Quest for Fun!

The Myth of Rational Animals

2025-11-23T08:36:00.000-08:00

A game store is, at its essence, an expression of a particular time and place. You decide to open a store now. “Now” is a moment with strict limits on where you can put that store. You’re constrained by what’s available right this second, or maybe what will be available during a tiny window, and you’re forced to build within whatever competitive landscape exists. If you’re smart, you might wait for something ideal to open up, but in the back of your mind you know you could wait for years. So eventually you compromise.

When I moved my store to its current location, it happened to be during a lull. One competitor was between one of his regular cycles of opening and closing, because shenanigans. My long-term “five hundred pound gorilla” competitor had just retired. The local Games Workshop store closed soon after. The stage was as well-set as anyone could hope, and I had no idea any of that was coming. And even then, that “quick success” took another five years to materialize. Is success sudden or gradual? Yes.

Location is necessarily self-limiting. Most people will place their store within a reasonable drive of where they live. That’s almost everyone. A few exceptions exist, usually people in limited markets, who think of themselves as retailers rather than gamers, and who make a dramatic personal move to build something better somewhere else. That’s exceedingly rare, but I have friends who did it.

People will subsistence-farm rocky ground for years simply because that’s where they’re from. Some will manage a chain of stores across regional towns because there is no “there there” in their home community. The game trade isn’t lucrative enough for most people to uproot their lives, start over somewhere more fertile, and rebuild their social world from scratch. People dramatically change their lives to start a business, but rarely do they dramatically change their location.

The location funnel narrows quickly. You start with the country, which already brings issues with distribution, leases, and labor. The game trade is US-centric, and every other country is essentially along for the ride, with a lot of limiting variables. Then you have the state or province. Some store owners wince when I describe doing business in California, but you can’t deny the money is here. I practically need an HR director for ten employees, but I get to go on nice vacations. Even the city you choose can make or break you, beyond demographics.

Then comes the neighborhood, and finally the exact spot on the street. Is it a busy corner or a forgotten alley? You can live or die by that last choice, and the good corner might be forever out of reach financially. Small landlords dream of corporate tenants so they can raise the rent for everyone. When I scoffed at the rates from one landlord, he told me a Starbucks was about to take the corner, so the rent was now 25 percent higher. Each layer constrains the next until you’re down to whatever keys a landlord is willing to hand you today. And sometimes they just say no. My first landlord was going to turn me down until I showed him my bank account had six figures.

Time is the prime variable. Where can I put a store right now? It’s a moving target. And when your current location mostly works, you tend to stick with it.

All of this is to say that stores have countless variables, and store owners are largely self-limited by time, place, and capital. I have friends who started at the same time as me who are doing twice my business. Did they hit the right market at the right time? Are they smarter than me? Better retailers? Better capitalized? The truth is far less grand. We all looked around one day, checked our bank accounts, researched where a store might work within a reasonable commute to where we lived right then, and made the best decision available. Deliberate, decide, move on. An expression of time and place. And yes, some of them are probably better retailers. Sometimes you turn down money for peace of mind.

It’s only in retrospect that we pretend there was more choice than there really was. If I decided today to move my store, I’d look at property listings, find fifty retail spaces, narrow those to twelve by size, then to three by cost. I’d discover that two are in terrible locations and one is merely alright. It’s rare I actually get excited about a location prospect. If I had to move today, I’d take the alright location. In fact, I’d be forced to or risk losing my livelihood. I would make lemonade out of those lemons, which is essentially the job description.

When I look at where I might expand, it’s thirty minutes in the opposite direction of my current store from my house, turning my commute into an hour each way. I don’t want to put a store there. But the underserved market demands it. Anywhere else would be significantly sub-optimal. As an established retailer with some success, I might be willing to move closer to bridge the gap, but most people wouldn’t consider that viable. If I had a Spouse With a Good Job, it would be out of the question. Most people, unfortunately, will enter a crowded market simply because the commute is shorter.

From the outside, you look at game stores and assume they had a business plan and raised $100,000 or more, so surely they picked their location based on a comprehensive market analysis and a sober assessment of need. In almost all cases: nope. It was near my house, available at the time, in whatever competitive market existed that day. We like to joke that customers are not rational animals, but it’s not like store owners are any better.

The Quiet Mind and the Cracked Pot

2025-11-02T08:28:00.000-08:00

I was looking at my LinkedIn profile the other day, something I hadn’t done in years. Dear god, I thought, who is this guy? I scrolled through my work record from the decade before I owned the store and saw a pattern of job-hopping in search of the next intellectual challenge. My immediate reaction was I would never hire this guy. However, every move came with more money and the same question: Why do you move around so much? Followed by a job offer.

I was always rewarded for impatience, usually, I suspected, by companies desperate to fill seats, government contractors and startups looking for warm bodies. My behavior shaped who would hire me, and that pattern shaped my idea of the corporate world. The specter of returning to it, what I thought was a nightmare despite the high pay, kept me in the game trade far longer than reason alone might justify. That was over twenty years ago, and I don’t even recognize that guy.

Those first five years of running the store without real profit were, in hindsight, about escaping the corporate fog of vague directives and unsatisfying contributions. In the beginning, it felt transgressive. I was sure someone would walk in one day and drag me back to work. I felt like I was disappointing people, like my old boss. I even had nightmares about forgetting to turn in my time sheet. I still have them. Later, it struck me that for the first time in my adult life, I had to decide exactly what to do. How does one make profit? Maybe it was in a book somewhere, so I read everything I could find. The game trade was a backwater back then, compared to now where you can hit a vein on your first attempt, if you do enough research.

It took years before I realized that the money moving through the store, the tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars (there were no millions then), was my money. Too many people told me not to take it personally, but I had to make it personal to move on to the next stage. You should absolutely take it personal. Only then did ownership become real. Running a store wasn’t just a business, it was a psychological transformation from being a cog in an incomprehensible machine to owning every problem and, eventually, every profit.

That transformation, combined with the difficulty of cracking the code of the game trade, is what kept me hooked. I was talking with friends about meditation recently, and a teacher’s story came up: there are two types of students who don’t stay with a Zen practice:

There’s the cracked pot, no matter how much instruction and wisdom you pour in, it leaks out the bottom. They can't benefit from it because they're in their own way. And then there’s the student whose mind goes silent too quickly. Meditation is supposed to teach you to quiet the mind through the struggle of your internal dialogue. If the thoughts stop right away, an incredibly rare occurrence, you learn nothing. You have been deprived of the struggle and thus the transformation. Some might think that’s a nice problem to have, except it completely short circuits real progress. New store owners can sometimes be both types.

Some are cursed with the empty mind. They hit the market at just the right time, sell a million dollars their first year, and think, well, this isn’t so hard. They’re like those rare meditators whose minds fall quiet without effort. However, tough times are coming and the struggle of the trade is the training to survive tough times. I hope they’re learning something, but I often wonder if the struggle itself is the point. And of course, there are plenty of cracked pots in this trade. No matter how much money rains down into their bucket, it just leaks out the bottom. Perhaps they are there For The Community, folks who are allergic to profit.

Profit came with its own kind of guilt, so it's not like there's a free lunch. Starting a business is, at least in theory, about making profit, that’s the point for most people. I’ve written about buying my first new car, a Volkswagen, and how it quietly created a divide between me and some of my poorest customers. My staff never said anything, but I felt it, the tension of earning real money while they made minimum wage.

That Volkswagen was hard earned, paid for with years of risk and struggle. I was around forty at the time. Isn’t that what a successful business is supposed to look like? Yet as my staff has grown older, from part-time students to working adults with real responsibilities, their needs have become more pronounced: higher wages, and the promise of living wages, with the understanding that building that future takes time unless I want to give up the very gains that have propelled me ... to a middle class income.

When I started working from home, another realization hit me: I’m never going back to work for someone else, at least not because I have to. Sometimes I daydream about taking a job pushing a broom at Home Depot, and my friends look horrified. For me, it’s just about getting out of the house, moving around, letting someone else take the lead. I’m not financially independent, just stable. COVID taught me I could come back and do it again if I had to, and my Home Depot fantasy tells me that maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

Monday Morning Workflow

2025-10-20T09:50:00.000-07:00

Here’s how my Monday morning ordering workflow goes. The first question is always: do I have money to buy anything? If you pay COD, that means real cash waiting in the bank for when the shipment arrives. I buy on terms or by credit card, so I ask a different question: is there room in the budget?

That budget is my Open to Buy (OTB) worksheet. With steady sales and discipline, if I only spend what’s available in OTB, I’ll pay my bills and stay profitable. Spend too much and profit slips. Spend too little and sales drop, which also hurts profit. When I delegated buying for a month while on a trip, my manager struggled to spend the full amount, which surprised me. It’s harder than it looks.

So what do I have to spend today? October is my slowest month, impervious to even the strongest new releases. Publishers seem to mark it off on their calendars. My store, like most, thrives on front-list releases. We can limp along on restocks and evergreen sellers, but we really come alive when there’s new hotness. October’s hotness is back loaded, all coming next week. But for now, I’ll ignore that storm on the horizon.

Looking at the numbers, I have $7,800 to spend today. That splits into restocks and new releases. Restocks are straightforward. I generate purchase orders based on reorder thresholds for each distributor. These thresholds shift constantly as items sell. Some go up, some go down, some disappear entirely. Inventory is a zero-sum game. I can’t add new things unless old things come off the list.

I prune throughout the day, but I also notice oddities when I see them on a PO. “What the heck is that?” Usually something from a first order that never moved. Most restocks are the usual suspects. Quantities might shift, but they’re safe bets.

I start with my CCG supplier at $3,100. They often have the best price on supplies, so I get that in first before higher cost suppliers get a bite. CCGs are my biggest category, so this is my biggest restock. Next comes my primary distributor at $650, but I pre-order everything from them, so that number can jump depending on new releases that ships. Budget-wise it averages out, but I often look overdrawn for a few days.

My secondary supplier is steady at $800. Then come the specialists: Games Workshop at $2,800, which I may get cut in half. If I'm really lucky, I'll get an invoice before it arrives. Then there's Asmodee with a "stub order" of $325 in restocks. I call it that because it's enough to get the ball rolling with new releases added on top of that.

That adds up to $7,625 of my $7,800 budget, assuming Games Workshop ships everything (they won’t), not counting $200–400 in new Asmodee releases, and not knowing what surprises my primary distributor might send. It’s messy. If I paid cash terms, it might even be stressful. My budget is rarely balanced, but it works.

If you call plus or minus $1,500 balanced, I’ve hit that mark four times this month. OTB is mostly a trailing indicator, something you check to understand how you’ve behaved, not predict what you’ll do next. In the past month I’ve been $15,000 over budget. Today, oddly enough, I’m sitting on my biggest surplus in the last 30 days.

Am I done ordering? Not quite. I just got a tracking code from a tertiary distributor, probably a CCG item that wasn’t on the calendar. I also have a $5,000 Asmodee order for Star Wars: Unlimited and League of Legends that might ship early. I'm told the League of Legends will ship in waves; I wanted a lot more. If it does ship, I’ll be $5,000 over budget for a week, until it sells out next Friday. That’s how it goes.

There’s nothing fancy about how I order. Most veteran store owners are doing the same thing this morning, some with a quarter of my resources, some with four times as much. The smart play is consistency. Have a system. Follow your best practices. Order often with the right depth. That takes experience, and it’s one of the last things I’d ever hand off.

Am I good at it? Buying assumes a few things. Do I know my customers’ tastes? Do I understand sales velocity? Do I know how well my staff can move product beyond stocking the shelf? Do I have an exit strategy when something needs to be clearanced? I could be better at all of it, especially if I spent more time hand selling or keeping up on product knowledge. I tend to err on the side of FOMO, over-ordering to make sure I never disappoint customers. That keeps them happy, even if it makes my OTB twitch. I can live with that.

Edit: Forgot my $2,125 new release order from Games Workshop. Looks like we're over budget again.

Warding the Game Store

2025-10-13T14:59:00.000-07:00

I once asked a shaman if working at a game store could attract spiritual problems. The answer was, “Yes, but not necessarily.” I was reminded of this interaction today while a customer was attempting to cast a spell in the back. We discussed it amongst the staff. Maybe we should have wards like one would have in a spiritual ceremony? Well, in practice, we already have them.

