Quote from: Ghost Whistler;360029I'd love to know the impact of WFRP 3e on the profits of struggling game stores. I've seen it in the shop near me, which is relatively new (Excelsior comics in Bristol). They have a respectable couple of shelves and apparently have gaming nights on Tuesdays (no good for me since I can't get there). It's on sale for around £80! That must cost a lot to buy in. But then I know they've made sales for some of the 40k games and Starblazer adventures at least. Those are quite chunky products. Could 3e be the straw that breaks the camel's lgs?

I think your mistaking WFRP 3e with Warhammer in general.  The gaming stores near me have keep a couple of WFRP 3's box sets and adventure tool kits in stock generally - that's it.  When they sell them they order a couple more when people come in asking for them.  GW has nothing to do with the distribution of the RPG it's all FFG's and their distribution line.  

I think you are thinking of GW's mandates on what it takes to sell miniatures which even for a rogue status store requires space and minimal commitments.

The 3e rpg will have little impact at all on FLGCs'.  If it sells it sells if it doesn't they don't buy more copies.

There's three LGSs I'm aware of in London: Leisure Games, Spirit Games, and Ork's Nest. (Plus the central London branch of Forbidden Planet has a pretty decent RPG section these days).

Leisure Games and Ork's Nest have been operational for as long as I've been gaming. Spirit Games I became aware of more recently but seem to do alright. Forbidden Planet, if anything, has been getting deeper and deeper into RPGs over the years. Maybe the FLGS is dying in the States but here in the UK it seems pretty stable.

Heck, in other towns in the UK I know some appallingly badly managed stores (I shall name no names) which still manage to survive.

Quote from: Warthur;360062Heck, in other towns in the UK I know some appallingly badly managed stores (I shall name no names) which still manage to survive.

Survival depends on lots of complicated factors, my local game store shut because the Travel Agents and Comic Book Shop in the same Arcade when bust, at that point the landlord decided to up all the other shop's rents so he would have the same income.

Now, he could have moved to a shop with lower rest, but its a lot of hassle when 90% of sales are over the internet anyway, and you can run that from your garage.

Quote from: Warthur;360062Maybe the FLGS is dying in the States but here in the UK it seems pretty stable.

The case of the UK seems quite special indeed. For instance I'm amazed whenever Darran posts about upcoming RPG conventions: you guys seem to be very active and the hobby looks vibrant there. OTOH 3 FLGS for a big city like London doesn't sound like a lot (compared to Collorado Springs above). How big are those LGS (in surface) approximately?

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;360031When i flirted with the idea of getting into 40k (biiiiiiiig mistake), i visited the local GW hive bearing a £20 game i'd just purchased and proceeded to get a nice lecture telling me not only that that money could have gone to buying whatever starter set he was on comission to hawk, but that video games are antisocial and crap blah blah blah.

GW stores are a special case. The employees are told to not sell, encourage or mention non-GW products. The stores can't carry non-GW products, including the Warhammer roleplaying games. They are not a gaming store, they're a Games Workshop store. The WotC stores were nowhere near that bad.

I'm sure that there are regular LGS that are like that too re: non-RPGs or non "traditional games" but those stores, especially if they're snobs about it, hopefully won't stay in business long. Yeah I'm snowbound. @_@

As for getting GW products in a non-GW store, it can be a dual edged sword. Very expensive buy in and replenishing stock isn't cheap either so stores tend to have big bare spots in their GW stock. The profit margin is likely to be thinner than it was in the 90s and GW's online shenanigans don't help, esp. if the LGS wanted to sell the stuff on the internet.

Too bad not even Warmachine and Confrontation / AT-43 are good competition. Dunno how the click / prepainted games do against GW, they may be different enough to not be direct competition.

That ties into the whole demo promotion and league organizations seem pretty much dead, if they were ever really alive.

Quote from: stu2000;360008In Colorado Springs, a smallish city, nestled in the shadow of the Stargate, we have three game stores on three points of one intersection. They all have ample playing space, and they have almost no overlap in customer base. Besides that, we have two other independent stores with tables, two Hobbytowns (hobby store chain) and one It's Your Move (mall-based game store chain). We have two used book stores that have extensive game sections. We have Border's and Barnes & Noble selling games to the straights.

