I'm faily new to the MTG world, but I'm already having a blast and I'm positively hooked.
I've recently started playing and collecting. It's been a journey learning the rules and tricks and my boyfriend who is an avid collector is helping me out.
We are thinking of opening a dedicated MTG card shop near downtown Montreal. We would also like to host MTG events like Booster Draft, Friday Night Magic and Tournaments.
We've been to many stores are still at the market research phase of this project but we don't have anything in the format we are hoping to provide even though there is a lot of competition for card selling.
Can you give me some input?
We already have a decent collection of cards and $30 000 cash for the initial investment. We are willing to draft up a business plan to get an additional $30 000 in funding to tough out the first year and adjustment periods.
Any advice would help. Think of a one stop shop for everything MTG and that would be us.
Unless there is high demand and little competition, sticking exclusively to MtG is a recipe for disaster. I recommend diversifying; sell other cards games, board games, maybe even comic books if you've got the space. Even if your focus is on Magic, having non-Magic product will help.
Glad to hear you're enjoying the game and thinking about turning it into a full-time lifestyle.
However, while I admire your ambition, you should have a very strong game plan from the start and know in advance that Montreal already has a highly competitive Magic market which caters to its equally strong player base, both in terms of retail stores as well as individual collectors and players selling cards to one another online sites like Craigslist, Kijiji, Ebay, etc...
To elaborate, just off the top of my head I can think of at least a few stores in the downtown area which are already well established including but not limited to: Tour de Jeux, Chez Geeks, Valet D'Coeur, Capitaine Quebec, Three Kings Loot, and then you'll have to also compete with various other stores including Face to Face Games (The largest MTG store in Canada), Carta Magica (which has multiple locations), Gamekeeper (which also has multiple locations), and various stores in the west island, east end, and on the south shore. I'm not trying to discourage you by any means as not all new stores fail, but you should know that your venture will be an uphill battle as some like Chimera Games didn't just struggle to survive and stay open, they weren't prepared from the beginning so they never really had a chance.
Lastly, I certainly agree with Lithl that you'll need to sell other non-MTG merchandise. All the stores that survive or thrive do.
EDIT: Just realized I somehow completely omitted Gamer's Vault in Snowdon from the list which is right across the street from a subway station and relatively close to downtown, as well as Palais des Cartes (aka: Card Palace) in Ville Saint Laurent which is also easily accessible via the subway, and is one of very few stores left in the city to keep most sealed products at MSRP instead of inflating them excessively, which is why I preorder my set of Commander decks from them every year there's enough in the set to pique my interest.
Anyhow, the best I can come up with myself is a game in the top 8 of a PTQ back during Urza block in which we were starting game 3 with time already expired, so the tiebreaker rule was that whoever had more life after 3 turns would win. And I lost to... healing salve.
Thank you Lithl and Mystic-X for your very educated and sound advice. I would not want to venture into this endeavour blind and therefore, I'll be conducting a thurough market research.
What made me want to do this is the fact that I've often wondered into stores which had so much varied merchandise that I couldn't find what I was looking for. I found also that the social aspect of the Game was not being exploited enough.
Maybe I haven't visited enough locations. I hope I will be able to countinue to count on your input through my research.
You're very welcome. I've seen many stores rise and fall in this city over the years for different reasons, the saddest of which was the Black Lotus Cafe (previously known as Triple Overtime before it moved around the corner from it's original location in CDN and expanded with a larger showcase, an area to play and lounge out which included a 60" projection tv for satellite movies, movies for rent, comics for trade, a dedicated arcade room in the back, and a kitchen for freshly baked pizza and other food service). When this store cafe closed in the late 90's, it was my favorite venue to play Magic and one of the reasons I took a long hiatus from the game.
In hindsight the owner may not have been the best businessman, but he was incredibly nice, a good role model who motivated many clientsincorrigible youths to stay out of trouble, and very fair in his pricing (whereas most stores often lowball players with their buylist prices). There was a decent congregation of players most days, and to my knowledge the owner never even objected once to people loitering (often for hours) even though many teenagers came solely to play after school but not purchase any product. Admittedly I was one of them one or two days per week because I was still very young and barely had any money to spend, but I always bought the singles, packs, sleeves, etc that I wanted from him whenever I had disposable income from gifts, allowance, or part-time jobs like cleaning and dog-walking (granted there weren't many alternative stores selling Magic to shop at near my parents' place back then regardless). I also regularly split pizzas with friends and pumped plenty of quarters into the arcades with friends. The location was also easily accessible within walking distance from Plamondon subway station, so it's hard to understand why the location failed. Did the store sell other products? There were other card games for sale (which failed miserably to attract followings like Magic's), but no shelves for board games and other merchandise.
So what was the problem? After the store's long-awaited, highly-anticipated expansion, the cafe was too big to support itself in the long run with its existing client demographic while seemingly being unable to attract enough new ones to pay for the added rent, utility, and insurance costs. Why? Unlike today, very few adults played (or even knew about) Magic back then, and let's be honest...when the great majority of your customers are adolescents (albeit mostly private school students), how much business revenue (let alone profit) can one reasonably and realistically expect at the end of the average business day? Furthermore, there was no delivery option for the pizza, and virtually no advertising in the window (at least none that I can recall) to even state that there was pizza available to passersby, so to the untrained eyes walking by, the venue looked like an obscure darkly-lit gaming lounge which served coffee.