A game store draws all kinds of people, many of them deeply attuned to their imagination. They come here after long days in the mundane world and slip easily into the act of transformation. Maybe they’re wizards, warriors, or something stranger, exhaling the energy they’ve carried from the outside. It’s always surprising to see what people choose to become when they’re given permission to imagine. Some need to blow off steam with power fantasies but others are fulfilling deep seated needs missing in their lives. Not everyone is going up levels.

Every time dice hit the table, players cross a threshold between the ordinary and the mythic. Traditional cultures warded such thresholds, doorways, crossroads, and hearths, not always from fear of what's outside, but from respect for the unseen currents that pass through them when they're at their most vulnerable. In a sense, we provide that doorway. We provide permission. We provide a safe space. Our store is a liminal space where people step out of the everyday and into something older and deeper. Warding, in that context, isn’t about magic. It’s about letting people know they’re safe to open up, to play, to create.

Warding as Permission and Protection

A ward isn’t a wall. It’s a sign of belonging. It says, this is a space where you are allowed to be yourself. In a psychological sense, it’s permission to let your guard down. In a game store, that might look like a pride flag in the window, a posted code of conduct, or a dragon head on the wall. This place is safe. You are amongst the tribe. We protect our people and slay the beasts Out There. These are modern wards, symbols that say your imagination is safe here.

They also mark a boundary. Psychological safety is the foundation of imaginative work. Without it, creativity becomes guarded and brittle. If you’ve ever had a roommate or partner walk in while you’re role-playing, you know how quickly the energy can drain from the room. When that happens, it's really hard to get back. When you post a code of conduct, keep the store clean, and treat people well, you’re doing more than running a business. You’re keeping the ward strong.

The Nexus and the Noise

An open, imaginative environment doesn’t just invite creativity; it attracts chaos. Trickster energy, you could call it. Sometimes it’s harmless, sometimes it’s not. You see it in people who arrive carrying too much, the ones who blur the line between fantasy and delusion. You see it in the erratic energy of certain customers, or just the sense that we've got "psychic residue" left behind after too many stories have been told in the same place. Get out those Clorox wipes.

Any place that deals in imagination becomes a magnet for the unpredictable. The solution isn’t to block it or fight it, but to hold space for it, to shape the current through rhythm and attention.

That’s where ritual comes in. Regular cleaning, lighting, music, and a consistent schedule are quiet forms of energetic hygiene. You don’t need sage or ceremony, but you do need intention. This has always been my instinct at the store. Order isn’t optional. Lose it, and the place starts to come apart. I’ve seen it happen, especially during chaotic events like Yu-Gi-Oh nights, when the energy simply refuses to stay contained. It's so disruptive employees enter a state of distress that's not normally part of our calm, ritualized day.

Practical Wards

You don’t need much to ward a game store.

Threshold markers: A symbol at the door, art, motto, or flag, announcing that this is a place of imagination and respect. A pride flag is both an invitation and a shield, a sign that everyone is welcome and the intolerant are not.

Ritual order: Opening and closing routines stabilize energy as much as they maintain the business. Cleaning becomes a ritual act. When someone skips it, the imbalance is felt immediately. Letting the bathroom go uncleaned or a stain linger is a kind of desecration in a place meant to nurture creativity. Staff know this, they feel it. They naturally avoid the disruption. It's for them as much as the customers.

Sound and scent: Ambient music, clean air, maybe the faint smell of dragon soap or print ink. In older times, people believed foul smells carried disease; they weren’t entirely wrong. Scents shape mood and memory. I grew up with cookware stores that sold games, and the smell of those places still feels like home, maybe not my home, but the home I chose.

Community norms: The code of conduct isn’t just a formality. It’s the living boundary of the ward. Inclusivity isn’t a policy; it’s an active practice, a continual fostering of safety and weeding out of intolerance so imagination can thrive without fear.

Finally

A store like this is a living space, a container for imaginative work and a meeting point of countless stories. Treat it with sacred attention. Warding isn’t superstition; it’s stewardship. If you keep rhythm, care, and intention, the space holds strong.

I feel we "mythologize" our stores, tell narratives that make sense of it all. Deep within that narrative is the acknowledgement that what we do is special, even if we're not sure why. You run a nexus. Give it form. Let it breathe. Keep it balanced. Perhaps you already do this and now understand your work has greater significance.

My Twenty-Dollar Assistant (AI in the workplace)

2025-10-09T07:56:00.000-07:00

A year ago, I started thinking seriously about hiring what would essentially be a personal assistant. Someone in the buying department who could handle the growing pile of e-commerce work I was generating. There was how I was doing it and how I wanted to do it, and the gap between those two required more labor than I was willing to give.

For years I managed buying between customers at the counter, turning what should be one of the most important parts of owning a store into a nuisance task. I wouldn’t expand buying because I didn’t have the time. Looking back, that was probably one of my bigger mistakes. Now it's my primary job.

I first started using AI to build a new D&D campaign. Combined with a wiki, it was intoxicating. I had continents mapped, pantheons defined, and NPC relationships modeled to the point I could feel how they’d interact by modeling dialogue based on backgrounds, often generated with the help of AI.

In three months I created enough material to last twenty years of gaming. I am not exagerating. Maybe because it was so top heavy, I lost the thread after only six months at the table. We’re now playing a more stripped down Old-School Essentials campaign, still using AI and a wiki, but with a lighter touch and fewer unnecessary details.

I used AI artwork to populate a thousand wiki entries for personal use. The one time I used an AI image for a store post, it got fantastic engagement along with a wave of outrage for “embracing the evils of AI.” I should mention that over the past year I’ve paid real artists to create professional-level D&D maps and regularly pay a graphic designer contractor for the store. I suppose what I’m saying is there’s a time and a place for AI art.

It wasn’t an obvious leap to apply AI to the business. The topic was already getting ethically messy, and it didn’t fit most situations anyway. AI isn’t a genie or a fairy godmother. It’s that personal assistant I was looking for, but not a great one.

Because of all the hype, people expect miracles. What I’ve found is it’s more like having a high school intern. They can take assignments, often save hours of work, but just as often return with the wrong results. You have to explain what went wrong, and they’ll give some excuse about how the assignment was hard. But I pay twenty bucks a month, so you get what you pay for.

In the aggregate, it makes sense if you already know enough to check the answers. You need to be informed enough to spot errors before acting on them. My fear in the outside world is that's likely to go disastrously wrong. Imagine the average person, and then remember half of the world is less smart than them. AI especially suffers from confirmation bias, where you often get the results you want to have, rather than the correct answer.

Yesterday was a good example. I asked AI to cross reference my upcoming trip itinerary with local holidays. It ran through lunar calendars, checked Cambodian observances, and triumphantly announced there would be a festival the same day we’d be at Angkor Wat. Perfect. I started planning around it, but something felt off. I had it recheck its work, and sure enough, it was off by a month. “A common mistake,” it admitted. AI wants to make me happy, so much so it will throw me the holiday party it knows I want, even if it's the wrong date.

For now, AI is great at crunching purchase orders, formatting text, and organizing thoughts. It’s still that high school intern, helpful, fast, and sometimes wrong. Will it get better? Probably. But for now, I remind myself that for twenty dollars a month, I’ve delayed the need for a twenty dollar an hour employee another year.

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Here’s a concise summary of how you’ve used ChatGPT for business so far, based on your conversations:

🏪 Business Operations & Strategy

You’ve used ChatGPT as a management assistant for Black Diamond Games, focusing on:

Inventory and purchasing analysis: creating and cleaning up purchase orders, comparing supplier prices (ACD, Alliance, Magex), calculating GMROI, elasticity, and margin targets.

Payroll and finance: building tables for payroll, inflation adjustments, wage tracking, and workers’ comp rules for S-Corp owners.

Accounting troubleshooting: fixing QuickBooks verification errors, planning a migration from QuickBooks for Mac to Online, and summarizing differences between plan tiers (Simple Start, Essentials, Plus).

Insurance and compliance: researching key person insurance payouts, and confirming state requirements (e.g., California minimum wage, workers’ comp exemptions).

💸 Product & Marketing Content

You’ve had me draft clean, SEO-friendly product descriptions for your online store using these principles:

No sales hype or fourth-wall breaks.

Include award links or official quickstarts when relevant.

Avoid disclaimers or cross-product references.
You also have me format these descriptions so they’re scraping-friendly for ecommerce uploads.

📦 Retail Data & Tools

You frequently use me to:

Build CSV or spreadsheet exports (POs, invoices, payroll, pricing updates).

Generate business metrics like ROI, stock ratios, or price-sensitivity calculations.

Write summaries of distributor trends, e.g., supply shortages (DragonShield Night Blue) or CCG allocation analysis.

🧠 Writing & Publishing

I’ve helped polish essays, blog posts, and book-length material in your “Friendly Local Game Store” voice — for example:

Opinion essays

Appendix N literary analyses for your personal page.

🧩 Game Design & Worldbuilding

For your Old-School Essentials campaign and published materials:

I generate encounter summaries, XP values, NPC tables, and stronghold cost breakdowns.

I format OSE-style character and item blocks.

I expand on Stonehell, Ember Bastion, and Ashkarin Concorde lore for campaigns.

🧰 Systems & Workflow

You’ve used ChatGPT as a workflow hub, integrating:

Google Sheets and CSV exports for business data.

Calendar and trip planning for long-term store and family projects.

Detailed structured outputs (tables, invoices, formatted PDFs, and campaign maps).

Last Man Standing: Life at the Bottom of the Retail Funnel

2025-08-11T09:01:00.000-07:00

In roleplaying games there is the funnel. You throw a bunch of zero level townsfolk into a meat grinder and see who crawls out. The survivors become heroes. Retail has its own funnel.

Our value proposition is simple. We do not have the lowest price. We do not have infinite selection. We have the thing you want, right here, right now. If a store cannot master that, it will not be around long. That reality makes us front list driven. We live in the land of release days and the Next Thing.

Most game players are not hobbyists. For many people we are just “the store.” They come in once a month, scan the shelves, ask a question, maybe check their phone, and walk out with a box of fun. I do not pretend they never buy online. Some refuse to touch the online world at all and will not even use my web store to check stock. Most are hybrids.

These customers buy from me, online, across town, and occasionally from a guy with a blanket at the train station. They do not optimize like alpha gamers who stretch every dollar for maximum cardboard. They buy something that looks fun. Our proposition resonates with those customers, and we do everything we can to turn up that resonance. For example, most do not use our Game Center, but they shop with us because we have one. They support a community they're tangentially part of.

Because of this, you learn to read the pattern. You see the Matrix in your sales data. Most of the time it hums along predictably. Then something glitches. A disruption hits the product funnel and you can feel it in your bones before you can chart it in your POS.

Here is how that funnel looks on the ground. There is a new hot game. You know it is hot because you bought it when it was just potential. You ordered deep. You brought it in for Jack, and Olivia, and Liam, and a dozen other actual people in your head. You matched your local demand with your local supply. Then the game catches fire.

The fire starts far away. It climbs the Amazon charts, then disappears. The fire spreads. It sells out at the publisher and at the large third parties. Most publishers now run multiple channels. The vast online-only crowd and the big corporate retail shoppers are happily buying from those channels. They do not know us and we do not know them. When I talk about standing outside a game renaissance hurricane, catching demand with a thimble, those folks are the hurricane.

Soon the publisher declares the game sold out. Yet my back room has a neat stack reserved for Jack, and Olivia, and Liam. The fire spreads to my little building in Concord. Customers begin to arrive. Not in a stampede, but in waves you can feel. The question comes like clockwork: “Why do you have this?”

Sometimes it is "Why do you have this when it's sold out?" or “Why do you have this when my favorite store across town does not?” Sometimes it is “Why do you have the Kickstarter version before I do?” I have heard the same person ask that more than once, which led me to ask in return, “If you know I have it, why keep going back to the place that doesn't?” Often it is online-only buyers who suddenly recognize my core value. I have what they want today. They wince at paying regular price. They notice I do not have a Walmart quantity. Then they buy it anyway. Some see me as some sort of predatory monster, preying on the ignorant. That is life at the bottom of the funnel.

Being the last man standing feels bittersweet. We want to be the first thought for hobby gamers, not the necessary evil at the end of a long search. We focus on pleasing Jack, and Olivia, and Liam, the people who follow our social media, who show up every week and share their wins and losses. So it stings a little when the stack sells out before our locals have had a full cycle to pick it up. I am grateful for the revenue. I also resent being the necessary evil for a hurricane of customers who learned about the game from someone else, planned to buy it somewhere else, and now strip my shelves clean like locusts, with a sense of grudging reluctance.