We have Denver, with numerous game stores an hour to the north, and Pueblo, with a couple shops a half hour to the south.

One of the stores in town is pretty new, the rest are all fairly well established. That one corner, though. Man. It's some kind of statistical anomaly, I tell you what.

I was wondering if it was Just Denver.  I can think of four decent gaming stores off of the top of my head, aside from It's Your Move (which has a few locations in town, but doesn't really do RPGs anymore) and of course Borders and B&N.  And this weekend is GenghisCon, one of two yearly general gaming conventions in town.

So... maybe part of it has to do with how active and involved the local gaming scene is?  Because I can't say I've ever lived someplace like Denver before.

Quote from: stu2000;360008In Colorado Springs, a smallish city, nestled in the shadow of the Stargate, we have three game stores on three points of one intersection.

What are their names?

Seanchai

Castle Games, a small, but functional store with dedicated carriage trade. They have an aggravating policy of shrink-wrapping all their books. Three or four big tables.
Heroes and Dragons, a consolidation of the two formerly mall-based comic/game shops. Two-story outfit with retail upstairs and gaming downstairs.
Gamer's Haven--my personal favorite, pays the bills with GW and carries a wide and deep variety of minis, cards, boardgames and rpgs. Retail in the front, a large, separate area in the back of the shop with 12 tall tables for minis and four regular-height tables for cards, painting, etc.

All three sit on corners of the intersection of Vickers and N. Academy.
There's also a little shop that sells vacuum cleaners and dragon tchotchkes, aptly named Vacuums and Dragons.

Quote from: boulet;360076The case of the UK seems quite special indeed. For instance I'm amazed whenever Darran posts about upcoming RPG conventions: you guys seem to be very active and the hobby looks vibrant there. OTOH 3 FLGS for a big city like London doesn't sound like a lot (compared to Collorado Springs above). How big are those LGS (in surface) approximately?

2 of the FLGSs and Forbidden Planet are in Central London, so I suspect they thrive on the fact that people can hop on public transport (or drive if they're crazy), head into the West End for some shopping, and pick up RPGs then. Forbidden Planet has the equivalent of around four sizeable shelves devoted to RPGs. Spirit Games has an RPG section in the basement of around twice that size. Ork's Nest is a smallish store but it's split over two levels, so the actual floorspace devoted to RPGs is pretty impressive. Leisure Games is up in North London, but a) they have a decent mail order service and b) because the rent is lower where they are they're in a larger store, though they'e all on one floor so the actual floorspace is probably not that much bigger than Ork's Nest.

All of the stores in question sell games aside from RPGs, but Ork's Nest and Forbidden Planet have RPGs in a clear majority. Also, all the FLGSs involved can order games in for you and do mail order.

Interestingly, I've not noticed that any of them have gaming tables or facilities for clubs to meet up. (Well, Leisure Games might have a display table, it's been a while since I've been to their physical store.) In general, it seems that gaming in stores just isn't something which has especially taken off in UK culture - most game clubs I'm aware of use the private function rooms in pubs.

Quote from: Casey777;360150GW stores are a special case. The employees are told to not sell, encourage or mention non-GW products. The stores can't carry non-GW products, including the Warhammer roleplaying games. They are not a gaming store, they're a Games Workshop store. The WotC stores were nowhere near that bad.

It's possible that this might be very, very gradually changing. Dark Heresy and WFRP products are being included in the New Releases section of White Dwarf these days, so it seems like GW are getting a bit less uptight about mentioning related products from other companies.

Quote from: Casey777;360150GW stores are a special case. The employees are told to not sell, encourage or mention non-GW products. The stores can't carry non-GW products, including the Warhammer roleplaying games. They are not a gaming store, they're a Games Workshop store. The WotC stores were nowhere near that bad.

I'm sure that there are regular LGS that are like that too re: non-RPGs or non "traditional games" but those stores, especially if they're snobs about it, hopefully won't stay in business long. Yeah I'm snowbound. @_@

As for getting GW products in a non-GW store, it can be a dual edged sword. Very expensive buy in and replenishing stock isn't cheap either so stores tend to have big bare spots in their GW stock. The profit margin is likely to be thinner than it was in the 90s and GW's online shenanigans don't help, esp. if the LGS wanted to sell the stuff on the internet.

