My old LGS is one of the largest in the US. I don't think I ever saw the owner sit down to play games at work in the ~decade that I went there. Most of the time, he was in the back room doing stuff for the store on his computer (financials, etc.). When he was in the front, we was doing actual work as well, like buying singles (he was the only one authorized to buy anything not on the printed buylist).
The other employees didn't sit down to play games during work either, although several of them would play when they were off. They all had jobs to do. All of that work led to the LGS buying a large grocery store's building for their new location several years ago. They've got close to a dozen display cases of singles for sale, plus more boxes of singles behind the counter and all kinds of sealed product on the shelves.
Compare that to the LGS I went to while at college, where the store owners were playing EDH almost every day, and they could barely afford a tiny store with barely enough space to accommodate the people showing up for prerelease, and just one singles case. Their location also only had maybe a half dozen parking spaces, with most customers forced to park on the street around the corner.
The two game stores that I go to, the owner and their partner employees are constantly busy all hours of the day they are open. Store maintenance/house keeping/cleaning up, organizing, sorting product that just arrived, pricing, helping customers. They never sit down to play. Occasionally at the one I frequent most, an employee of the store - but not the owner himself - will play in events to help fill one to fire off or teach people to play the game. But the owner and everyone else is still constantly busy.
Oddly enough the only store I've been to in the greater Houston area where the sole guy running the shop usually would sit down to play, the store was horribly mismanaged and inevitably closed down. The store and it's finances were mismanaged and new customers were put off by constantly waiting for him.
What do you do day to day other than attending to customers? In my LGS, they play games when they are free. Sounds like a dream job to me.
One thing to remember about being a business owner, is that you get out of your business what you put into it. The more effort and time you put in to building your business, building your inventory, sales, and customer base, the bigger your business will grow, and the more potential for eventual profits to be gained there will be (after fixed expenses like rent/utilities/employee costs/etc etc). Many people who open up a shop do it because they think it will be easy, and because they view it as a way to be able to casually run a business while having a place for them to be able to enjoy gaming at. The realities are often very different from that though. If you want to be successful you had better be prepared to work hard, work potentially long hours, and only sit down to play games if its for the benefit of the business or if you actually are all caught up on your work. That's the thing though, a properly run gaming store, is typically never "caught up" on work to do. There is always something to be done.
That's not to say that you cant take a day off every now and then, especially if you have employees that can give you that time, but really a properly run gaming store should always have something for their employees to do.
I owned and ran the magic singles and non-standard sealed product for a local game store for 6 years, in addition to significant online sales besides that. The first couple of years as the business was growing, there was certainly times where the work was caught up on, but as business grew, that sort of free time came and went. The last 3 years I was at the shop, I was working constantly, between the shop and my online sales I was working 15 hours a day, 7 days a week 52 weeks a year (no vacations, no time off, save for holidays like thanksgiving and Christmas), and even then I still wasn't able to 100% keep up with everything because of how busy we had gotten.
As for what work an owner or employee of a gaming shop should be doing or would be doing, that could include some or all of the following:
Magic the gathering or other collectible card games: Sorting cards, pricing cards, inventorying cards, constantly re-adjusting prices on cards as the market adjusts, dealing with people wanting to sell the shop cards, dealing with people wanting to trade cards into the shop, dealing with people wanting to straight up buy cards, helping customers determine what they want to purchase or how to improve their decks (whether for the optimal version of the deck, or on a budget as needed), or just generally answering questions. Keeping knowledgeable about the rules and any new keywords/abilities/interactions that could come up if someone has a rules question, Keeping up on new cards, and potential interactions with old cards that could cause them to suddenly spike in value. Restocking inventory as needed. And that's just at the shop. Add to that online sales, where you have to deal with inventory there, pictures, listing things, answering questions, packging up and shipping things daily, adjusting prices, etc etc.
Needless to say, you likely get the idea. There should ALWAYS be something to do, at a shop that is actually interested in making money and providing the sorts of inventory, prices, and customer service that local gamers would be looking for.
I think it depends on the store. There are a handful of MTG shops in my area. One was derium's and they would play WoW at work or play EDH with customers and they seemed just fine. (granted they dropped mtg for pokemon and i dont go there anymore) Another store that sells magic but is more of a D and D/board game store is similar. I have walked in and the guy at the counter is watching youtube videos or playing a demo of a board game. Both of these shops are doing fine, derium's was looking to expand i think and the board game shop has been around for over 10 years. There was another shop where I never saw the workers not working. Sorting, dealing with customers, running tournaments, and that shop got shut down cause it couldnt compete with others in the area.
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I think it depends on the store. There are a handful of MTG shops in my area. One was derium's and they would play WoW at work or play EDH with customers and they seemed just fine. (granted they dropped mtg for pokemon and i dont go there anymore)
Right there with you. I used to love going to Derium's to play EDH... then they stopped being open on the weekends so I could really only go there for a few hours after work on Thursdays, and hope there would be other players (towards the end there frequently would not). The final nail in the coffin was when they changed their store hours so I literally couldn't get there before they were already closed; never been back since.