The memories are bittersweet, because alas, as previously stated by others, it was simply too good to be true.
Anyhow, the best I can come up with myself is a game in the top 8 of a PTQ back during Urza block in which we were starting game 3 with time already expired, so the tiebreaker rule was that whoever had more life after 3 turns would win. And I lost to... healing salve.
MTG is tricky. Especially recently with the way wotc is releasing products. A few stores recently closed with the releases of MM17 and Amonkhet 1 month apart. They invested in MM17 and were selling the boxes at a lost just to get enough money back to be able to invest in Amonkhet, unfortunately some didn't make it in time and if you miss an event you're pretty much done for.
Also, you have to be able to predict how some products will sell. For example, my buddy owns a shop in rosemere, he already needs to place an order for iconic masters but has no idea what's it about. He has no idea how much to order.
Also, there's only 1 supplier. You better be patient with them and slowly build a good relationship with them because THEY WILL SCREW YOU. For example, they'll tell you that they couldn't fulfill your allocation but they'll send extra cases to another shop that they "like". They have the monopoly and they know it. Stores have closed down because of them.
I strongly suggest to get into comics, pokemon and warhammer. Stay away from Yu-Gi-Oh singles and keep the sealed to a minimum. Unfortunately YGO in montreal is practically dead.
Best advice I can give you, if you do open, do not be afraid to throw troublemakers out. The people that will make fun of newbies or sore losers, they will be cancers and make it very unpleasant for others to come to your shop. So get them out early and you'll be rewarded later on.
I hope I haven't scared you away from your project. Best of luck to you!
Gaming Stores can be tuned to be some nerdy place to be for the weekend.
Just offer some drinks and snacks , maybe get in contact with a fast-food restaurant in your area and team up.
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If you have a reasonable large shop, you can run a bunch of events for different games, so your weekends will be booked out each time.
During the week, you focus on seeling stuff and other products.
The more enjoyable the shop is as a event location, the more people will come, even if they have a shop in their location already (or would buy online etc.).
You can't have too much of a cafe area though, it will only be used during events. Face to Face in verdun only sell some food that you find in gas stations (i.e. sandwiches, pizza pockets, starbucks coffee...).
From my friends store, weekends are the quietest days except during prerelease. For example, he does standard drafts tuesdays, thursdays and saturdays, this week he had 16 people on tuesday, 18 on thursday and only 2 saturday. On the flip side for amonkhet prerelease, he did it friday night, saturday afternoon and night and sunday afternoon and had 50 players for each one plus he had to refuse people because he didnt have enough space in the store.
I would not recommend going downtown. There is already plenty of MTG stores there and the rent would be higher.
Unfortunately, the locations where there is a lack of stores also lack metro access (like the north east of Mtl or the very west). I'd say the west end or east end of the metro line (Angrignon or Honoré-Beaugrand) would be best to have a more exclusive clientele while still be accessible.
I currently play at the Secret des Korrigans since it's the only store somewhat to the east. It would be hard for me to switch since I know all the regulars and the store owner there.
It's hard to compete on price. There are differences, mostly for limited run products like from-the-vault or anthologies. For the rest of sealed products, stores are generally within 5$ or less of each others. There are a few differences in single prices, mostly due to reaction times or inventory, but they also don't diverge much. It would be hard to build a player base solely by trying to compete on prices.
Thank you all for your wonderful suggestions. I am not giving up the idea. But I do want to be careful and take the time to do it properly.
I am taking time to do proper market research. I've started visiting some stores around town. I've been to Face to Face and also a store in West Island (Pierrefonds and St Jean). I find their buying prices a bit outrageous. I also found atmosphere not very inviting to new players.
I want to open a space where all are welcome (newbies and experts alike). I also want to put more focus on the MTG artwork for the deco and host more events (networking and entertainment).
I've looking into rent prices downtown and they are outrageous. Here are some questions for you if you care to answer:
1) Would the presence of a bar encourage you to go to an MTG store (space)?
2) Are you interested in connecting with other MTG players in real life at a social event?
3) Would you buy MTG artwork?
4) In your experience are MTG players also likely manga readers?
5) Would you pay a small entry fee to be allowed to hang indefinitely at an MTG space?
6) Where in Montreal, other than the city center would you travel to to play or buy/sell MTG?
Thank you for the advice Dom4419! I'm still very passionate about this project and I will make it happen. I'll take my time building a good plan and hopefully, soon enough you'll be playing on a Friday night at my location.
1- Getting mtg players in your shop is fairly easy, getting them to regurarly buy products is not.
Suggestion to have a food shop within your store is not a bad idea....people have to eat.....
Btw alchool licenses arent cheap
This is the reason why you have to diversify your product to get various incomes. Le valet de coeur (one of the most notable one) have kept their crappy website for years because they didnt have the money to update it....until recently. You can also look at coolstuffinc....youll see that those 2 have all sorts of products that they rely on to keep going.