Too bad not even Warmachine and Confrontation / AT-43 are good competition. Dunno how the click / prepainted games do against GW, they may be different enough to not be direct competition.

That ties into the whole demo promotion and league organizations seem pretty much dead, if they were ever really alive.

I know they aren't allowed to sell or stock nonGW stuff. It was the attitude of the guy. Having a pop at a potential customer for what he'd brought prior to coming in struck me as mind numbingly crass way to treat them.

A week later the price of their codices doubled. I dabbled with some Dark Eldar but quickly got my feet out of the shark pool as it was perfectly clear that Dark Eldar were old and useless and unavailable and all sorts of other bollocks - unlike the brand new shiny shiny space marines.

They are a very strange company.

Quote from: stu2000;360192Castle Games, a small, but functional store with dedicated carriage trade. They have an aggravating policy of shrink-wrapping all their books. Three or four big tables.
Heroes and Dragons, a consolidation of the two formerly mall-based comic/game shops. Two-story outfit with retail upstairs and gaming downstairs.
Gamer's Haven--my personal favorite, pays the bills with GW and carries a wide and deep variety of minis, cards, boardgames and rpgs. Retail in the front, a large, separate area in the back of the shop with 12 tall tables for minis and four regular-height tables for cards, painting, etc.

Thanks! I'll have to see if I can check them out sometime...

Seanchai

Quote from: PaladinCA;359897I think brick and mortar stores need six things to succeed.

1-Great customer service.
2-An online presence w/online orders.
3-Discount pricing on large purchases (10-15%).
4-Location, Location, Location.
5-Space for gaming tables, preferably set away from the retail part of the operation.
6-Regularly sheduled events for the gaming community & promotion of the events.

The best game store in my area did all of those, plus:

1) Clean room.
2) A mens room, and a womens room, separate, clean, and well supplied.
3) Wide open and inviting spaces, with no dark corners or back rooms for computer gaming or anything that promotes cliques of smelly guys camping out all day and buying nothing.
4) Cater to a wide variety of interests: RPGs, board games, war games, party games, strategy games, miniatures, CCGs, traditional family games, casino games, chess, jigsaw, etc..

Game Empire's Pasadena store also does all of those things and is pretty much my ideal of what a game store should be, and yet I still rarely go there and almost never buy anything except out of their used bin for $3-4. New product can all be had for cheaper online (and they don't stock most of what I'd be interested in -- small-press "OSR" stuff -- anyway), their used bin is fun for browsing and impulse-buys but if you're looking for a specific title you're still better off at Noble Knight or ebay, and while they host lots of "league"-type games (including a huge monthly RPGA event for 4E D&D) none of it's for games I play, and when I tried to run an old-school D&D game there a few months ago I got zero takers, meaning if I wanted to run a non-4E/RPGA game there I'd still have to recruit players for it just like for a home game (where you're allowed to bring in outside food, don't have to worry about someone else needing your table if the game runs longer than scheduled, and don't have to deal with distracting passers-by and the loud guys at the next table). So, for me, even the "ideal game store" doesn't really offer anything I can't get as well or better online

Quote from: T. Foster;360259Game Empire's Pasadena store also does all of those things and is pretty much my ideal of what a game store should be, and yet I still rarely go there and almost never buy anything except out of their used bin for $3-4. New product can all be had for cheaper online (and they don't stock most of what I'd be interested in -- small-press "OSR" stuff -- anyway), their used bin is fun for browsing and impulse-buys but if you're looking for a specific title you're still better off at Noble Knight or ebay, and while they host lots of "league"-type games (including a huge monthly RPGA event for 4E D&D) none of it's for games I play, and when I tried to run an old-school D&D game there a few months ago I got zero takers, meaning if I wanted to run a non-4E/RPGA game there I'd still have to recruit players for it just like for a home game (where you're allowed to bring in outside food, don't have to worry about someone else needing your table if the game runs longer than scheduled, and don't have to deal with distracting passers-by and the loud guys at the next table). So, for me, even the "ideal game store" doesn't really offer anything I can't get as well or better online

Funny enough, though I posted pics from Gaming Empire San Diego, I actually was thinking of Gaming Empire Pasadena in my post