Twenty years ago we built hobbyists from scratch. We introduced people to games despite every reservation. Many of those customers graduated into hybrids. We do not own customers. We are not owed anything for our effort. That is a hard lesson until you accept the storm for what it is. The hurricane is not ours. The thimble is not ours either. Our job is to hold the thimble steady and fill it. We are here to serve.

The trade was roughly an $800 million market when I started. Today estimates put it around $3 billion. The feeling of being a necessary evil has not changed, and some conditions make it sharper. During COVID, publishers had to build new direct paths to customers while my doors were closed. It took me a year and a half to feel fully functional again. Now tariffs push more publishers to sell direct because they cannot afford to pay the markup friction twice. Distribution has to take a cut. Retail has to take a cut. The math does not always work. So more of the storm bypasses us.

What do you do about this if you run a store, or if you care about the survival of your local?

Keep living on the front list. Be the place where the Next Thing is reliably on the shelf on release day. If you are not that place, your other efforts are bailing water.

Buy like a local. When you back a project or go deep on a title, imagine the real people who will buy it in your community. Those mental preorders keep you honest. They also make you kinder when the hurricane arrives.

Protect the locals’ window. Give regulars a clear chance to get the hot thing. That could be a brief hold period, a preorder list, or a simple message that it arrived. If they pass, let the market do its work. Do not fight the storm. If I feel I've given clear warning of the coming storm, I am not super sympathetic when you're caught unaware.

Say yes with a smile. When the necessary-evil customer walks in, sell them the game, answer their one question, and send them on their way feeling good. Do not scold them for their purchasing history. Some will be back. Some will not. Both outcomes are fine.

Invest in your resonance. If your only value is “we have it right now,” you live and die by allocation and luck. Layer on community, events, trusted curation, and a store that is pleasant to visit. Those things turn a one-time hurricane buyer into an occasional customer, and sometimes into a Jack, Olivia, or Liam. Understand you have a value proposition and people can either engage with it or not. It's probably not going to bend to their whim.

Accept the limits. We do not control the storm. We can only widen our thimble and keep it upright. Some weeks the thimble feels small. Lately it feels smaller as channels multiply and costs climb. Yet the storm is bigger than ever, and there is still plenty of water for the patient and prepared.

That is the retail funnel. It is not glamorous. It is not fair. It works. On a good week the locals get what they were waiting for, the hurricane pays the light bill, and the next stack arrives just in time. On a great week, one of those hurricane buyers sticks around and learns our names. Either way, the job is the same. Keep the Next Thing in stock. Keep faith with your people. Keep the thimble ready.

Gary Goes Car Shopping

2025-08-07T11:27:00.000-07:00

This week, the car I bought for store deliveries during COVID, the one I planned to keep until the wheels fell off, had the wheels fall off. It was parked in San Francisco and got hit hard enough to jump the curb. Just about every door panel, front and rear bumper and even the exhaust system needed repair or replacement. My little Lexus IS, with 100,000 miles on it, was supposed to go another 200,000, maybe even 300,000. But the insurance company totaled it.

I’ve bought more than 25 cars in my life, and honestly, I’m over it. Over the process, the pricing, the pattern of nonsense that happens every time. I think buying an RV, with its archaic process and practices outlawed in the auto world, finally broke me. Thanks Camping World. I’m also trying to live by the motto: Debt is the promise of future work. That includes car debt. So this is the story of how I bought vehicle number 26, or whatever number we’re on.

First, I make sure to shop with someone who will be patient or else I go alone. I don’t bring my wife anymore. The last time I did, she took the side of the closer. “Extended warranty? Sounds great!” She doesn’t care about cars. This time I brought my son, mostly to help spot things that would annoy his mom. I'm really buying this so she can drive him around.

Second, I know what I want. In this case, I wanted a cockroach. Something unkillable. A jellybean that would run for hundreds of thousands of miles. I wanted Certified Pre-Owned, so it would be vetted and come with a decent warranty. I was willing to pay more for that. Basically, a new used car.

She needed ground clearance because of our driveway. The Lexus had its front and rear bumpers nearly torn off trying to get in and out. The back bumper cover is still sitting on the side of the house; it would have been destroyed in the accident. She also needed space for plants and instruments. The day I saw dirt ground into the white seats of the Lexus, I knew my vehicle choice had been ... sub optimal. I didn’t want to think about this vehicle again. I already have a Ford and an RV to worry about. I just needed something beyond reliable, with a warranty, and no drama.

So really, it came down to the cheapest certified cockroach between Toyota and Honda. Lexus was too expensive. We only had one because I got a stripped-down, off-lease model during the COVID shutdown for a steal.

I test drove the cheapest certified Honda CR-V first. I had read it was a better driving experience than the Toyota RAV4. I was planning to buy the Toyota, but I needed to rule out the Honda. Due diligence. The CR-V was as nice as the Lexus it was replacing, according to my son, but it had a turbo engine, direct injection, and a CVT transmission. I follow cars closely and that's three strikes in my book. Three knocks on long-term reliability. But Honda does those three things better than anyone else. There's apparently a big difference between say, a Nissan CVT and a Honda CVT.

The next day I went to Toyota, ready to buy the RAV4. I was hoping to feel that it was simply better, even though people said it was less refined. I was hoping for some confirmation bias. I’ve owned two Toyota products already, and my next vehicle will probably be a Toyota. I wanted to like it. I really did. I was willing to overlook flaws.

Boy was I wrong.

The seats were uncomfortable, a common Toyota issue. The cabin felt cramped and gave me the beginnings of a panic attack. The Lexus does that to me too; just a little too tight. The engine sounded harsh and buzzy. The whole thing felt more like a Corolla than a Camry. And it cost more than the Honda. "How do you like it sir?" "Ha! I don't like it at all!"

I started doing the math. I could put some repair money into that Honda over time and still come out ahead. And every owner I talked to with a Honda said the same thing. It lasts. Two hundred to three hundred thousand miles, easy.

So I went back to Honda and put down a deposit on the CR-V. The three-strike cockroach won. It's a boring little silver jelly bean from 2021 with a slow head unit and cloth seats. Perfect. If we she can just keep it on the road for the foreseeable future, that would be great.

Remote Manage: Another Look

2025-07-23T10:57:00.000-07:00

After years of running my game store, I now manage it remotely. Here’s what that actually requires—and what I’ve learned along the way.

Process Improvement

For years, I met weekly with my manager to tackle problems big and small—special orders, maintenance issues, even a broken bathroom door. A consistent agenda meant no blind spots.

That discipline built a culture of excellence. We don’t tolerate broken things or process loopholes. While the "broken window theory" may be discredited, I believe problems attract more problems. Apathy grows in environments with broken systems. Small issues signal a bigger decline—something we actively fight. We have a premium store mindset and we better live up to that.

Excellent Management and Staff

My best managers have come from within. That’s because our staff are taught our values from day one. Outside hires? It’s a coin toss—about 50/50. And when those hires fail, it’s often due to value misalignment, not skill.

Good managers are worth more when you’re remote. I compensate mine better than if I were present every day. Why? Because turnover is disruptive, especially when you want the freedom to travel. It’s vastly cheaper to retain great people than to replace them.

IT Infrastructure

I’ve built my system for remote work:

Fast internet at home and at the store and when I'm remote (with failover backup).
A robust POS system (Lightspeed) optimized for physical retail, not online sales like Shopify.
MacBook Pro for longevity—mine last 5–8 years.
Automated payroll, 401K, workers comp, and utility payments.
Bills paperless or forwarded to my home. E-banking emphasis, which is a given nowadays.
When I lived in Mexico for four months, staff scanned and emailed physical mail, usually just a few items a month. Meanwhile, I moved every account possible online.

Distributors are only just now catching up with uploadable orders—something promised back in 2004. But I can do nearly everything from anywhere.

Simplified Processes

There’s always a tension between customer service and process exceptions. Card singles, for example, demand airtight oversight: theft control, inventory limits, strict buying guidelines. We’re not doing singles right now. We will again, but only with strong systems in place.

Same with online shipping. It's an obvious revenue stream, but requires robust oversight. Right now, we’re not ready. Those are low-hanging fruit for our next expansion.

Staying Informed

If you manage remotely, go to at least one trade show a year. I don’t, but I compensate by being plugged into the social media hive mind. I’m constantly watching what other stores are doing. Most of it isn’t relevant. Some of it is gold.

I don’t speak to sales reps anymore. Allocations are the name of the game: Pokémon, Games Workshop, Magic—all allocated. Final Fantasy Magic was an exception, a rare opportunity where my nerve was the only limitation. My store is big enough that allocations are annoying but manageable. Bigger stores feel the pinch significantly more.

Innovation Will Slow

If you want real innovation, you’ll have to show up and do it yourself. That’s the remote owner's dilemma. There’s only so much innovation you can expect others to initiate. That’s why I still have “low-hanging fruit” waiting to be plucked.

You must accept some inefficiency. Your staff won’t have your OCD. Nobody will care as much as you. You have to be okay with that. "This is fine."

Growth Trade-Off

Stores with on-site owners will likely grow twice as fast as mine. Remote ownership means something else matters more to you: family, travel, gaming, your time. That’s fine. But it comes at a cost. You have to be willing to accept that.

Many owners eventually burn out and close shop. Remote management is a solution only if your store is worth the effort. Most stores aren’t.

Stop Trying to Make It Happen

Here’s a piece of advice I recently got: If you’ve tried everything, turned an issue every which way, and still can’t make it work, let it go.

That doesn’t mean you’ll never do it. It just means it’s not time. Don’t force it. Choose what’s working, and move on. Not being able to wrap your head around a problem so you can change it is the answer. The answer is no.

Final Thought

Remote store management is entirely possible, but it requires structure, support, and a willingness to let go. Growth will slow. Some things won’t get done. You will not be the best at anything, at least not for long, and you'll need to be very conscious of when your Unique Value Proposition becomes simply Useful, and your Useful Value Proposition becomes obsolete. For me, the trade-offs are worth it.

Thoughts on Expansion

2025-06-25T10:36:00.000-07:00

What Comes Next: Six Paths for the Store

I’ve got two years left on my lease, and I’m beginning discussions with property management about the future. My challenges with expansion are the same ones many established stores face.

One Store or Two?

Opening a second store is tempting. It solves the problem of expanding without tampering with a successful formula. But it introduces new problems—management complexity, operational drag, and the unknown. I tell people I only know how to start a store wrong. Could I do it right this time? Sure, in the sense of “do as I say, not as I did.” But do I have the interest and energy to launch something truly new in the same space? Not really.

The Case for Bigger

A larger store has always been my ideal. Bigger stores leverage systems: policies, procedures, staff expertise. I can keep everything in one store in my head. Two stores? They give me literal bad dreams. But a larger single location? That’s manageable at almost any size.

Still, expansion is risky. I run a profitable business. I’m heading toward retirement. Why would I jeopardize that with a high-stakes expansion? I’m not going back to IT after 20 years out of the game. I can’t live on a “game trade adjacent” salary.

I’m wearing golden handcuffs—both the paycheck and the business model. My salary can’t be replicated. My current space includes a self-financed mezzanine that effectively saves us $3,300 a month in rent. If you had a stock portfolio paying $3,300/month in dividends, you’d think twice about touching it.

Still, the need is real: we don’t need more game space. We need more retail.

Scenario 1: Elevation and Separation

We could turn our downstairs event space into retail. Our upstairs space would remain game space, and we’d expand into a third unit for events. But the catch is we’d need to install an elevator. The unique setup makes this possible—but not cheap or easy. We could do this now.

Scenario 2: Wait Out a Neighbor

One neighboring tenant isn’t going anywhere—too much invested in their buildout. But the other’s lease is up in 2029 and may be negotiable. If so, we’d add 3,000 square feet of retail space, with rent increasing by about $12,000 a month.

The goal? Use the next two years to build sales and optimize inventory, testing whether our current customer base can support that much additional space. Can a suburban game store double its retail footprint and remain viable? I need some time to find out and 2029 might be too tight.

Scenario 3: Moving

I have a spreadsheet for moving to a larger space. Originally, it was a “sometime in 2033” idea. But with a 25% sales increase this year, that move feels closer. I’m 57. I imagine one major move before retiring sometime after 70. By then, I project the store to be doing over $5 million annually. I’d rather not move, but long-term survival may demand it.