2- prices are outrageous in local shop because they dont have volumes to make smaller profits per cards..... Less volume mean they need to make more profits especially knowing some of thoses cards wont sell.....card rotating out of standard....
Like you said, renting is high, so is employee salary, and then you add all these other expenses...
People like me buy on the internet because its way cheaper....coolstuffinc, cardskingdom...
Having larger volume requires more work into keeping track of prices going up and down.
Overall, you have to understand that you might end up having similar prices because at the end of the month, you may end up not being able to pay for everything...
You said you were new to the game, the game as been going on for the past 24 years...store have come and go and it isnt because they didnt know what they were doing, it is because it is hard to sustain ....its hard to make money.....
Store owner didnt lack ingeniosity, some even did grandeur nature to help make some side money...
3- the location of your store is everything....close to school, college and far enought from competitor is going to help getting more customer...it must also be easy to access...such a metro station
Answers to your questions (Please note that I am basing this off of my experience when I played regularly at shops):
1. Yes. I enjoy a good beer, whisky, or wine when I am playing.
2. I would rather connect with players in person, but I probably wouldn't socialize with most of the players from the old shop I went to.
3. Nope. Doesn't fit with my decor.
4. Beats me.
5. Not really. When I used to hang out at stores on a regular basis I was always buying something. But I would have no interest in paying a cover charge to play somewhere. I also refuse to pay cover charges to get into bars or clubs.
6. Not from Montreal so I can't help. I hear it is nice though!
Firstly, not being from Canada, I cant really speak to the local scene or card market up there vs here in the US, but that said I will offer what I can from my experiences being involved with a local shop and owning/running the magic singles and non-standard older sealed product at the shop.
Firstly, yes, Rents in general these days have gotten crazy for any sort of decent location anymore. The cost to just keep the doors open and the lights on (rent/utilities) alone for a decent sized shop set up properly to be able to offer plenty of space for product and events is going to be high, and that cost has to be made up from the profits of the products sold during each particular month (though most new businesses tend to factor in losing money the first couple of years as they build up a loyal customer base and slowly increase sales to a point where breaking even or actually showing a real profit becomes possible.
Secondly going mtg only, as much as I would love to do such a thing myself in the future, just really isn't realistic. I personally am very knowledgeable when it comes to MTG, but have only bits of knowledge about other games. Part of why the owner and I worked so well at the shop for 6 years, before I had to leave due to health reasons, was that he was a bit of a jack of all trades for knowledge of other games, while I was the magic expert, and while magic did make up a huge portion of our sales (easily 50%+), without the sales of the other products the shop offered, there would have been no way that the shop would have succeeded, even with my sales volume being as high as it was and the shop getting 15% off the top of my sales.
Thirdly the time commitment to a successful shop can be huge to say the least. This means typically one of two things. Either A: a willingness to work yourself to death as it were to help make the shop as successful as quickly as possible, or B: to hire people to help run the shop that you trust and are friendly knowledgeable people about the games and the running of a shop to be able to help you keep the shop running the way you want, though that comes with added costs of paying those employees that would have to be factored into the other fixed costs of rent/utilities.
Fourth it helps to be well known among the local magic community if you are planning to open such a theme specific shop to help get more customers into your new shop in a market where there may already be several shops to choose from without having to advertise locally to attract more customers to your location. I know for our shop, the ownership was known by a fair amount of the local community for various things, and I was well known when it came to being the "magic guy" for the large collection I had and my willingness to buy/sell/trade on a regular basis, and to help out shops by buying up parts of their collections that I could at least break even on when they needed money in an attempt to help stabilize them where I could. People knowing who we were helped a lot to bring in various people to check out the shop and word of mouth really helped out immensely from there, I don't think we really ever had to advertise much if at all to get people into the shop.
Fifth, at the end of the day, customer service is most certainly key for any successful business. This means friendly knowledgeable people running the shop, as well as a variety of products (whether magic based sealed/singles) or other products that gamers would be looking for (our shop in addition to an extensive magic sealed product collection, as well as probably the most extensive (or so I was told) magic singles collection in the entire area) we also had a variety of miniature figure game products available for sale, chosen based upon what the local gaming community played, as well as a variety of popular board games and other such things that adjusted as time went on depending upon customer demand and customer feedback.
Sixth, competitive pricing versus other local shops is going to be important to help draw customers in. It there are other shops nearby that are offering a box at $100, and you are trying to sell at $120, its unlikely that you will sell many boxes, the same applies to singles as well as really anything else. This means of course lower potential profit margins, but at the same time, lower profits can be made up by higher volume if the prices are good enough to bring people to your shop specifically. That was a huge advantage that we had as a shop with my magic singles setup, as I wanted to largely support the shop as well as the customers with my magic singles setup, and chose to price basically at the lower end of buy it now prices on ebay for all of my singles, while offering a fair cash buying/trading rate along with having a massive collection to keep the card sales flowing, as well as being a prime spot to come in to sell cards for trade/cash which helped keep the whole thing rolling along and kept customer confidence high which encouraged them to buy/spend more knowing that cashing out or trading for a new deck was possible basically whenever they wanted.
