So yeah, I totally missed this, since I'm kind of busy running a game store. I figured why bump an old thread to revive an off topic conversation (and others may want to know as well)...
Oh, how's the store going by the way? I honestly don't remember you saying much about it except for when you opened it up.
It's going decent, but it's tough. November and December, supposedly the panacea of retail, stunk up the joint - bad enough that I almost closed the store (there were days - note the plural - that I only had $20 in sales - not profit,
sales). Then January and February were my 2 best months ever - when a new Magic set releases, I have a good month. Worldwake pre-release was the last weekend of January, then released the first weekend of February. Even if the set ends up selling crappy (*looks at WorldWake*), the release is usually pretty good (Zendikar was a little shaky, even though it sold like hotcakes everywhere else). Everyone wants the new shiny...
4E only sells at 20% off (even then it's sales are nothing to write home about) and board games also rarely sell. The used DVDs and Video Games I have sell in waves, but things have gotten better since one of the 2 video game stores a couple of towns over went out of business (apparently they had quite the price war). Nobody around here wants to paint metal minis and as soon as I got traction on DDM and SWM, WotC killed the lines (although DDM is coming back in yet another format). So yeah, riding the Magic wave when I can and trying my best to build up other lines.
The average game store lasts 18 months, I'm at 13/14 months and counting (my soft open was the last week of January, Grand Open on February 16th). Barring a complete meltdown, I won't lower the curve. While I'm not hemorrhaging money now, I'm still not at the "making money" stage yet. The only ones making money on my store are WotC, Alliance, and the tax man - I'm basically working for free...