Scenario 4: Buying a Building

Buying sounds like the smart move. But have you looked at commercial property lately? In my city, there are two available: one in the middle of nowhere for $2.6 million, and one prime location for $4.5 million. They're both between 7,500 and 8,500 square feet. A 10% down payment means needing $260,000 to $450,000 upfront. The first is plausible, just barely. The second is fantasy. And that's the entire market right now. Owning a building seems like a great retirement asset, if you can buy one.

Scenario 5: Stay and Optimize

Use every inch of vertical space. Dramatically increase inventory. Ride the sales trajectory until growth forces us to move. It’s a rational plan. But something in me resists. It feels like saying “enough.” It assumes growth has limits. Maybe that’s true. But maybe it’s just fear in disguise.

Scenario 6: Sell

I have a number. What’s yours? Not necessarily a dollar amount, but a concept—maybe five times net? A year of gross? Everyone in this business should have a number. And with each year that passes, mine becomes more interesting. Maybe I'll head a company that buys up successful game stores. Wouldn't that be a surprising scenario.

Six Months of Facebook Posts

2025-06-23T07:59:00.000-07:00

Worth posting, more or less...

I post most things on Facebook because that's where the eyeballs are, and I'll get interaction, which is how I learn nowadays. This is around 25 pages in a Word document. Formatting it using ChatGPT was way more work than I expected, but it's readable.

Facebook Page:

https://www.facebook.com/garyraybdg1

The Math of a 15% Price Increase

A 15% increase in price reduces customer demand somewhere in the 18–30% range. This number is based on the "price elasticity of demand," which I’ve historically pegged at 1.55 for board games. That’s a 25% demand reduction.

If I need my board games to perform at 4 turns a year, then anything currently at 4 or below will see a 25% drop. A 4 becomes a 3. Previously safe games are now borderline performers.

I carry 122 board game titles from Asmodee (including card supplies). Removing titles less than a year old—since we lack long-term performance data—I’ve identified 16 that are likely not to perform. That’s about 13% of the catalog. Of those, only 10 are newly subject to clearance scrutiny; the rest were already on clearance.

Titles Flagged for Clearance:

Arkham Horror: 3E (seasonal)
Catan: Traveler (seasonal)
Exploding Kittens: Barking Kittens
Marvel United: Multiverse
Mists Over Carcassonne
My Toxic Ex – Base Pack
Playing Cards: Bicycle: Lion King
Set a Watch: Outriders
Spot It Camping (seasonal)
Ticket to Ride: Europe (seasonal)

Of the 10 clearance games, four may return seasonally. The rest? Possibly gone for good.

I could keep current pricing and simply mark these not to reorder, especially since demand hasn’t dropped—yet. But I’m choosing to drop them now during an ongoing board game sale. It’s a good moment to quietly clear the shelves.

(Also: Slip It In is a strong Asmodee seller, just saying.)

Thinking About Business Education

Every once in a while, I browse the local community college catalog to see what classes might actually be useful for a retail store owner. My son is college-aged, and we’ve been discussing whether business or computer science would serve him best.

For those raised in small business environments—or who are naturally inclined—business degrees can feel redundant. But for the rest of us, I find formal business education genuinely fascinating.

I’ve taken just a few business-related classes: accounting in high school, a business law course in community college, and an economics course titled "Economics of Monsoon Asia." The rest is self-taught, and I’ve got plenty of gaps.

I recently tried mapping out coursework that would cover what I’ve learned through experience. It essentially turned into an associate degree, minus the general ed. Here's what I found valuable:

Core Business Courses (Required)

BUS109 – Introduction to Business (3 units)
BUS250 – Business Communications (3 units)
BUS294 – Business Law (3 units)
BUSMG120 – Introduction to Management Studies (3 units)
BUSAC181 – Applied Accounting (3 units)

Electives

BUSMG121 – Supervision: Practices & Concepts (3 units)
BUSAC185 – QuickBooks Accounting I (1.5 units)
BUSMG191 – Small Business Management (3 units)
CIS116 – Microsoft Excel – Comprehensive (2 units)

Optional but Useful

BUS210 – Introduction to E-Commerce (3 units)
BUSMG226 – Group Behavior and Leadership (3 units)
BUSMK255 – Advertising (3 units)

What’s changed since I looked at this a decade ago? Less focus on website/graphic design, more emphasis on e-commerce. Excel, QuickBooks, and fundamentals remain vital.

Sure, you can learn most of this online, but I’m from the “take a class” generation. I still prefer a classroom and a syllabus, even if the idea now feels exhausting.

I’ve had employees with and without college degrees, and truthfully, ambition matters more than credentials. Still, for those seeking a structured path into retail, this curriculum holds real value—especially for the next generation.

How Final Fantasy Could Have Gone Wrong

If I’m complaining, I’m probably making money. Otherwise, I’m solving the problem—and usually, that problem is me.

After our best sales day ever ($40,000 gross), it’s worth looking at what could have gone wrong with the Final Fantasy release:

1. Pre-Selling

We pre-sold about a third of our product. If the set had underperformed, we’d have been in trouble. It didn’t—but we’ve seen other games spike on release day, then flatline. Pre-selling can be a double-edged sword.

We captured customers who only ever pre-order, so it was worth it. But the risk profile? Stressful. Some of that profit is now tied up in Chinese board games gathering dust.

2. Overprinting

If supply had exceeded demand, prices could’ve tanked. Combined with aggressive pre-orders, that might’ve meant refunding money already spent. Luckily, the print run matched demand.

Still, our invoices nearly equaled our release-day sales. That’s a razor-thin margin of safety.

3. Demand Uncertainty

I know nothing about video games. I leaned on peers who did know. Thankfully, they were right. Final Fantasy was hot, and Wizards didn’t botch the IP like they have with other oddball sets.

4. Distributor Shenanigans

Wave two product arrived on release day. We’d already refunded $4,500 in Commander Collector boxes we assumed wouldn’t show. Oops. If we’d waited 24 hours, we could’ve kept every sale.

5. Store Mismanagement (That Didn’t Happen)

This release was intense. Lines formed before opening. My son wasn’t scheduled to work but jumped in and was immediately overwhelmed. Still—we handled it.

By Sunday, we had all products in stock (except prerelease kits). We may not get restocks, but everyone who really wanted it got it. And the launch nearly covered our invoices.

No meltdown. Just success.

A New Book: The 5-Year Path

If I wrote another book—and I’m not particularly eager—it would be about what comes next: the path to sustained, upper-class income from running a game store.

Working Title:

FLGS: A 5-Year Path to an Upper-Class Income

Premise:

Success isn’t the same for everyone. But successful stores tend to share certain traits. This book would explore those traits through interviews, analysis, and common-sense insights.

Key Questions:

What defines success? For me, it’s doing what you love, sustainably, with enough margin to live well.
How do we reduce confirmation bias? By talking to a broad range of store owners—famous and obscure.
What do the best have in common? That’s the meat of the book.

Early Observations:

Best Practices: Strong location, solid capital, good hiring, excellent execution.
Service-Oriented: Broad product mix and exceptional customer service (especially events).
Persistence: Many succeed by simply not failing. Outlast and out-adapt.
Presence: The most successful store owners still show up. They’re engaged.

I’ve stepped away from daily operations. That’s my trade-off. I’ve had the privilege of traveling with my son before he ages out of our adventures—and that’s my personal definition of success.

But if someone wants to hit that next level—financially, strategically, emotionally—I’d love to explore what that looks like in a second book.

When Is It Okay to Sell at Low Margin?

My store's sales are unpredictable. In theory, you might expect a tidy formula: make X in gross sales, get Y in gross profit, and earn Z in net profit. I’ve met exactly one store owner whose operation works like that. In reality, I’m paying last month’s bills with this month’s sales, and if this month underperforms, I’m in trouble.

This unpredictability comes from being “front list driven.” Our new releases create spikes that make forecasting difficult, but they also keep us alive. Without them, we’d likely be a break-even operation. That’s why when someone asks, “What’s your break-even point?” the answer often depends on what happened last month.

Over time, it averages out: about a 55% cost of goods, healthy six-figure gross monthly sales, and a modest 5–10% net profit. If you get six great months in a row (like our last six—excluding May), you’re profitable, feeling confident, maybe even renting a storage unit to hold extra board games from China. Six bad months, though, and you’re having hard conversations.

So When Is It Okay?

The short answer is: after you’ve hit your “nut.” Once I’ve achieved six figures in sales at a 45% gross margin, everything beyond that is gravy. But that core volume must be protected. If I tamper with it, say, by cutting prices across the board, I risk breaking the business. I tried selling all Magic products at market rates a few years back. It didn’t boost sales; I just earned less on the same volume. Lesson learned.

That said, preorders can be a good opportunity for lower margin sales. I have customers who drop $4,000–$5,000 on Magic preorders and only buy during those windows. If I don’t offer a competitive discount, they’ll preorder from someone else—and I won't see those dollars later at "full" margin. These sales are essentially "found money" that I wouldn't capture otherwise, so a lower margin is acceptable.

Clearance is another case. About 9% of my inventory is currently on clearance at a 40% discount, and sometimes I have even deeper sales. If they still don’t move, I throw them away. Poor buys, saturated titles, or just aging stock—anything that clogs up my shelves is a drag on the business. Even a dollar recouped here becomes part of a more profitable product cycle. Sometimes, clearing out dead stock is about making space to show off what actually sells.

Card singles are often low-margin as well. If your core sales are solid, and singles don’t interfere with your main operation, they can make sense. I’ve never hit that sweet spot. When we sold singles, they didn’t cover labor or overhead. I needed more scale. Paying staff $25/hour to sort cards just wasn’t viable in California, not until my card operation became a much larger entity. That model only works if it covers its own costs and doesn’t pull resources from higher-margin areas.

There are low-margin, high-volume models in other industries you can use as a thought experiment. When I looked at buying a Subaru, I learned the average dealer earns less than a 5% gross margin. But they sell 1,000 cars a year at $20,000 each—that’s $1 million in gross profit. You might manufacture widgets for $20 and sell them for $21. Same 5% margin. You just need to sell a million widgets to match the Subaru dealership.

In our industry, most stores need standard high-margin sales to stay afloat. Exceptions exist. Some stores succeed on low-margin singles and long hours—the card binders and Lifetime tables model. My impression is those store owners work much harder than necessary, but it’s what they’ve got. They may not have had the $150,000–$200,000+ in capital needed to launch a traditional high-margin retail model.

Bottom Line

Stick with the standard model unless you have very unusual circumstances like extremely low rent, free labor (often yourself), or a unique niche. Protect your core sales. Experiment carefully. And don’t confuse high sales with financial health. When you've cracked that nut and the low hanging fruit is all picked, go ahead and dabble at the margins.

Reminding Myself of the Fundamentals

You can't buy if you don't have any money.
Start liquidating dead stock. Consider reinvesting more profit. Work on incentives like events and demos to get customers into the store.
You can't buy what you don't have.
I would love to single source from the lowest-price vendor, but I usually have to buy from whoever has stock right now. My store is not the cheapest, and I regularly benefit from being the last man standing.
You can't sell what people won't buy.
Tastes and customer mixes evolve. Fifteen years ago, most of my customers were dudes playing Magic, 40K, and D&D. Today, we see more women and interest in cozy games. I don’t understand, but I try to keep an open mind.
You can't grow what you don't feed.
If you're not nurturing new players or reaching new demographics, your store won’t evolve. That evolution has a ceiling.
You can't forecast what you don't track.
If you don’t track sell-through, turn rates, and category performance, you’re flying blind.

Enjoy your day, stay in budget, and burn your dregs.

How I Envision the Store One Year from Now (with 145% Tariffs)

A year from now, I expect our inventory will have expanded by another 25%. Hopefully we'll transition out of our new storage unit as we replace our stocked up board games with other, smaller things.

RPG Miniatures made in China will be gone, replaced by more Warhammer.
Card Sleeves will shift toward Dragon Shields and Katanas. Ultra Pro will be mostly gone.
Dice will become Chessex-only again. The embedded-toy dice era is over.
RPGs will remain steady. D&D is printed in the U.S., Old School Essentials in Lithuania, and indie titles may adapt or struggle with tariffs.
Board Games will take the biggest hit. Expect to carry only 30% of current titles. They're a distressed category with structural problems.

I’ve tolerated board game chaos for 20 years. I’d tolerate it for 20 more. But if board games disappeared tomorrow, I’d sleep easier. They’re the comics of the game trade: love them or not, they’re exhausting.