Seventh and hugely important is cash flow. Sitting on massive amount of product and not having it selling quickly enough to keep the cash flowing back into the business to either be reinvested into more product or to pay bills, is a huge things for any business, which is why having a secondary outlet to move excess product is very important. In my case I, and occasionally the owner, would use ebay as a significant outlet for excess stock, in my cast of mostly singles, in the owners case occasionally for other product, something he should have done more of, but just never really got around to enough. Having that cash flow will put you into a position to be able to afford larger collection as they come in at a reasonable cash rate to grow your collection and leave you room for more future profit. Simply buying boxes of new sets and selling standard singles alone isn't going to be terribly profitable, the overall average expected value per box just isn't that great for most sets just shortly after release, and thusly the buying/trading of singles are going to be a significant area to where your profits are going to come from as time goes on.
Future value is another area that can be risky depending upon your inventory level. What I was able to do at the shop I was at, holding such a large and varied collection of cards as I did, was viable at the time due to the large base of customers we were able to draw in, especially those last few years before I left the shop, as well as the game growing at a significant pace as it was to where a lot of the older cards were increasing in value at a steady pace that made buy/old on a lot of the older stuff a perfectly viable option. However these days, the risk of doing that has increased significantly with how much more wizards is reprinting older cards in various products and how much non-standard set product has stagnated in value (RTR to now really it seems) since I left the shop the end of 2012. Also the ebb and flow in popularity of other games can be a detriment there too, I've seen plenty of games come out of the gates red hot in popularity and sales, only to be gone within a couple years, sometimes leaving shops with a bunch of excess inventory that can be near worthless, which is why picking your games carefully can be hugely important, as well as using ebay and such as an outlet to move stagnant product.
Having bottled drinks (soda/water/energy drinks/etc) as well as snacks of various kinds is also important to helping keep customers around which can increase their likelihood of spending more money on other products there. And snacks/drinks often can be a solid area of potential sales/profits for a shop if handled properly. I am unsure whether offering alcoholic drinks is the best of ideas, especially if you are going to have a lot of underage people around in the shop. I know many shops will allow people to bring in outside food, which can often be fine depending upon how you want your setup to be. You want to encourage people to stay a while and be available to play with others as they come in, that atmosphere of game and play availability is important to attracting more people to come in and populate the shop and of course spending more money.
As far as charging a cover charge goes, I really don't think that's a good idea, unless its some exclusive event you are running where there is an added benefit for coming there for the event, such as free food or otherwise, but generally customers tend to not like the idea of having to pay a fee just to be able to come into a shop. I don't really know much about magic artwork as far as that goes, so I don't know how popular that sort of thing would be, but would be something to look into.
At the end of the day running a shop is not easy, and far more shops fail than succeed, but if done right, and with enough initial planning and financing, it is possible to succeed at doing, you just have to have the right people running the place, enough financing to keep the place open until it can finally break even, and the right variety of products available at the right prices to attract people into your shop versus all of the others.
Thank you Lithl and Mystic-X for your very educated and sound advice. I would not want to venture into this endeavour blind and therefore, I'll be conducting a thurough market research.
What made me want to do this is the fact that I've often wondered into stores which had so much varied merchandise that I couldn't find what I was looking for. I found also that the social aspect of the Game was not being exploited enough.
Maybe I haven't visited enough locations. I hope I will be able to countinue to count on your input through my research.
Thanks again and regards
1. Sell things other than MTG cards. Other games, board games, other TCG's, Video Game memorabilia, collectibles, fun geeky toys (go to ThinkGeek for some ideas) fidget spinners, whatever. Also sell food and drink. Gotta diversify.
2. Find something that sets you apart from the other stores. You need add more value to the customer/player experience. You have to find something the other stores do not do, that people want, and do it.
3. For the love of God invest in decent lighting. I hate playing under the generic fluorescent lights. Even if you have regular fluro lights during shop hours and then when you switch the gaming in the evening, switch to some softer light, it is easier on the eyes.
4. Make going to the store an experience, not just "going to a store to buy goods". For example, instead of buying generic foldable tables, try to find some nice rich wooden tables, or build them yourself, they do not have to be expensive, but make the surroundings pleasing to the eye. Add some nicer wood furniture, lighting, lamps, tapestries, etc. Make people feel like they are walking into a place reminiscent of Knights, Wizards, middle age-ish type stuff.
Make it an experience.
5. Be price competitive
6. Build a relationship with your clients.
7. Have an awesome security system, cameras everywhere. This is for two reasons. First it protects you from being robbed and if you are robbed you can find the person that did it. Secondly, if someone has their cards stolen in the store, you can track them down, get the person their cards back, and become a hero. People will feel comfortable knowing crooks are being watched, and it will deter crooks in the first place.
8. This one may suck, but you need to have pretty late hours. People may want to play til midnight on the weekends, you should think about accommodating this.
9. Social Media marketing. If you are opening a store like this, you need to be posting on social media every hour. Just random stuff, pictures of cards, of people playing, the decor in the store, etc.
