FLGS 2.0

While in high school, I watched hobby shop after hobby shop shutter its doors in my (original) hometown.  I couldn't understand why this lucrative and noble profession didn't flourish as I loaded box after box of steeply discounted RPG materials that didn't sell into my car.  It didn't occur to me until the dawn of Amazon that it was particularly regular that I couldn't find specific books in my friendly local gaming shop (FLGS).  I had more luck finding Vampire: Revised books in my local Waldenbooks than at my hobby shop.  For the next decade, I would primarily make my purchases online, not only not supporting my FLGS, but encouraging their obliteration.

It wasn't until I saw Games Workshop's sales figures for the first time that I particularly understood why.  Here are ten lessons I've come to learn about a successful FLGS thanks to Games Workshop stores.

1. What You Came to Buy is Irrelevant

After chatting extensively with a local redshirt, I noticed that he would draw your attention to the models and engage you in a conversation about buying stock -- but that particular sale was noncommittal.  They were always understocked of anything except the latest models.  It was meant to be a lead-in for the true profit point.  At the point where you got to the register, he'd suddenly be suggesting paints, glues, and miscellaneous hobby supplies as impulse buys.  You were trapped, with an armful of merchandise, easily spending $20-30 more than you'd intended.  This total, of course, did not account for the money that went to the local Chik-Fil-A next door, or elsewhere in the mall.
Games Workshop hinges on selling players incidentals, and these are more important than anything else in the store barring the newest releases for Fantasy and 40k (and LoTR, but no one plays that) that get people in the store.  The focus on a hobby shop should also be incidentals.  If you cater to wargamers, have your glues, paints, dice, etc. prominently displayed.  Remind players that they need a stack of d12s since they were talking about a Barbarian earlier.  "I heard you like Shadowrun.  You might want this pack of 150d6!"  While they're at the counter, sell them a starter of the latest Magic edition, since we all know people who've ever touched that game are curious enough to buy a starter at least once per cycle.  Have sodas, snacks, and food ready and cheap, so players don't leave to hit up the local King McWendybell.

2. Stay as Long as You'd Like; We Have All Day to Sell Things to You.
 The merchandise, then, is primarily there to keep the tables company.  You're more than welcome to sit down all day and paint, or play.  They want you to hang around, because you're more likely to buy -- and if a hobby shop involved food and drinks, you're more likely to spend.  Most people coming in to play already have possession of the thing they intend to play with.  A modern hobby shop would serve as some sort of hybrid between the sales attitude of a gym (where staff go out of their way to engage you in order to get you in the door more frequently), a hobby shop, and a Starbuck's.  Get them in the door by having them come play, and have them stay for quite a bit.  Run events, painting seminars, and activities constantly.

3. The First Rule About Mordheim...
Salesmen only talk about the absolute newest product.  If the product you want has to be found elsewhere, you're quietly ushered along in your business.  Remember, you're there to facilitate sales to other customers while you're milling about jabbering about your latest Warhammer Fantasy Ro -- "There was never a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying game.  Let's talk about Necrons." 
The fact is, there are products that your employees cannot sell to your customer.  If they talk up a game no one has played in twenty years, no one will buy that game at your store -- because they can't.  That employee that waxes poetic about 2nd edition D&D and complains bitterly about 4th shouldn't be talking up 2nd because you don't have 2nd in stock.  Instead, perhaps he should be hyping the fact that even though he didn't like 4th Edition, Wizards brought back Dark Sun, Gamma World, and made a few Ravenloft modules even without the full rights to the setting!  He can go on about D&D Next letting him playing his 2nd Edition character once D&D Next is able to be ordered for players.

4. No, We Don't Have it in Stock.  We Can Order it for You.  It Should be Shipped Here.
If you're looking for something specific that's not part of the latest release, they don't have it.  But they really want to order it for you.  Right now.  They'll have it shipped to the store, so that you have to come back in and start the cycle over again.
A hobby shop can do this same thing, and order products to be delivered to your home or to the store.  For in-store browsing, a computer with a purchased copy from DriveThru RPG will meet all of the browsing needs of players.  Each box or book that is just waiting for a new owner is a box that could be something that would've already sold.  Also, by having you order online in-store, they know you're giving them your money as opposed to the generic 20% off internet retailer of the same product who also doesn't charge sales tax.