Not the owner, but an employee. Customers in the store are always priority #1. Apart from that I restock the fridge and snacks, clean the store, restock/organize product, adjust prices, go out and grab either food for the team or other stuff we need atm, package/ship online orders and theres much more that I probably forgot. There's plenty of time to play a few games on some days, but I'd feel very unproductive doing so. I'd rather attend to the things I already mentioned.
I'm SO SICK of the "too strong for Standard" argument. It's the new "Dies to removal". We can have a two mana 4/4 with a zillion abilities, but we can't just have Accumulated Knowledge. Makes sense.
I worked for a woman who really only understood sports stuff. I started working there to take care of the comics and game section. During the summers, I ran a comic/card shop for her about 45 minutes away at a resort town. It was so small I think it was actually a converted bathroom for the video store next door. Other than restocking or rotating merchandise, there wasn't much work to do.
I never got a lot of customers. So if Johnny came in wanting to play a game, I usually set up a table and played a few.
Both towns loved sports but were far too practical to really support comics or cards. It was very difficult to compete on sports pack sales when the likes of 7-11 sold them .50 cheaper. Both towns had terribe network access so managing a website was out of the picture. There's usually an LGS there and it usually folds as soon as there is any sort of downturn. People see this town and try but never really do the research for previous failures.
She eventually closed up shop and moved her collection back home. I have no idea what happened to her after that.
Salt is part of the game. Deal with it.
I know a lot of workers spend time organizing cards, or price listing stuff. Organizing the store, maybe playing games when there is free time.
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The other employees didn't sit down to play games during work either, although several of them would play when they were off. They all had jobs to do. All of that work led to the LGS buying a large grocery store's building for their new location several years ago. They've got close to a dozen display cases of singles for sale, plus more boxes of singles behind the counter and all kinds of sealed product on the shelves.
Compare that to the LGS I went to while at college, where the store owners were playing EDH almost every day, and they could barely afford a tiny store with barely enough space to accommodate the people showing up for prerelease, and just one singles case. Their location also only had maybe a half dozen parking spaces, with most customers forced to park on the street around the corner.
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Oddly enough the only store I've been to in the greater Houston area where the sole guy running the shop usually would sit down to play, the store was horribly mismanaged and inevitably closed down. The store and it's finances were mismanaged and new customers were put off by constantly waiting for him.
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One thing to remember about being a business owner, is that you get out of your business what you put into it. The more effort and time you put in to building your business, building your inventory, sales, and customer base, the bigger your business will grow, and the more potential for eventual profits to be gained there will be (after fixed expenses like rent/utilities/employee costs/etc etc). Many people who open up a shop do it because they think it will be easy, and because they view it as a way to be able to casually run a business while having a place for them to be able to enjoy gaming at. The realities are often very different from that though. If you want to be successful you had better be prepared to work hard, work potentially long hours, and only sit down to play games if its for the benefit of the business or if you actually are all caught up on your work. That's the thing though, a properly run gaming store, is typically never "caught up" on work to do. There is always something to be done.
That's not to say that you cant take a day off every now and then, especially if you have employees that can give you that time, but really a properly run gaming store should always have something for their employees to do.
I owned and ran the magic singles and non-standard sealed product for a local game store for 6 years, in addition to significant online sales besides that. The first couple of years as the business was growing, there was certainly times where the work was caught up on, but as business grew, that sort of free time came and went. The last 3 years I was at the shop, I was working constantly, between the shop and my online sales I was working 15 hours a day, 7 days a week 52 weeks a year (no vacations, no time off, save for holidays like thanksgiving and Christmas), and even then I still wasn't able to 100% keep up with everything because of how busy we had gotten.
As for what work an owner or employee of a gaming shop should be doing or would be doing, that could include some or all of the following:
Magic the gathering or other collectible card games: Sorting cards, pricing cards, inventorying cards, constantly re-adjusting prices on cards as the market adjusts, dealing with people wanting to sell the shop cards, dealing with people wanting to trade cards into the shop, dealing with people wanting to straight up buy cards, helping customers determine what they want to purchase or how to improve their decks (whether for the optimal version of the deck, or on a budget as needed), or just generally answering questions. Keeping knowledgeable about the rules and any new keywords/abilities/interactions that could come up if someone has a rules question, Keeping up on new cards, and potential interactions with old cards that could cause them to suddenly spike in value. Restocking inventory as needed. And that's just at the shop. Add to that online sales, where you have to deal with inventory there, pictures, listing things, answering questions, packging up and shipping things daily, adjusting prices, etc etc.
Needless to say, you likely get the idea. There should ALWAYS be something to do, at a shop that is actually interested in making money and providing the sorts of inventory, prices, and customer service that local gamers would be looking for.
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I never got a lot of customers. So if Johnny came in wanting to play a game, I usually set up a table and played a few.
Both towns loved sports but were far too practical to really support comics or cards. It was very difficult to compete on sports pack sales when the likes of 7-11 sold them .50 cheaper. Both towns had terribe network access so managing a website was out of the picture. There's usually an LGS there and it usually folds as soon as there is any sort of downturn. People see this town and try but never really do the research for previous failures.
She eventually closed up shop and moved her collection back home. I have no idea what happened to her after that.
Old thread, so I'm locking it down.
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