I'm personally a mtg player but realistically you need to do mtg, yugioh and pokemon. Your real money is going to come from yugioh. I hate to say that but it's the truth and dealing with yugioh (konami) is a whole new ball game. They have some fairly strict rules. You need to be aware that you buying singles of mtg cards will vary on the condition of the card. Use tcgplayer for a price guide when buying. You will need vending machines or buy bulk snacks and drinks to sale. You need to have enough money set back to pay for the Bill's and rent for the first year. Do online advertising through fb and other social media. Mail and newspaper flyers could help. Make sure you dont have too much competition for your town. Also look into holding smash bros. Video game tournaments once a month you can provide a couple of screens and systems but the real players will bring their own setup. You could a ln so have a few gaming systems setup for everyday use charging by the hour but if so look into having it setup to where they cant touch the discs. You can have free wifi or charge a reasonable rate for it better places also sell comics and books for pathfinder d&d and other such games. And even sale board games. Have a family game night like on tuesday where families can come play board games you have strictly for public free use it gets moms and dads enjoying coming up to your store. Have set schedule for what nights are for what like mtg standard, modern pioneer pauper edh and such though people can come play whatever whenever it's good to have a schedule so people looking to play a certain format know when they are likely to be able to play it. Have yugio a couple of times a week as well. Have pokemon at least once a week. You need to be knowledgable or have employees that are knowledgable of the different card games if you can hire a level 0 or 1 judge so you have that but dont really have to pay much extra for it all the better. If you become large enough to host qualifiers you will need to hire actual judges for the events. You really are talking about alot involved in having a thriving business in this line of business and it does help if you enjoy it and it's not just a business. There will be other costs like using card swiping system you will need cameras for security. Display cases can be bought second hand and in good condition. Lots of chairs and tables. Oh you might also look into the miniature games where you sell the miniatures they paint them make their little armies and fight each other using rulers and dice games like warhammer there are also people who do like civil war bicentennial war world war one and so on. You provide tables sell snacks and drinks normal snack like candy bars chips donut packs and so on but you can also sell stuff like pizza pockets frozen microwavable hamburgers and such. Possibilities are endless with what you can do but we have all this in our store and we do very well. But again you will honestly make more off yugioh than mtg so do yugioh as well if nothing else oh and as to the person above talking about doing wooden furniture and such yeah maybe for some little small store but most people dont take care of other people's stuff and accidents happen only worry about wooden tables for the miniature games you can make the place enjoyable without that but definately not hard metal chairs not if you want them staying long or enjoying sitting around playing. You can potentially make quite a bit off snacks and drinks from people sitting around playing. I do agree with making the surroundings game friendly and enjoyable get alot og mtg posters have some nice big emblems made and painted for the different mana bases and mana color combos like Dimir and such
I'm faily new to the MTG world, but I'm already having a blast and I'm positively hooked.
I've recently started playing and collecting. It's been a journey learning the rules and tricks and my boyfriend who is an avid collector is helping me out.
We are thinking of opening a dedicated MTG card shop near downtown Montreal. We would also like to host MTG events like Booster Draft, Friday Night Magic and Tournaments.
We've been to many stores are still at the market research phase of this project but we don't have anything in the format we are hoping to provide even though there is a lot of competition for card selling.
Can you give me some input?
We already have a decent collection of cards and $30 000 cash for the initial investment. We are willing to draft up a business plan to get an additional $30 000 in funding to tough out the first year and adjustment periods.
Any advice would help. Think of a one stop shop for everything MTG and that would be us.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)
Glad to hear you're enjoying the game and thinking about turning it into a full-time lifestyle.
However, while I admire your ambition, you should have a very strong game plan from the start and know in advance that Montreal already has a highly competitive Magic market which caters to its equally strong player base, both in terms of retail stores as well as individual collectors and players selling cards to one another online sites like Craigslist, Kijiji, Ebay, etc...
To elaborate, just off the top of my head I can think of at least a few stores in the downtown area which are already well established including but not limited to: Tour de Jeux, Chez Geeks, Valet D'Coeur, Capitaine Quebec, Three Kings Loot, and then you'll have to also compete with various other stores including Face to Face Games (The largest MTG store in Canada), Carta Magica (which has multiple locations), Gamekeeper (which also has multiple locations), and various stores in the west island, east end, and on the south shore. I'm not trying to discourage you by any means as not all new stores fail, but you should know that your venture will be an uphill battle as some like Chimera Games didn't just struggle to survive and stay open, they weren't prepared from the beginning so they never really had a chance.
Lastly, I certainly agree with Lithl that you'll need to sell other non-MTG merchandise. All the stores that survive or thrive do.
EDIT: Just realized I somehow completely omitted Gamer's Vault in Snowdon from the list which is right across the street from a subway station and relatively close to downtown, as well as Palais des Cartes (aka: Card Palace) in Ville Saint Laurent which is also easily accessible via the subway, and is one of very few stores left in the city to keep most sealed products at MSRP instead of inflating them excessively, which is why I preorder my set of Commander decks from them every year there's enough in the set to pique my interest.
What made me want to do this is the fact that I've often wondered into stores which had so much varied merchandise that I couldn't find what I was looking for. I found also that the social aspect of the Game was not being exploited enough.