CCGs still rule. As long as Magic and Pokémon stay strong, retail survives. Most are printed in the U.S., though raw materials might face pricing pressure.

Will new games shift to domestic printing? Not within a year. Maybe not within three. Expect more card games, standees instead of miniatures, and a shift toward direct-to-consumer for overproduced titles.

Sales are up 27% this year, driven by doom spending under Trump. We reinvested into Chinese-made goods, becoming part of the messy trade data behind negative GDP. I’ve never let a crisis go to waste. If we’re crashing, I’ve upgraded to first class.

Observations as a Buyer Under Tariffs

Price increases on Chinese goods are running 40–60%, especially board games and card supplies. This leads to:

Reduced Demand

A 60% price increase means about a 50% drop in sales. Any game that didn’t sell 10 copies last year is now assumed to only sell 5—my average. Only 27% of board games meet that bar.

Culling inventory assumes better uses for the money—and I’ve already found those uses.

Customer Drift

Customers will accept $20 card games. But $60–$100 board games? That’s when they flee to online discounters. Games breaking the $100 threshold—like Wingspan, Heat, Arkham Horror, Slay the Spire, Ticket to Ride: Legacy—are now in danger of falling off the map.

New Normal

Eventually we’ll adjust to a new reality. Some will trade down, treating board games as staycation luxuries. Others will simply leave the hobby. We’re counter-cyclical, but only if customers keep jobs and homes.

If nothing changes, we adapt. If something changes—say, tariffs lift—we rebuild. Either way, the store flies on.

What Do Any of Us Really Know?

I'm in my 21st year of running a hobby game store. Over that time, I’ve developed deep expertise in some areas and remained relatively inexperienced in others. After nearly as many years writing about retail, my opinions have gradually sharpened into two main categories: best practices and things that work for me. These categories often overlap, but not always.

Best practices are methods I’ve come to recognize as objectively better. They’re the gold standard, the result of widespread success across many stores and situations. The things that work for me, on the other hand, are personal solutions that fit my specific store, circumstances, or temperament. Sometimes, readers challenge these personal approaches, and I’ll happily change course if they show me a better way. I’m not attached to being right—I’m attached to doing better. Other times, I’ll respectfully disagree and stick to my own methods, knowing they suit my particular context. I approach this with an academic mindset, always ready to abandon my way in favor of something more effective.

Because experience can be so idiosyncratic, one thing I do in my writing is focus on deeply personal experiences. What did this mean to me? How did it make me feel? In the moment, these experiences often seem unique, specialized, and unlikely to resonate with others. This is another area where I think I know something, but I don’t. More often than not, these moments are common. They may not be particularly special, but they carry weight because there’s a loneliness in this work that shared experiences can bridge. Time and again, my weird little perspective turns out to be exactly what another store owner was thinking. In that way, I am an emotional Dunning-Kruger—imagining my thoughts are unusual, only to stumble into a sense of connection and unexpected intimacy.

When it comes to what I know and don’t know, the contrast can be stark. I spend over eight hours a day immersed in buying and managing inventory. At this point, I feel it in my bones. I can read the data like a second language, the numbers flickering like a matrix of arcane symbols. That’s a space where I have real mastery.

But then there are areas where my experience is far more limited. Take commercial leases, for example. I’ve signed three or four in my career, across two locations. I’ve renegotiated a lease once. That’s more experience than a brand-new store owner, but not much more. This is why I often encourage people to gather multiple perspectives. Even someone with two decades in the business may only have a handful of experiences in a given area. Some decisions require more than anecdotal wisdom. That’s when you call in the professionals—accountants, lawyers, brokers. And yes, you really should.

One of the key lessons I’ve learned as a veteran store owner is knowing what I don’t know. I’m a capable bookkeeper, but I’m not an accountant. I’ve studied business law, but I’m not a lawyer. I’ve found and managed retail locations, but I’ll absolutely hire a broker for our next move. When it comes to HR, I have a working understanding at best. For property maintenance, I have someone I call. Knowing when to delegate is not a weakness. It’s a strength. Delegation should be one of your core competencies. I have peers who are genuine experts in some of these areas, but rarely in more than one.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect describes the trap of being too inexperienced to realize how little you know. I still get caught in it sometimes. There are moments when my lack of knowledge causes me to underestimate the complexity of a problem. True expertise means understanding the limits of your own understanding. It’s about recognizing degrees of certainty, and how those diminish as you move farther from your area of strength.

That’s why best practices matter so much. They help fill in the gaps when our experience falls short. And occasionally, when I’ve earned it through mastery, I deviate from those standards in favor of something that simply works better—for me.

My Role Is Happiness

My job is to make you happy. I run a wonder emporium, a place of respite and joy. As much as I would like to lean into the events of the day, tariffs that threaten to destroy entire segments of the game trade, reduce customer choice, and shutter beloved companies, that is not my role. My job is to offer a brief escape from the suffering of everyday life. That is what I tell myself.

So when it comes to stocking my store, you might expect talk of supply chain disruptions, dead products, and fading categories. But again, that is not my place in this story. My role is happiness. To that end, I am spending tens of thousands of dollars to protect endangered species. Chief among them are board games and card sleeves.

If Trump's destructive tariffs turn out to be temporary, this moment will be a blip in the system. It will be an overreaction, a premature stock-up ahead of the holidays and beyond. I have bought a full year of product in that hope. But if the tariffs remain, many of these items may quietly disappear, fading from shelves like relics of a golden age. That is a problem for next year.

I am not trying to sway voters or stir discontent. Believe me, I am discontented and stressed, and it would be easy to share that burden. But my customers did not vote against their interests. I do not live in that kind of place, quite intentionally. My customers are just as stressed and just as trapped in this policy mess. They can confront their politics in their own time.

When they walk into my store, I want them to find comfort. A familiar game, a beloved card sleeve, a reliable escape. I want to help soothe that wound, not deepen it. It would be easy to boycott, to rage, to make a statement. But that is not my role in this war.

My role is to hold the line and preserve joy for as long as I can. And if the storm passes, I hope not a single ounce of this stress ever touches them.

People I Don’t Know

Last year, my store sold well over 10,000 board games, yet I only vaguely understand my market.

My ideal board game customer is best described as "people I don’t know." The best board game customer is always a new one, someone just getting into the hobby. Unlike seasoned buyers, they aren’t yet entangled in the fragmented and hyper-competitive ecosystem where publishers, Kickstarter, Amazon, and discounters are constantly undercutting one another. We can attract new customers for a while, but eventually, they move on. That is an old story.

Our existing customers, who we absolutely cater to, are deeply embedded in this ecosystem. They back games on Kickstarter, buy directly from publishers, and, because they are value-conscious and volume oriented, turn to Amazon and online discounters. They support us when their interests align with ours, but that alignment does not happen as often as we would like. This is no surprise in a market where store buyers often wait for a game to accumulate hundreds or even thousands of positive reviews as a pre-requisite for making a purchase. It is astonishing that this system works at all.

Some customers love us for our quarterly ding and dent sales, where we sell damaged or discontinued games at deep discounts. We even have a private Facebook group of 500 regional customers eagerly waiting for the next sale. This was my attempt at creating a "Magic singles" style secondary market for board games, a niche we have cultivated for nearly 20 years. It was once as lucrative as CCG singles, but rising shipping costs have reduced its profitability.

We host board game events, but they rarely translate into board game sales. Some stores excel at handselling specific games, but when we experimented with this, it did not make a significant impact. We once had a board game-focused manager who was fantastic at this and sold a large number of games to our most engaged customers. When they left, the momentum disappeared completely. Having a product champion is an incredible advantage.

Ultimately, our best method of selling board games is simple. Have them when they are hot and avoid them when they are not. It is more of a buying challenge than a selling one, as there seems a limitless demand on a board game title until suddenly, there isn't. You can sense your place in the broader ecosystem when we get games significantly early to sell (thanks AEG), or when you're the last man standing before desire fades into oblivion. Just don't stand there for too long.

Part of buying well is knowing how to offload excess stock. We have both in-store and online clearance sections, perpetually priced at 40 percent off. At any given time, we have around 50 titles in clearance online, ranging from “the last copy” to “the game that never sold.” That represents less than 10 percent of our board game inventory, and it is a continuous cycle. If we shipped, an online store or eBay might serve as our exhaust port for clearance stock.

At one point, I asked myself if an infinite budget could allow me to fully saturate the market and meet all demand. It's a finicky market, perhaps I just wasn't hitting all the notes? When government money temporarily made me wealthy, I put that theory to the test. We doubled our board game selection, both in breadth and depth, which was absolutely the right choice, but we also hit a clear ceiling. Local markets get the stores they deserve, and I believe we have done everything possible to reflect ours. Our board game sales in 2024 were 210% higher than 2019.

It is far easier to influence collectible card game sales than to predict board game success. My best-selling board game last year was Wyrmspan, with 110 copies sold. However, 13 different collectible card game products outsold Wyrmspan, across Magic, Pokémon, and Star Wars Unlimited.

It is always easier to organize another Magic event or source an elite Pokémon product than to guess which board game will take off. Most new game stores recognize this. Many even choose their point-of-sale system based on how well it integrates with collectible card game singles. I can't argue with them, but I also don't want to live in that world.

I am an old-school believer in full-spectrum game stores that serve the broader community, and we certainly do that. However, I would not necessarily recommend this approach. I wouldn't put all my eggs in one basket, but if I were to do it again, I would be budgeting for robots. As I consider my next project, I hesitate to repeat this model. The ecosystem takes bites out of every customer, not just board gamers. I believe it is a rising tide that keeps us above water.

Vendor Behavior and the Price of Integrity

As a buyer, my ideal small vendor sends clear order cues.

They offer enough product variety and flexible shipping policies to allow me to place my next order as soon as the previous one arrives. With so many small vendors to choose from, this kind of workflow makes it easy to reorder consistently.

A strong product lineup includes a steady trickle of new items replacing those that are tired or sold out. Many small vendors don’t refresh their product lines often enough, forcing me to sell through nearly everything before reordering. This is a bit exhausting and sometimes I just let them go.

A continuous stream of fresh products makes a big difference. There’s joy in discovering a new line from an existing vendor, whether it’s national park notebooks from Field Notes or a new dice series from Foam Brain. In fact, bringing in all of Indie Press Revolution’s “Bestsellers” has moved them into my regular restock cycle.

Other Key Features of an Ideal Vendor:

A streamlined online store - no multi-step approvals or manual intervention.
Credit card payments accepted, preferably with Paypal.
A reasonable shipping threshold for free or discounted shipping.
A "New Arrivals" section.
A "Bestsellers" or recommended section, perhaps starter bundles.
An easy-to-navigate website that allows for simple data scraping—no obscure data formats or copy restrictions on descriptions, prices or product codes.
Complete product details for every item, including title, price, cost, code, and description for every item variation.
Clear inventory status—whether an item is temporarily out of stock or permanently discontinued.

My POS shows 82 active vendors. Every Monday morning, I place orders with five of them, then check my budget and decide which of the remaining 77 deserve some attention. The vendors in steady rotation stay top of mind.

I was once offered $1,000 to allow an adult film to be made in the store after hours. I said no. I was ready with that "no" because I wasn’t the first game store owner to be asked.

I have a reputation to uphold, an image. We are a safe space, a wonder emporium, a bright light on a hill where many game stores are shabby and smell of cat pee. We have a duty of care to our employees to keep them safe and protected from creeps with innuendo.

But what if they had offered me $1,000 every week? Imagine a weekly adult show with recurring revenue. Hmm, how adult? See, now we have questions. Suddenly, the adult film producer is paying my salary. They are my boss. And what is my role? To maintain the store’s image. Because maintaining the image keeps the film revenue flowing.

Over time, the film set image becomes enshrined. We stop innovating because the store has to look the way it did in the films. Our customer base shifts—fewer families, fewer kids. Instead, we cater to adults familiar with the work, alongside our aging regulars who like that we have gobs of money to re-invest.

And that’s what it means to be captured by corporate interests. It’s like publishing a game like Dungeons & Dragons under the rule of shareholders - the pornographers of Wall Street. Their focus isn’t on the slow-selling, expensive-to-produce game books, but on whatever brings in fast, scalable digital revenue. They have completely lost their connection with their core customers, but at least the money is good.

Most of us in business have a price. I won’t take $1,000 to turn my store into an adult film set, but each year, I get a little closer to the moment when I’d take a year’s worth of revenue for the keys. Until then, we can joke about that one time the crazy thing happened.

