Owning a retro gaming store

100proof

100proof

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It's the kind of business that's only going to survive at this point in an area with a lot of foot traffic or in a busy college town. The margins are too thin to make rent much less eek out a living. Adding other products (card games, hobby stuff, etc.) helps but you're going to drown quickly unless you build a community and, even then, you're fighting a losing battle with the internet every step of the way. Plus the caliber of people you regularly encounter would be a total dealbreaker (for me personally).

Like others mentioned, it's purely the realm of trust fund kids and people who don't mind hustling for peanuts. Good luck if you decide to give it a go.
 
Ajax

Ajax

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Building up a fighting game community has a way higher chance of success, if that's any consolation. If that's your aim, I don't feel like having a shop is necessary to pull it off.

When SFIV came out, there was a doctor here in SLC that began holding meetups at his house. It was a totally organic thing and it exploded. He had a lot of money to throw at it, which helped, but it could have happened without that.
 
fake

fake

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Ajax said:
Building up a fighting game community has a way higher chance of success, if that's any consolation. If that's your aim, I don't feel like having a shop is necessary to pull it off.

When SFIV came out, there was a doctor here in SLC that began holding meetups at his house. It was a totally organic thing and it exploded. He had a lot of money to throw at it, which helped, but it could have happened without that.
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Yeah, if fighting game stuff is the real goal, it's probably easier and less risky to just find a bar or something where you can host one night every other week or something. The bar will make money from the people coming in to play, and you can charge a $5 sign-up fee for the hassle of sourcing and bringing consoles, TVs, sticks, etc. Part of that can go to a prize for tournament winners or something.
 
promking

promking

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It's very tough.
Imagine , cleaning, testing and packaging it nice... Only to have some goob in your store to say " this sold for five bucks cheaper on ebay "
Market goes up and down so much on certain games, it's so hard to price.
 
terry.330

terry.330

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There are more retro game stores around here than I can count. It's fucking crazy. I think most of them barely scrape by but the one closest to me does very well. It's a pretty large store with a shit ton of diverse inventory. They do the usual games/toys/movies/music, they get a huge amount of foot traffic and people even make road trips just to go there. Prices are generally on the high side and their inventory is so big it's impossible for them to keep everything current but they're fairly flexible if you want to negotiate.

I am amazed though at how many people are willing to spend a little bit more just to buy something in person and for the convenience of being able to go home with something uncommon to add to their collection. Never underestimate collectors, especially Nintendo people.

The smaller stores all seem to be combination games/MTG or Pokemon and their game inventory are all basically the same. Small amount of overpriced retro stuff and the other 80% is common fodder from the last decade. They're all pretty unimpressive.

The biggest problem with most of these stores is that the people who run them are basically flea market level hustlers not really people who care about games. Their employees are usually terrible as well. I have no idea how those guys stay in business selling a handful of $10-20 games a day with the occasional expensive Nintendo item. The guy that runs the big store has been in the game store scene since I was a kid and he really positioned himself well when the retro boom hit. He's the exception, he's still a hustler but his store is pretty much self sufficient so he's not running around trying to scrape up inventory and nickel and dime customers.
 
theMot

theMot

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If i had to make money out of you dweeb fucks with vidya games this is how i would do it with fairly minimal effort:

Put a list together of 100-200 games on any system that are in high demand, Mario, Snes rpgs, shmups that kind of crap. Set up alerts for those on Ebay. When they come for sale (preferably auction) put in low ball bids or offers. Strike rate won’t be great but from time to time you’ll get a good deal. Once you get the game take nice photos and relist it for double what you paid. If it doesn’t sell, after 3 years it’s likely increased 20-30%, reduce it to the market price and sell it.

Fuck standing in a shop dealing with smelly cunts twice a day.
 
NeoSneth

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There are several discussions about this on retro podcasts. the main problem is inventory. You need a wide area to come to you to sell their old stuff otherwise you run out fairly quickly. There's only so much you can purchase on your own from resale apps and garage sales. You also need to be selling. It's very difficult to be a collector and a retro store owner. You cant be a drug dealer using your own supply.
 
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neo_mao

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Vectorman0

Vectorman0

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Azra113 said:
Anybody on the forum owns a retro gaming store ?

I was thinking about getting into this but I'm not sure if its feasible. Would love to hear stories if anyone done this before or currently.

Please share any stories

I don't know how to make a poll but i feel like this could use a poll
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I don't own one, but I have friends who do and have worked in one.

There is no clean answer to whether or not "it's feasible". In some situations, it will be. In others, it may not be possible. It's going to be challenging regardless. Rather than write an essay here, I'm just gong to list some thoughts.

Keeping costs manageable is the biggest challenge. You need to go through the exercise of doing the math, making worst case assumptions to see how tough this will be, especially starting out. When you open day 1 and have rent due, but have no customer base, are you going to be able to survive taking a loss while you find a way to attract customers? Will you still have cash on hand when a customer comes in with 60 new old stock Game & Watches that they have been sitting on for 30 years, and now that you are open, want to sell to you for less than market value because they don't trust the internet? (true story)
  • Location - This is extremely important. Not just "what town you are in", but what street you are on (volume of traffic you are exposed to), the local demographic, how visible your sign and store are, how easy it is to park, what other stores are nearby, what competition is nearby (or was nearby in the past), etc. You can't just pick any storefront, or you are likely to set yourself up for failure on day 1.
  • Employees - You are most likely not going to find competent employees you can trust who are willing to be paid minimum wage, and it's going to be hard to pay anyone much more than minimum and still make money. This means you are always going to struggle to find and maintain decent help. Most of your potential employees are going to be teenagers, which means they will not know how to test an RF console or even composite console, or have any idea how to differentiate a real pokemon game from a bootleg. To make a game store work, you will probably need to be putting in 8-12 hours a day seven days a week to start, and it may be hard to ever scale that back.
  • Inventory - This will always be a challenge (that worsens over time), but I would say less so than the above. Once you open, most of your inventory will be trade-ins. The upper limit on this is out of your control, so you need to do everything in your power to get people and their friends coming back. On one hand, you are doing them a favor by turning their stuff into money. This is much less of a service you provide than in the past - they have many other ways to get rid of their items for more than you will be able to offer
    • You can think of your store as an oil well or mine. There is a finite reserve out there (not anymore if there is/was another store nearby doing the same thing), and the flow will diminish over time. The way to counteract this is build a very good relationship and reputation with your customer base, so they will potentially one day sell or trade their games back to you for a fraction of what they can get on ebay.
    • The margins on the games everyone wants to buy will not be great, you might need/want to pay 50% cash value on something like Melee
    • If trade ins are not sufficient to keep your store stocked, where will you get more inventory? Ebay? For most things on ebay, you will be competing with collectors who are willing to pay much more than you can afford.
 
BlackaneseNiNjA

BlackaneseNiNjA

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It almost looks and sounds as if he approached this endeavor as though he were building a public man-cave/gameroom that could also happen to function as a store…rather than a well-studied and researched entry into retail at a time where every other major competitor in that market has decided to retreat from it, but kudos to this guy for following his dreams. Hopefully this endeavor wasn’t a misguided exercise in fandom/90’s nostalgia and it works out for him.

Games are fun and all, but owning a retail store sounds like a good way to guarantee that you won’t have much time to play them. To each their own.
 
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