Maybe I haven't visited enough locations. I hope I will be able to countinue to count on your input through my research.
Thanks again and regards
storecafe closed in the late 90's, it was my favorite venue to play Magic and one of the reasons I took a long hiatus from the game."Daniel / Protoman" on ManaDeprived described it as: "One of those “Too good to be true” anime/card arcade places of that era." as well as: "The ultimate hang out and paradise". As someone who frequented the location first hand, I can concur that description as accurate.
In hindsight the owner may not have been the best businessman, but he was incredibly nice, a good role model who motivated many
clientsincorrigible youths to stay out of trouble, and very fair in his pricing (whereas most stores often lowball players with their buylist prices). There was a decent congregation of players most days, and to my knowledge the owner never even objected once to people loitering (often for hours) even though many teenagers came solely to play after school but not purchase any product. Admittedly I was one of them one or two days per week because I was still very young and barely had any money to spend, but I always bought the singles, packs, sleeves, etc that I wanted from him whenever I had disposable income from gifts, allowance, or part-time jobs like cleaning and dog-walking (granted there weren't many alternative stores selling Magic to shop at near my parents' place back then regardless). I also regularly split pizzas with friends and pumped plenty of quarters into the arcades with friends. The location was also easily accessible within walking distance from Plamondon subway station, so it's hard to understand why the location failed. Did the store sell other products? There were other card games for sale (which failed miserably to attract followings like Magic's), but no shelves for board games and other merchandise.So what was the problem? After the store's long-awaited, highly-anticipated expansion, the cafe was too big to support itself in the long run with its existing client demographic while seemingly being unable to attract enough new ones to pay for the added rent, utility, and insurance costs. Why? Unlike today, very few adults played (or even knew about) Magic back then, and let's be honest...when the great majority of your customers are adolescents (albeit mostly private school students), how much business revenue (let alone profit) can one reasonably and realistically expect at the end of the average business day? Furthermore, there was no delivery option for the pizza, and virtually no advertising in the window (at least none that I can recall) to even state that there was pizza available to passersby, so to the untrained eyes walking by, the venue looked like an obscure darkly-lit gaming lounge which served coffee.
The memories are bittersweet, because alas, as previously stated by others, it was simply too good to be true.
Also, you have to be able to predict how some products will sell. For example, my buddy owns a shop in rosemere, he already needs to place an order for iconic masters but has no idea what's it about. He has no idea how much to order.
Also, there's only 1 supplier. You better be patient with them and slowly build a good relationship with them because THEY WILL SCREW YOU. For example, they'll tell you that they couldn't fulfill your allocation but they'll send extra cases to another shop that they "like". They have the monopoly and they know it. Stores have closed down because of them.
I strongly suggest to get into comics, pokemon and warhammer. Stay away from Yu-Gi-Oh singles and keep the sealed to a minimum. Unfortunately YGO in montreal is practically dead.
Best advice I can give you, if you do open, do not be afraid to throw troublemakers out. The people that will make fun of newbies or sore losers, they will be cancers and make it very unpleasant for others to come to your shop. So get them out early and you'll be rewarded later on.
I hope I haven't scared you away from your project. Best of luck to you!
Just offer some drinks and snacks , maybe get in contact with a fast-food restaurant in your area and team up.
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If you have a reasonable large shop, you can run a bunch of events for different games, so your weekends will be booked out each time.
During the week, you focus on seeling stuff and other products.
The more enjoyable the shop is as a event location, the more people will come, even if they have a shop in their location already (or would buy online etc.).
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
From my friends store, weekends are the quietest days except during prerelease. For example, he does standard drafts tuesdays, thursdays and saturdays, this week he had 16 people on tuesday, 18 on thursday and only 2 saturday. On the flip side for amonkhet prerelease, he did it friday night, saturday afternoon and night and sunday afternoon and had 50 players for each one plus he had to refuse people because he didnt have enough space in the store.
Unfortunately, the locations where there is a lack of stores also lack metro access (like the north east of Mtl or the very west). I'd say the west end or east end of the metro line (Angrignon or Honoré-Beaugrand) would be best to have a more exclusive clientele while still be accessible.
I currently play at the Secret des Korrigans since it's the only store somewhat to the east. It would be hard for me to switch since I know all the regulars and the store owner there.
It's hard to compete on price. There are differences, mostly for limited run products like from-the-vault or anthologies. For the rest of sealed products, stores are generally within 5$ or less of each others. There are a few differences in single prices, mostly due to reaction times or inventory, but they also don't diverge much. It would be hard to build a player base solely by trying to compete on prices.
I am taking time to do proper market research. I've started visiting some stores around town. I've been to Face to Face and also a store in West Island (Pierrefonds and St Jean). I find their buying prices a bit outrageous. I also found atmosphere not very inviting to new players.
I want to open a space where all are welcome (newbies and experts alike). I also want to put more focus on the MTG artwork for the deco and host more events (networking and entertainment).
I've looking into rent prices downtown and they are outrageous. Here are some questions for you if you care to answer:
1) Would the presence of a bar encourage you to go to an MTG store (space)?