5. Three Quarters of the Store is Used for Demos.
Sure, there are four tables in my local Games Workshop store.  Two of those are rarely used, and instead are an elegant life-like display of the latest starter box painted and ready to issue a siren's song to...  oh, wait.  Most people who go into a GW store already familiar with the game, and collecting armies of their own.  It would sure be nice to have two more tables, rather than having twenty men huddling around two tables yearning for their own turn for fun.
In a hobby shop, demo space is essential.  Gamers have a reluctance, and rightfully so, of picking up a new product, because it gets expensive buying all the fun games that no one plays.  We like to know that other players will be right there with us trying a new product.  A demo table is essential, and staff needs to jump on that opportunity not only to evangelize a new (and hopefully fun) product, but also to pitch a sale.  Staff needs to wander out from behind that cavernous register and bring players to new products.  Demo the latest product your store has decided to showcase, and hopefully it'll generate sales in droves.  Once you're out of stock, demo a different product.  In the old days, companies could afford to entice demo teams that wandered around and did this for you, but the industry has shrunk to the point where freebies are rather scarce.

6. We're Not Here to Ring You Up.
I don't think I've ever seen a Games Workshop employee behind the counter while anyone's in the store.  They're so engrossed in painting or playing or yakking about the newest release that I have had to sit and wait most every time I've been in one to check out.  That's how it should be!  I've been into many FLGSes where the staff member is so engrossed with whatever is they've got going on the computer monitor that they really could not give any fewer cares about someone being in the shop, or that I walked out of the shop without buying something.  Alternatively, I've been in so many shops where because they were at the counter when someone walked in, that someone is holding them hostage behind the counter telling the employee about their favorite D&D character.  How can they help me or pitch a sale to me if I can't get their attention?

6. Incremental Releases
The core of Games Workshop's current model involves small globs of units being released periodically over the course of years for each faction -- often years after the rules for those models were released.  But why?
The latest Tyranid codex involved a new, powerful unit that had the side effect of creating smaller, less-powerful units -- the Tervigon.  The Tervigon was close enough in rules and description to an already existing unit, the Carnifex.  It was also so good that many players wanted at least three of them.  The rules, mind you, were released in 2010.  They didn't release the model until this year.  What were existing players to do?  We bought Carnifexes -- old stock -- and made Tervigons out of them.  Now, we've got a new, shiny, and likely better model than the one we hacked together from putty, plastic, and hacksaws.  Why wouldn't we buy the same thing we already have again?
Now, I understand that hobby shops don't have direct control of when models are released.  However, you do have control of when they're demoed and shelved.  Why not bring out old demoed products and show how the new rules/objects/etc are the greatest thing since sliced bread?

7. Epic Music Makes You Buy More.
Serious.  It just does.


9. Staff Must Buy Product to Demo to You.
Every Games Workshop employee worth their salt has an army they brought to play against you.  They've spent hours painting, playing, and building their army, and they're ready to be a walking ad.  First off, it's an expected part of the culture.  Secondly, they get a discount.  It's a wonderful opportunity to have staff advertise and evangelize consumers to new product.  Through the process of demoing, staff learn games and hopefully will pick them up and bring regular players in simply to talk about the hobby.

10. We Don't Do Sales.
Since most of Games Workshop stores thrive on incidentals, sales actually create heavy cuts in profit margins.  If you're trying to push glue on people, that glue better not be steeply discounted, or all you're doing is having more of a loss to make up for with volume.  Games Workshop actually does the opposite -- every year or so, they raise many prices at least 20%.  It creates a mad rush in late May to buy out product players know will get significantly more expensive in a week.

All jabs at Games Workshop aside, they have come quite a ways in sustaining a hobby community at a regular level of frenzy.  Each new release begets a new wave of excitement, and people hop from army to army as they're released -- enough to regularly spend $200 every few months on plastic.  This in turn becomes the perfect venue to spend nearly as much with the same regularity on hobby supplies, paints, glues, and green stuff.  Wear and tear also comes from the idle play, increasing sales of supplies even further.  They've also managed to minimize losses and keep things pretty consistent.  I have to hand it to them -- they know how to make a business out of one nasty cluster of a hobby.  I just wish they weren't as sleazy, and that other hobby shops could manage to hold a candle to the success they've had.