The More Things Change

If you worked for me 10 years ago and had to step back onto the sales floor today, it wouldn’t feel all that different. That’s about how long it’s been since I was a dedicated sales employee.

Half of the top 10 brands from a decade ago are still in the top 10. You’d brush up on the latest Magic set or two and get familiar with the current meta.

Pokémon practically sells itself, as do Warhammer 40K and D&D. The key difference between D&D 5.0 and 5.5? There isn’t much of one. Just be glad 4th edition is gone.

Board games would take some catching up. Of our top 20 board games from 2011, only one would still be familiar—Betrayal at House on the Hill! The top three back then were Catan (now #61 in 2025), Ticket to Ride (#208), and Carcassonne (#217). They’re still considered “evergreen,” if that’s any comfort. Today, we carry over 1,000 board games—about 40% more than in 2011.

Really, not much has changed, except now we have a mezzanine level and twice the customers. Yet, we still have that lingering fear that the sky is about to fall, that any day now, the bottom will drop out. Maybe it will. Maybe I'll say the wrong thing. Maybe the Game Trade Singularity will finally collapse. But do we dare to believe otherwise? Absolutely.

If you had told me a decade ago that I’d still be selling roughly the same things, in roughly the same ways, to twice as many people, just by keeping at it, I would’ve thought you were insane. If you told me I would be working from home, I would have known you were on drugs, which at that time were illegal. Now, when I predict the same outcome 10 years from today, people ask, “How is that even possible?”

Beats me. Let’s find out.

The Illusion of Wealth

Before I owned a store, I didn’t reconcile my checking account or keep a budget. I owned a home and had a growing 401K, but when it came to finance, I mostly winged it. I can’t say a lot has changed, but the stakes are much higher now.

Imagine this common scenario. You generate two million dollars a year in income. Of that two million, about $100,000 is profit, or 5%. The remaining $1,900,000 is spread across rent, credit cards, payroll, and vendor payments, often not aligned with where the income is generated. On paper, you look like a rich person, but the margin for error is razor-thin, and vendors often treat you like a vagrant.

A friend once asked me how I deal with the stress of that. Ha. A few things. First, the human condition allows us to get used to just about anything that doesn’t kill us. You become hyper-focused on cash flow, which can be dangerous because it often leads to short-term thinking. Second, the only real relief from the pressure comes when there’s money in the bank, measured in time.

A month’s worth of cash means I sleep like a baby. Right now, after paying annual personal taxes and some one-time expenses, I’m down to about ten days. Ten days requires careful attention and I can't wait to build it up again. I’ve been down to just a few and have even missed payroll once by a day. I vowed not to have that happen again. That kind of stress takes a toll on your health. Having money in the bank helps, and so does a modest line of credit, just in case.

Day to day, I think about risk in relation to my credit line. When my Magic: Final Fantasy preorder starts to creep toward maxing out my line of credit, I pull back a little. I learned when I had six figures in savings, I could afford to make about three big mistakes before I was likely sunk. It’s important to identify those signposts. There's one. Ooops, there's two. Is this going to make it three?

The holiday season usually buys me a little breathing room until tax time, when I pull savings to pay my personal taxes. I have money set aside for new product, taxes, and my point-of-sale subscription (something I never used to have), but mostly, that money just lets me relax.

This is something only small business owners truly understand. The huge gross sales that make it look to outsiders like you’re rolling in cash. The tiny net profits that make people think you must be mismanaging something. The stress that stays bottled up until you can vent with peers who actually get it.

This is fine.

The Infinite Asshole

There was a moment, coming down from a psilocybin journey*, when being one with the universe ended and the ego re-established itself, where I made the public declaration: “I am the infinite asshole!”
Just moments before, I was one with the cosmos, floating in a state of perfect clarity. But as the discerning and judging part of my brain returned—the "default mode network"—guilt was the first thing waiting, and it was awfully big. Just when you think you've resolved your issues (ha!), another one pops up.

Capitalism is inherently cruel, especially from the vantage point of an employer. We do what we can to soften the edges—higher wages, bonuses, the occasional and much-maligned offering of pizza. My accountant gets on me about spending too much money on food. At its core, running a business means making hard decisions that impact people’s lives. And that weight doesn’t leave you, no matter how well-intentioned you are.

My companions around our circle reminded me of the good I’ve done. I’m not an evil employer. I’ve created jobs, given opportunities, built a space that brings joy to customers and employees alike, even when my motivation is survival and making rent.

But what sticks with me are the hard times. The now-thirteen banned miscreants, the employees who weren’t the right fit, the 30 to 40 people who’ve passed through my payroll, some of whom I can barely keep track of anymore. I’m fond of almost all of them. Some became friends. I’ve held hands through heartbreak, replaced car windows after break-ins. But mostly, I keep my distance. Logically, it’s for the best. Spiritually?

“I am the infinite asshole.”

I often wish I could have done more. Paid more. Been there more. There’s a deep guilt in this work—the Doctor Who effect of running a small business. You take on a young, bright-eyed crew, travel together on an adventure, and then, inevitably, they burn out, move on, get left behind. And then you pick up new companions, younger ones, and start the cycle over again.

Those who remain friends look back on our time with both nostalgia and ghosts in their eyes. I know the feeling. I followed my own Doctor once, only to find myself left behind, wondering what it all meant, wondering, after some recent discoveries, if perhaps he was an infinite asshole. I don't go in any more and that haunts me the most.

So what’s the resolution to being the infinite asshole? It’s not some grand gesture, some final redemption arc. It’s just acceptance. Life is hard. We don’t live in a Star Trek utopia of fulfilling work free from economic struggle. We work because we have to, and we do what we can to make it as painless as possible.

As business owners, we control some things and have no say in others. We can choose to be deeply involved in the lives of our employees, taking on their chaos alongside them. Or we can be like the Doctor—a benevolent traveler with a duty of care, but always moving forward. Nobody’s getting rich here, but that doesn’t change the infinite nature of being an asshole.

Acceptance. Living in contradiction. And maybe, if I can manage it, a little self-forgiveness. Being one with the universe, even for a moment, means opening up to its pain. It's Arjuna on the Kurukshetra battlefield, accepting the contradiction of his inner battle as well as his duty in life. Forgiveness is also acknowledging the beauty within the universe.

Me wondering how I can be any weirder and less approachable to people.

Unix Admins and Purchase Orders

I just wrote my 5,000th purchase order on our "new" POS system implemented in 2020. This milestone has been on my radar, so I've been thinking about purchase orders for a while.

PO 5,000 was a Monument Hobby order for Pro Acryl paints. I highly recommend them, especially their Bold Titanium White. The coverage and pigment is so superior, many hobbyists dip into the Pro Acryl line, just for this color. I carry Bold Titanium White 12 bottles deep, compared to 2–3 for the other paints. You can often pick up Pro Acryl from Alliance, but they're a bit behind on stocking.

What I want from my purchase orders is a combination of technical improvements, which nobody else cares about—often things I once had that were later removed, like dynamic product cost changes—and of course AI. Not brain-dead demand forecasting like our POS company provides, but actual digital assistance in placing orders.

I would like AI to replace my job as buyer, or come close to it. I've experimented a bit in trying to get it to buy for me, but it's still lacking horsepower. It can clearly do the work, but it doesn't have the bandwidth. For example, I asked it to take a list of board games, search the reviews from BoardGameGeek using several important parameters regarding weight, review average, and review totals, and order X amounts based on the results. The answer?

After a bunch of number crunching and waiting ... No.

ChatGPT came back and said “I can't do this, but here's how YOU could go about doing it.” Yes, ChatGPT, I just taught you that. I use ChatGPT to the limit of its free version for my D&D game, but I have yet to find a business case to spend the $20 per month for a subscription. If you have a business case, please let me know.

When someone finally implements worthwhile AI business tools, I believe there will be no hesitation in adopting them. This is especially true for a stupid field like hobby game retail, in which the inefficiencies are legendary and helpfulness is a closely guarded competitive advantage. I'm hoping AI implementations will see a sharp reduction in dumb.

Many stores have grown faster than mine. My 8% average growth rate has been comfortable, although it will be less so in the future. It took 12 years of a niche hobby market to reach a million dollars in sales. It will take 10 more years to reach two million with hobby games going mainstream. It will take 6 more years after that to reach three million, 4 years to reach four million, and I expect to retire at five million.

It's clear the business must evolve, transform, expand, and re-staff for these increases not to steamroll us. I believe AI could buy me a million dollars of time to figure this out. I hope it does it sooner, rather than later.

A Torrential Downpour of Opportunity

GTS recently announced their handling fees would increase to $7.50 per order. This is a weird trade in which "free freight," with no fees of any kind, used to be part of the deal. Order enough games and they just arrived for free. That is mostly gone as shipping costs increase. It's actually a little insane distribution eats shipping, considering their small slice of the pie. Some expect handling fees will increase across the board with GTS moving first.

As a buyer, you might venture out into toy land every once in a while and feel the sting of actual freight charges. Stuff is expensive to move! Most of us learned to mark up our prices to cover that freight, but this is an alien concept to quite a few game retailers. I have one game adjacent supplier where freight is upwards of 15%. In that case I just couldn't justify buying from them any longer, even with a mark up.

I placed 470 orders in 2024, and the handling fees (not freight charges) were $1,426, or about $3 per order when you factor in the various no handling suppliers. In my store, we just eat this, without raising prices.

Handling fees look like this: ACD: 3.50
Alliance: 5.00
GTS: 7.50
PHD: 7.50+
Magazine Exchange: $5-$15 (depending on weight)

These fees are mostly hidden. My POS system has a place to add them to a purchase order, but there's no reporting, requiring an Excel dive to figure out what I paid last year. Originally, I declared I would order less often because of per order fees, but that didn't last long. Now it's just the cost of doing business.

These "hidden" fees are nothing compared to credit card processing fee increases. When I started in 2004, credit card fees were taken out monthly in a big chunk of cash. You knew exactly what you were paying.

Nowadays, fees are siphoned off before the daily deposit is made, making fees opaque, as if you never actually made that gross amount. Our processing fees went from 2.1% to 2.4% in 2025. Rates in Europe are .3%. That's right, point three. I could buy a new car every year with the savings.

Our increase will hit us for $5,000 in extra fees this year, money that we think we made, but will never materialize in our bank account. Imagine $14 a day siphoned from your account, like a banker at Visa/Mastercard putting their lunch on your credit card every day. These rent seekers have a captive audience with their CEOs each making more than $20 million a year.

“This is just classic collusive, monopolistic behavior,” said Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri.... He noted that Visa and Mastercard control about 80% of the market. “This is not a sustainable situation.”

Inventory, Time, and Marketing

The main ingredients of a hobby game store are money (inventory), time and marketing. You can't fudge these.

Inventory is the life blood of a store. You need a lot of it; $100,000, $200,000 and the largest stores have a million dollars or more, usually grown over time. This is often the owners retirement savings, probably misapplied, although most of these people are gone. Inventory should grow over time.

Astroturfing a hobby game store is dangerous, dropping down a fully formed entity into a new community, expecting to have the correct mix. Finding the inventory mix is a slow process of courting the local customer base. If it were fast, the trade would be dominated by a few players who would spam the nation with their stock market funded, cookie cutter stores.

It takes time to fine tune inventory, to gather customers, and to grow the business. It is painfully slow. The concepts and ideas for growth aren't any more complex than other fields, but access to capital and the slow nature of business growth means projects that you could implement in a month elsewhere, will instead take a year or longer. You will often be a project genius with an empty bank account.

Successful stores over the decades are simply ones that were responsive to customers and grew their inventory over time without failing. Not failing is the common denominator of successful, long term stores, which is actually a whole tool bag of hidden skills. "Don't fuck it up" is my core competency. Growing a hobby game store can almost never be rushed, although there are exceptions. Those are the store owners that intrigue me the most. Those who can rush growth. I promise you their mantra is not "Don't fuck it up."

Marketing is the least important thing, but store owners are obsessed with it. Why? Because they are poor and have a vision of a community. They don't have the proper investment for inventory and they are young and want to instantly please the community from which they usually came. Marketing means events primarily, delighting large roomfuls of customers with games each night, sacrificing the owners evenings, social lives, family time, and friends, with this Third Place. Marketing can range from inconsequential to critical to fast growth, depending on how well it's managed. Marketing is almost always done wrong, almost always focuses exclusively on events, and only occasionally generates income or moves the store forward.