2) Are you interested in connecting with other MTG players in real life at a social event?
3) Would you buy MTG artwork?
4) In your experience are MTG players also likely manga readers?
5) Would you pay a small entry fee to be allowed to hang indefinitely at an MTG space?
6) Where in Montreal, other than the city center would you travel to to play or buy/sell MTG?
Can't wait for your answers.
Cheers!
Thanks again and best regards
Suggestion to have a food shop within your store is not a bad idea....people have to eat.....
Btw alchool licenses arent cheap
This is the reason why you have to diversify your product to get various incomes. Le valet de coeur (one of the most notable one) have kept their crappy website for years because they didnt have the money to update it....until recently. You can also look at coolstuffinc....youll see that those 2 have all sorts of products that they rely on to keep going.
2- prices are outrageous in local shop because they dont have volumes to make smaller profits per cards..... Less volume mean they need to make more profits especially knowing some of thoses cards wont sell.....card rotating out of standard....
Like you said, renting is high, so is employee salary, and then you add all these other expenses...
People like me buy on the internet because its way cheaper....coolstuffinc, cardskingdom...
Having larger volume requires more work into keeping track of prices going up and down.
Overall, you have to understand that you might end up having similar prices because at the end of the month, you may end up not being able to pay for everything...
You said you were new to the game, the game as been going on for the past 24 years...store have come and go and it isnt because they didnt know what they were doing, it is because it is hard to sustain ....its hard to make money.....
Store owner didnt lack ingeniosity, some even did grandeur nature to help make some side money...
3- the location of your store is everything....close to school, college and far enought from competitor is going to help getting more customer...it must also be easy to access...such a metro station
1. Yes. I enjoy a good beer, whisky, or wine when I am playing.
2. I would rather connect with players in person, but I probably wouldn't socialize with most of the players from the old shop I went to.
3. Nope. Doesn't fit with my decor.
4. Beats me.
5. Not really. When I used to hang out at stores on a regular basis I was always buying something. But I would have no interest in paying a cover charge to play somewhere. I also refuse to pay cover charges to get into bars or clubs.
6. Not from Montreal so I can't help. I hear it is nice though!
- Matt
Firstly, yes, Rents in general these days have gotten crazy for any sort of decent location anymore. The cost to just keep the doors open and the lights on (rent/utilities) alone for a decent sized shop set up properly to be able to offer plenty of space for product and events is going to be high, and that cost has to be made up from the profits of the products sold during each particular month (though most new businesses tend to factor in losing money the first couple of years as they build up a loyal customer base and slowly increase sales to a point where breaking even or actually showing a real profit becomes possible.
Secondly going mtg only, as much as I would love to do such a thing myself in the future, just really isn't realistic. I personally am very knowledgeable when it comes to MTG, but have only bits of knowledge about other games. Part of why the owner and I worked so well at the shop for 6 years, before I had to leave due to health reasons, was that he was a bit of a jack of all trades for knowledge of other games, while I was the magic expert, and while magic did make up a huge portion of our sales (easily 50%+), without the sales of the other products the shop offered, there would have been no way that the shop would have succeeded, even with my sales volume being as high as it was and the shop getting 15% off the top of my sales.
Thirdly the time commitment to a successful shop can be huge to say the least. This means typically one of two things. Either A: a willingness to work yourself to death as it were to help make the shop as successful as quickly as possible, or B: to hire people to help run the shop that you trust and are friendly knowledgeable people about the games and the running of a shop to be able to help you keep the shop running the way you want, though that comes with added costs of paying those employees that would have to be factored into the other fixed costs of rent/utilities.
Fourth it helps to be well known among the local magic community if you are planning to open such a theme specific shop to help get more customers into your new shop in a market where there may already be several shops to choose from without having to advertise locally to attract more customers to your location. I know for our shop, the ownership was known by a fair amount of the local community for various things, and I was well known when it came to being the "magic guy" for the large collection I had and my willingness to buy/sell/trade on a regular basis, and to help out shops by buying up parts of their collections that I could at least break even on when they needed money in an attempt to help stabilize them where I could. People knowing who we were helped a lot to bring in various people to check out the shop and word of mouth really helped out immensely from there, I don't think we really ever had to advertise much if at all to get people into the shop.
Fifth, at the end of the day, customer service is most certainly key for any successful business. This means friendly knowledgeable people running the shop, as well as a variety of products (whether magic based sealed/singles) or other products that gamers would be looking for (our shop in addition to an extensive magic sealed product collection, as well as probably the most extensive (or so I was told) magic singles collection in the entire area) we also had a variety of miniature figure game products available for sale, chosen based upon what the local gaming community played, as well as a variety of popular board games and other such things that adjusted as time went on depending upon customer demand and customer feedback.
