 2019 BOARD GAME SUPPORT GROUP CARL: Hello everyone, please welcome Gary to the group. He could useour support.
GROUP: Hi Gary!
GARY: Like all of you, I buy too many board games. They’re sitting in shrink wrap on shelves. GROUP: Nodding approval. GARY: But I’m mostly trying to sell them to you folks, as aretailer.
GROUP: Disapproving grumbling. GARY: But often at a discount, because they sell like crap. GROUP: Murmuring with approval. GARY: You see, as someone whose mostly a role player, I tend to buy board games that interest me. Really complex stuff that makes my brain tingle. But I don’t play them. As my friend Jay says, a good day board gaming is still not as good as a bad day role playing. You know, like the sex and pizza metaphor. GROUP: Angry grumbling. Several female hands go up. VIJAY: They can’t all sell badly, what about Terraforming Mars with its eight point four on bee gee gee? GARY: Yes, Vijay, even Terraforming Mars with its eight point four. Where did you buy your copy Vijay? VIJAY? (Sheepish) Amazon. GARY: Yes, Amazon. You don’t need me and I shouldn’t be cateringto you.
CARL: I bought my Terraforming Mars at your store! GARY: Oh, when was that Carl? CARL: At your Black Friday Sale. GARY: Right, on clearance. *cough* vulture *cough* CARL: What was that? GARY: Anyway, this is my first day vowing to order games only for our casual customers, the ones who actually buy from us. People who allow us to sell them games through our demos and our enthusiasm. CARL: So no more high concept bee gee gee picks? GARY: No Carl, no more complex board games. Which even at their best, aren’t as good as a bad night of D&D. Or you know, sex and pizza.Posted by Gary Ray
at Tuesday,
June 25, 2019
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