You must have the inventory investment, which nowadays is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. You can almost never compress the time needed to build the business. Almost never. Marketing is over emphasized and often about pleasing crowds rather than growing the business.

The whole endeavor is painstakingly slow, just absolutely, low margin, years in the making, molasses slow. The tendency to "fuck it up" is tremendous; ordering too much of the wrong stuff, failing to pay taxes, losing your lease, getting behind on bills, allowing the wrong people in the store or on staff, and general malfeasance. If you were given a giant sum of money to move your business forward, even the experts would probably blow it half the time. The real wizards of the trade know how to optimize inventory, compress time, and use events to their advantage.

Speculating with Garbage Bags

How much of a new CCG should I buy? Well, how much money can you afford to lose?

An investment in a CCG entails community interest, a track record, and a schedule of events or other promotional efforts. There is a community in mind, ignoring the fact they have limited resources and you will be cannibalizing your other games. The more you can plan these things for a new game, the more risk you can assume. Investment assumes you have hopes for the future.

Speculating in a CCG is a "pump and dump" calculation with little to no community interest with perhaps a known outlet if things go south. A dead CCG in a game store is pretty much a rock. I speculate on a lot of CCGs, but I speculate in the realm of maybe a case, rather than a pallet. I just barely escaped Altered with my life, breaking even due mostly to the Kickstarter booster boxes. I bought way too many starters for the people we would be flocking to my store to learn to play this game. That was speculation, although with a lot of groundwork based on promises (that didn't get fulfilled).

The difference between a new CCG investment and speculation? There's not much sunlight between them to be honest. New means we are convincing people before a product exists. The difference between investing and speculation is more a fuzzy scale between 1 and 10 than some hard line of separation.

Magic the Gathering's Innnistrad Remastered, which released this weekend to predictable results, is probably a 2, on a scale of one to ten, with little speculation. However, a Digimon release is a 9, with no community and perhaps just a handful of interested parties. It might completely fail with zero sales one day.

I'll buy $10,000 of Innistrad on release, while I'll only buy $500 of Digimon. It takes about three dead Magic sets to cause my operation to seize up (ask me how I know), while I can fail on a $500 CCG pretty much continuously ... until there are too many of them for too long. One time I did some forensic accounting to realize these little $500 CCG buys were the reason I wasn't profitable. You miss every shot you don't take, but you'll only make money by taking careful aim.

When Redakai came out, the poster child for wild speculation, I was still talking with sales reps and taking their advice. I no longer do this. The game would have state of the art "lenticular" transparent cards where you could stack them, like with Gloom, to create a new thing on the table.

This game was from Spinmaster, a toy company who made the uber popular Bakugan franchise worth a billion dollars in annual sales. It was to be launched with a cartoon tie in and toys. Retailers would get it two months before mass market. It was a summer release, the best time. There would be organized play and league kits. It was the Next Big Thing and it couldn't fail. They had me at Gloom, to be honest.

Like all new CCGs, it had to win over existing CCG players and create a new marketplace. It had to nail its marketing efforts, convince influencers and alpha gamers, and it had to hit the supply and demand just right. Redakai was perfection on paper, probably a warning sign. In practice, Redakai did not do any of these things.

The game was expensive costing 50% more than the market rate of CCGs, due to the fancy, lenticular cards. It was unbalanced with broken combos with no desire to fix this. The product packaging was bewildering and the product make up differed among various sales channel. Support for the game by its developers was lacking.

Critics say Spinmaster was more interested in the toys for Redakai and the cartoon series that was released concurrently. Spinmasters was essentially a toy company, not a game company. It's unclear if the tie ins supported the CCG or the CCG supported the tie ins. Hint: you can still buy the toys. Sometimes the cartoon would reference the CCG and give out gaming advice ... that was totally wrong. In other words, the marketing department was leading this project.

At the end, I recall dragging a 50 gallon black garbage bag of Redakai to the dumpster in the back. It was too heavy to lift. One game store friend lamented I should have given it away. Let me tell you, nobody wanted this game.

The difference between a successful, speculative pump and dump and a failure is simply the quantity ordered. I might feel different about Redakai if I had ordered approximately one 50 gallon garbage bag less.

Nowadays, could you catch me out on a Redakai? Oh yeah, for sure. My Gundam CCG pre order, assuming I get it all, would leave a Redakai sized mark if it fails. It won't bury me though and when I placed the order I calculated the debt it might put me in short term. Always keep those 50 gallon garbage bags in stock.

The Daily Grind of Ordering

I've got some ordering statistics from the last year:

431 orders were placed, over the 250 or so business days. There were 3 days I didn't place an order. If it was a business day, there was a 99% chance I was placing an order.
Only 24 vendors were ordered from. I have 80 "active" vendors in my POS and 277 inactive vendors. So only a third of my "active"vendors got an order in 2024. Perhaps I need three categories? Hyperactive vendors.
9 orders arrived late, or 2% of my orders. This is a function of UPS, primarily. Half of those late orders were from Games Workshop. GW being late is why I looked, but it only happened four times over the last year. In my mind it was larger.
Most vendors prefer UPS. Foam Brain and IPR (and Heart of the Deernicorn) use USPS. USPS shows up when it shows up. A few random orders arrived via Fedex from Renegade and Toyhouse. Get with the 1Z folks.
The average time between when an order is placed and when it was received was 1.25 days. This is because I have three major distributors with a one day delivery time. I almost went to pick up our Innistrad order yesterday with my truck.
The average Games Workshop order took 13 days, but many took 20-30 days. When Games Workshop wants to, they can get me an order in 4 days, or in other words, a well functioning GW would get me orders in the same week I placed them.
Over 35,000 items were received, or 81 items per order.
The average number of boxes per order was 2, which I base on the rough estimate of $500 of content per box. Over 1,000 boxes arrived over the year, so many that it requires a dedicated recycling dumpster.
The average order value was $1,200.
The average number of boxes arriving each business day is 4. Some days are heavier than others. For example, Tuesday I estimate we received 30 boxes.
About once a quarter we'll get 50-100 boxes that arrive on a pallet that are not part of these statistics. We got one of those orders on Wednesday.
We fill the recycling dumpster to the top each week with boxes and the recycled trash from customers opening product in store. If the customers took product home to open, we could get away with a recycling trash can. We learned this during COVID.
I have 3,342 items on pre order and back order accounting for $83,692 holding on 29 purchase orders, including some dummy POs that keep things organized. A quarter of that is product from Bandai and a quarter is from Wizards of the Coast. Only 3% is Kickstarter derived.
I'm at the point where I could use some help. I will definitely need to hire someone to help with purchasing in the next 24 months, as growth continues.

Choosing the Cleanest Dirty Shirt

The larger your organization, the more incompetent people are involved, according to Price's Law.
The law states half of the total contribution is made by the square root of the total number of participants. So let's take the Department of Education with 4,400 people. 66 people are doing 50% of the work, according to Price. This is not a dig on the DoE, it's just how all organizations function. Small and nimble is nice to have, but it's not always possible. The incremental gains as you scale up are generally worth the inefficiency, which is why we have large organizations.

If you want to hunt down inefficiency and scale back a work force, good for you. You just need to be careful you don't eliminate those 66 people doing half the work, or signal to them you don't care about them (they certainly have). If you offer a universal buyout to all employees, what are you signaling?

Here are top reasons top performers quit according to a brand analyst:

Lack of Growth Opportunities (check)
Burnout (check, because they do half the work already)
Under appreciation (check)
Poor Leadership (check)
Misalignment with Company Values (check)
Lack of Autonomy (check)
Limited Recognition or Reward (check)
Unclear Expectations (check)

So if you want to destroy an organization, this general invitation to quit is an excellent way to go about it. Do you think Elon Musk took such a cudgel to Twitter? Or did he take a more sophisticated approach? It's the latter.

The End of an Era?

I just re-filled my thirty foot wall of RPG miniatures. It's WizKids with some Reaper Black Series. However, I think this segment is dead, either for me or as a game trade segment. I'm not sure yet. It hasn't worked on paper for some time.
The problem is the supply hasn't been reliable and the demand is very spotty. Lack of demand and lack of supply equals death. Both WizKids and Reaper seem disinterested in supplying the trade. I recently opened a Reaper account, but I'm reluctant to use it for security concerns. I could trim down my miniatures to a core collection, but I've tried that, and sales performance did not improve. I could have a half dozen of every miniature on a hook, but it just means terrible inventory performance. We're giving that a final stab this year.

So why re-fill the thirty foot wall with questionable product? This is kind of a last gasp to prove myself wrong. Perhaps the lack of supply was the lack of demand. Perhaps painters will come out of the woodwork when they see a power display, one lacking quite a bit of power in the form of many SKU holes (we don't actually use those moronic out of stock cards, of course). I'm down to just 61 WizKids back orders.

Why is this happening? I think the RPG painting customers have moved on. These are dungeon masters of D&D, primarily. COVID taught them to use virtual tabletops, even in person. D&D players are notoriously cheap, and they're not likely to buy more than a model or two a year, but it's not uncommon to see my players with 3D color printed character miniatures from HeroForge. Or perhaps ghostly white plastic figures they promise to paint one day. Paintable miniatures are legacy.

We have tried to incentivize RPG miniature painting through painting contests throughout the years, including using the last eight, Wiz Kids paint night kits. I don't see any more of those coming.
As a DM, I take some pride in having the right miniature in every situation. It's a form of mental illness. When possible, I buy my miniatures pre painted on Ebay. I buy them 3D printed or acquire 3D print files and have them painted or paint them myself. Only in the rarest of situations, a last resort, will I bother purchasing a WizKids or Reaper miniature off one of my shelves. These minis aren't bad, they're just not amazing like the infinite options one gets with 3D printing. I've spent thousands of dollars over the last year on miniatures; $5 came from my store.

So this year, I attempt to prove myself wrong with my full wall of miniatures. This might be the end of an era. However, just like we have new fixtures to consolidate and better display RPGs, after magazine racks have become obsolete, there is an awful lot I could do with thirty feet of new wall space. I think that's easily a year of inventory expansion. Most likely dedicated to Games Workshop. If I can get the product.

The Merchant's Dilemma

You're on the battlefield in your chariot, fighting for your kingdom. You notice your enemies are comprised of many of your family and friends. Turning to your best friend and chariot master you tell him you would rather lay down and die than fight this battle. Fighting this fight will tear apart the community.
Your chariot master is unusually wise and tells you that sometimes life puts you in impossible situations, and you can only do your duty. The dude is blue, which means you should probably trust him.
I'm talking about Pokemon, along with the most famous scene in the the Bhagavad Gita. Sometimes we are put in difficult situations. In the case of Pokemon, we can lie down and get trampled in the battlefield, selling to scalpers and resellers as we hold to the MSRP, a pawn in many a side hustle. Pokemon USA made an announcement they were appalled at market prices, a monster they created.

Or you can accept your role as a merchant, a warrior in the battle of supply and demand, and do your duty, fighting your battle with market prices. Being a merchant occasionally puts us in situations where we are forced to act, where there is little to do but submit to the life you've chosen. This can sound overly dramatic, I know, but there's truth to it.
Some people will feel trampled by your chariot. They will leave one star reviews. This is capitalism, with winners and losers, but if you ask me, everyone is far better off than the alternatives. Like a billion people being lifted out of extreme poverty in 20 years. Take your winnings and build a better kingdom with more wonders and opportunities that serves everyone.

The Escort

Investor friends and I were at a fancy restaurant on the ocean having lunch. We were contemplating what was needed to move the business forward. I was eating some local oysters and a "dragon fizz" soda, a snack that would cost me an eye watering forty dollars. But the view.
"An escort? Explain."

"Well, I need someone who will take products I'm buying, add them to our online system, and promote them for pre orders.
When the product comes in, they would take photos, promote the product on social media and in store, and make sure the product was the focus of events.
They would manage the online store, provide shipping which we don't currently offer, and create product offerings across platforms, like on Amazon and Ebay.
Then when a product failed to perform, they would run reports, pull product from shelves, and create sales opportunities. They would escort product from conception to its inevitable death. They wouldn't buy or sell product, just facilitate it's life progression.

"Don't you already do these things now?"

"We all do a little bit of each of these tasks, but they aren't our core job, so we do them kinda poorly. This is a 3M position, as in they don't buy, sell or dispose of product, they just make the buying, selling and disposing of a product better."

"So when are you hiring this person?"