Sixth, competitive pricing versus other local shops is going to be important to help draw customers in. It there are other shops nearby that are offering a box at $100, and you are trying to sell at $120, its unlikely that you will sell many boxes, the same applies to singles as well as really anything else. This means of course lower potential profit margins, but at the same time, lower profits can be made up by higher volume if the prices are good enough to bring people to your shop specifically. That was a huge advantage that we had as a shop with my magic singles setup, as I wanted to largely support the shop as well as the customers with my magic singles setup, and chose to price basically at the lower end of buy it now prices on ebay for all of my singles, while offering a fair cash buying/trading rate along with having a massive collection to keep the card sales flowing, as well as being a prime spot to come in to sell cards for trade/cash which helped keep the whole thing rolling along and kept customer confidence high which encouraged them to buy/spend more knowing that cashing out or trading for a new deck was possible basically whenever they wanted.
Seventh and hugely important is cash flow. Sitting on massive amount of product and not having it selling quickly enough to keep the cash flowing back into the business to either be reinvested into more product or to pay bills, is a huge things for any business, which is why having a secondary outlet to move excess product is very important. In my case I, and occasionally the owner, would use ebay as a significant outlet for excess stock, in my cast of mostly singles, in the owners case occasionally for other product, something he should have done more of, but just never really got around to enough. Having that cash flow will put you into a position to be able to afford larger collection as they come in at a reasonable cash rate to grow your collection and leave you room for more future profit. Simply buying boxes of new sets and selling standard singles alone isn't going to be terribly profitable, the overall average expected value per box just isn't that great for most sets just shortly after release, and thusly the buying/trading of singles are going to be a significant area to where your profits are going to come from as time goes on.
Future value is another area that can be risky depending upon your inventory level. What I was able to do at the shop I was at, holding such a large and varied collection of cards as I did, was viable at the time due to the large base of customers we were able to draw in, especially those last few years before I left the shop, as well as the game growing at a significant pace as it was to where a lot of the older cards were increasing in value at a steady pace that made buy/old on a lot of the older stuff a perfectly viable option. However these days, the risk of doing that has increased significantly with how much more wizards is reprinting older cards in various products and how much non-standard set product has stagnated in value (RTR to now really it seems) since I left the shop the end of 2012. Also the ebb and flow in popularity of other games can be a detriment there too, I've seen plenty of games come out of the gates red hot in popularity and sales, only to be gone within a couple years, sometimes leaving shops with a bunch of excess inventory that can be near worthless, which is why picking your games carefully can be hugely important, as well as using ebay and such as an outlet to move stagnant product.
Having bottled drinks (soda/water/energy drinks/etc) as well as snacks of various kinds is also important to helping keep customers around which can increase their likelihood of spending more money on other products there. And snacks/drinks often can be a solid area of potential sales/profits for a shop if handled properly. I am unsure whether offering alcoholic drinks is the best of ideas, especially if you are going to have a lot of underage people around in the shop. I know many shops will allow people to bring in outside food, which can often be fine depending upon how you want your setup to be. You want to encourage people to stay a while and be available to play with others as they come in, that atmosphere of game and play availability is important to attracting more people to come in and populate the shop and of course spending more money.
As far as charging a cover charge goes, I really don't think that's a good idea, unless its some exclusive event you are running where there is an added benefit for coming there for the event, such as free food or otherwise, but generally customers tend to not like the idea of having to pay a fee just to be able to come into a shop. I don't really know much about magic artwork as far as that goes, so I don't know how popular that sort of thing would be, but would be something to look into.
At the end of the day running a shop is not easy, and far more shops fail than succeed, but if done right, and with enough initial planning and financing, it is possible to succeed at doing, you just have to have the right people running the place, enough financing to keep the place open until it can finally break even, and the right variety of products available at the right prices to attract people into your shop versus all of the others.
1. Sell things other than MTG cards. Other games, board games, other TCG's, Video Game memorabilia, collectibles, fun geeky toys (go to ThinkGeek for some ideas) fidget spinners, whatever. Also sell food and drink. Gotta diversify.
2. Find something that sets you apart from the other stores. You need add more value to the customer/player experience. You have to find something the other stores do not do, that people want, and do it.
3. For the love of God invest in decent lighting. I hate playing under the generic fluorescent lights. Even if you have regular fluro lights during shop hours and then when you switch the gaming in the evening, switch to some softer light, it is easier on the eyes.
4. Make going to the store an experience, not just "going to a store to buy goods". For example, instead of buying generic foldable tables, try to find some nice rich wooden tables, or build them yourself, they do not have to be expensive, but make the surroundings pleasing to the eye. Add some nicer wood furniture, lighting, lamps, tapestries, etc. Make people feel like they are walking into a place reminiscent of Knights, Wizards, middle age-ish type stuff.
Make it an experience.
5. Be price competitive
6. Build a relationship with your clients.
7. Have an awesome security system, cameras everywhere. This is for two reasons. First it protects you from being robbed and if you are robbed you can find the person that did it. Secondly, if someone has their cards stolen in the store, you can track them down, get the person their cards back, and become a hero. People will feel comfortable knowing crooks are being watched, and it will deter crooks in the first place.
8. This one may suck, but you need to have pretty late hours. People may want to play til midnight on the weekends, you should think about accommodating this.
9. Social Media marketing. If you are opening a store like this, you need to be posting on social media every hour. Just random stuff, pictures of cards, of people playing, the decor in the store, etc.
If I think of more I will add it.