"I need another $120,000 of annual revenue, so probably in a year. The problem is this is a cost center rather than a verifiable income generating position, although shipping from the online store will increase revenue. Marketing will increase revenue somewhat."

"Just one more thing, you'll need to change the name. You can't solicit for an escort...."

Third Places and Table Fees

A business book not often mentioned, probably because it's so ingrained in our thinking, is The Great Good Place, by Ray Oldenburg. Third Place theory is the concept that society needs a third place for socialization, a neutral ground between work/school and home. Game stores can be that third place. I didn't bother reading this book until I was planning a coffee shop. Game stores, we preach, like coffee shops, are that third place. We are anchors, creative outlets, and social meeting places. For publishers we are marketing venues of both a place to view your product as well as play your game. We are the worst option for selling a game for publishers, the last best place to sell a product, since we eat up 60% of the margin with our distribution buddies. It's only after every channel has been exhausted, that some publishers will finally relent and allow us to sell their goods. In this third place, we put eyes on their product that wouldn't see it otherwise, at tremendous cost.

In the post COVID world, getting customer engagement with our third place is harder than ever. My sales are up, but my event attendance is down and it's that way with many, if not most stores. I would not base a business on third place right now, as I think we have some emotional healing to do before it's a viable option. I would still have game space, but I wouldn't be looking to expand it. We may need to skip a generation to recover, perhaps getting a decade out where the 12 year olds never wore a mask. My own kid, now 19, is fine with his friends online and feels no need to see people in what we early online adopters used to call "meat space." Getting people to re-engage in "meat space," with that third place, requires a cultural shift back to normal that we have little control over. We can build it; they may not come. My need for a bigger store is about product space, not assembly space. I have re-claimed some of my event space for product storage, post-COVID.

An important point I want to mention from The Great Good Place is that a third place should be free OR inexpensive. That "OR" is important, as many game store owners are stuck on the free setting. New store owners, often fresh from being a player at another game store (which obviously wasn't good enough for reasons), are reluctant to charge anything at all for table space. However, let Starbucks be your guide. Starbucks this week changed their policy to require a purchase to use their space. This is because they got tired of being abused. A spokesperson in a CNN article said, “By setting clear expectations for behavior and use of our spaces, we can create a better environment for everyone.” Sound familiar?

Americans don't value free. Even a small price, the cost of a cup of coffee for a few hours, is enough to drive away a ton of free loaders, sucking up power, clogging the wifi, and messing up the bathroom. The darker side is Starbucks is a resource for the homeless, a case where our weak societal safety nets are supplemented by private businesses. Starbucks might be able to afford to fund restrooms for the homeless, but I can't. Some sort of purchase to use the space, even my older store credit model ($5 for $5 of store credit), is enough to discourage a ton of freeloaders, as well as remove people who don't belong. If phrases like "don't belong" are offensive to you, don't start a business.

Resentment is probably what drove me to make the change from essentially free to a table fee last year. This was exacerbated by too many RPG groups, a change that happened post COVID when we invited everyone, anyone, back to our game space. Any warm body would do. Before COVID, we had a carefully balanced and curated collection of groups that filled the entire space every night. We are years from that again.

In the case of RPGs, through data, it became clear the GM was spending all the money, and half a dozen people would buy some event store credit, which would then be used on snacks. Imagine a packed room of 50 people in which five of them are actual product customers. As Travis wrote, if you're angry with your customers for doing what you've encouraged them to do, it's your own damn fault. Changing to a table fee meant the table was the product, not the D&D product. If players are pirating books, buying them on Amazon, or not buying anything at all, that's Not My Problem now. My product is the table. They are paying for a service, one that's profitable enough ($5) to be the net profit of a Player's Handbook every gaming session. Of course, this has reduced the size of our RPG crowd, and it may have hurt our reputation, but it removed a major irritant and made room for paying customers (again, my broken system, so my fault). It makes me sad, but it pays the electric bill.

Third places just sorta happen. You can't force it. You can't make your place cool. You can certainly legislate it out of existence with fees and policies and rudeness. However, as Starbucks demonstrates, you need to find a middle ground in which you're creating a third place environment where everyone is getting what they need; the business and the customers. Some people will naturally be excluded from that.

Special Orders and Accountability

Just for fun...

My store does 400 special orders or pre orders each year, a little over one each day. Our success rate is 99%, which you might think is very good, but it generally means 4 people each year are unhappy with something we've done. One each quarter. If you can't handle disappointing customers, special orders are not for you.

There are three words you need to learn to take special orders: I screwed up. Notice the "I". Selling a customer's special order is the most likely scenario, because it wasn't noted on the incoming order, put aside for the customer, or because math is hard. It is going to happen.... four times this year.

"I screwed up" means the responsibility lies with me. The customer who bought the oversold item is absolutely never to be an issue. We don't need to make THAT a mistake too! Take your win with the unknowing customer who bought the reserved item and make it up to the customer who didn't get their item. This is such basic customer service, that I wonder if it needs to be said.

But what if that was a one of a kind sale? When we screw up, it's because we can't solve for X, we can't get another one of whatever was ordered. That's often a Games Workshop army box, an unobtainium box of CCG product, or perhaps a limited edition cover of an RPG book. Store owners regularly send messages in forums, scrambling to find just one more copy of X, from anyone willing to ship it. If the wronged customer is patient, we can often fix the situation.

As an aside, we are regularly learning when not to take these special orders. For a minute, Wizards of the Coast made certain products limited release without telling anyone. It took a couple cycles to realize this. Keeping at least one item in reserve of a Games Workshop release guarantees we won't oversell those; often when eager clerks ignore the math. Me taking the blame in that case means not pulling back before they had to use their counting fingers.

We gave back thousands of dollars to angry customers we didn't know when our first Lorcana allocation was well below 5% of our order. Such astonishing poor planning all around.

"I screwed up." Try it out a few times. It loses its sting after a while. Just work on saying it less tomorrow.

AI, Wikis, and the Digital Dungeon Master

I went digital with my D&D hobby six months ago and it had me concerned about the future of tabletop role playing. I did this with a huge world building project, and with the help of technology, it turned out to be a planet sized endeavor, supercharged by AI.

I am behind. This is not the future of the hobby, but me catching up with a lot of tech that's been around, sometimes up to a decade ago in the case of wikis. The role of the hobby game store in the future is likely tied up in unwinding how our selling of physical stuff interacts with this technology. What I found was a bit disturbing but also reassuring.

I'm using a campaign wiki (Kanka), a technology that appears to be at least a decade old. Combined with AI, which is obviously much newer, I've been able to create about 900 documents in the last six months. This "power couple" is both a blessing and a curse of sorts, in that if you can think it up, you can create it quickly and organize it to be accessible.

When I used paper, there was a point at which the organizational structure determined when I was done. The key is having a vision, planning and focus, which is pretty much the human contribution, when it comes to AI.

I'm also using an encounter generator, Kobold+ Fight Club, to create combat encounters. How do RPG books, those things we sell, come into this?

Generally, if content won't fit into my wiki, I'm not interested. At first this was alarming as a store owner. However, I've bought many RPG books for this campaign, provided I could also get electronic copies. Dumping PDF text dumps into ChatGPT, modifying it to my liking, and generating new content, was a pretty common method when I wasn't writing entirely new content.

Kobold Fight Club has access to 34 published monster source books, of which I've selected 20 to use for my campaign. I've sought out the holes in my physical collection, wanting copies of all 20 of those books.

When it comes to monsters, I need them to be open source, so I can create a hyperlink in my wiki. If not, I need a PDF copy available so I can at least include an image. Kobold Fight Club can get around this, if you use it for combat. If I can't get access to either a hyperlink or a PDF, I won't use that source material.

I don't subscribe to D&D Beyond, which has a lot of official content. I also don't pay for ChatGPT, although I should. The only recurring expense for this project was Kanka, which charges me $5/month for advanced features and additional storage.

The ease of creation of a huge array of content leads me to the understanding that less is more. A more focused, tighter vision, with dynamic content created along the way, is how I would do this in the future.

Perhaps I'm a bit old fashioned in wanting physical copies of books, but that physical content must have an electronic representation of some sort.

In the case of my store, we offer Bits & Mortar copies of books we sell, provided that publisher is part of the B&M program. Many publishers are not members and sometimes I'm leaning on PDF copies sent to me as a store owner by the publisher, who frankly isn't sure what to do with them when it comes to customer distribution.

Finally, there are miniatures. I have a tremendous collection, which ironically leads me to want the exact miniature for any encounter. My preferred method is to buy pre painted collectible WizKids singles on Ebay.

I've got a lot of Lovecraftian monsters, so I'm also buying 3D printed models, or 3D model files. This expense is offset by my sitting at home working on this thing and not traveling, which costs a small fortune.

The 3D files are printed in store on our 3D printer. The 3D models are often ordered on Ebay, then made to order, and sent to me where I paint them myself or outsource them for painting. This process mostly bypasses my store, unfortunately.

My favorite Ebay store is Kings of Light, and if I could have a collection of every pre painted mini for sale like them, I would be happy, but probably poorer for my efforts.

I'm not a trailblazer in this endeavor, although I've been enjoying an experimental D&D 5e implementation of ChatGPT. This version takes my gaming nonsense and ensures it remains D&D formatted and compatible.

One of my small joys is converting AD&D spells to 5E, and including those as rare spells to the players in the wiki. Again, if I can think of it, I can create it quickly -- a double edged sword, but manageable with a database.

I should also mention that players, like all players everywhere, are only mildly interested in these world building shenanigans.

If I were to advise stores on how to be more integrated with such a process, first I would suggest a Bits & Mortar account. We've been a member for many years.

I've talked to some store owners who are opposed to the concept, but some of my alpha RPG customers swear by it and are happy to buy print books while also having us send them PDF copies through B&M.

3D printers have yet to become ubiquitous, as predicted, so perhaps offering a printing service for miniatures and terrain is something you might develop.

Finally, although my store has dropped it, opening collectible miniature boxes of pre painted minis might be a consideration, although it's labor intensive, takes up critical space. It probably requires volume, like any collectible singles, to make it work properly, meaning you'll need enough profitable singles to make up for the dregs.

I've been writing regular world building posts on my personal page for months, but wanted to summarize what I've learned, now that the world building is done. We're now at the phase where new content is written as the game progresses.

Why Do You Need to Be Great at This?

2025-06-18T19:12:00.000-07:00

One time in grad school, I gave a ride to a Korean Buddhist monk. He was older than me, soft-spoken but perceptive, and asked if I planned to become a professor. I told him no. I had considered it. At the time, I was fascinated by Central Asian Buddhism, a field that demanded fluency in Chinese, Tibetan, and Uyghur. And because nearly all the scholars working in that space were Japanese, it also meant mastering my academic nemesis: Nihongo.

My fascination was sincere, but my aptitude for languages lagged behind my curiosity. In hindsight, I suspect I was drawn to the field because the path was so impossibly difficult. There’s a kind of romance in chasing something you know you’ll never catch. I told him, “No. I’m not great at languages, and if I were to be a professor, I’d want to be a great one, not just another mediocre academic.”

He listened, paused, and then, in broken English, asked me a question that pierced straight through my carefully assembled logic:

“Why do you need to be great at this?”

My brain sputtered.

There are parts of ourselves we knowingly try to improve—our weaknesses, our habits, our interpersonal skills. But then there are the unexamined convictions buried in our operating system, deep beliefs that we mistake for truths. For me, the need to be great at something wasn’t just a goal. It was a foundational belief, an assumed necessity. Even though I was only 23 and demonstrably not great at anything, this belief shaped how I saw my potential and self-worth.

The monk's question was a kind of koan—a riddle not meant to be answered directly, but to be lived with, puzzled over, and slowly absorbed. “Why do you need to be great at this?” wasn’t just a passing curiosity. It was a gift, one that would take decades to unpack.

At first, it hit me like a challenge. But over time, I realized it wasn’t a test—it was an invitation to freedom. The belief that I had to be great was, in fact, a source of suffering. It was preventing me from engaging with the things I loved unless I could already excel at them. What if my curiosity and my modest talents, applied with diligence, were enough? What if good could be good enough?

That koan stayed with me.

I eventually finished my graduate work. My honors thesis included a zany chapter analyzing Buddhist enlightenment theories through the lens of Ries and Trout’s Immutable Laws of Marketing. It was filler, really—more playful than academic—but it slipped through. Turns out Buddhist studies professors have a surprisingly sharp sense of humor.

One of those "immutable laws" said that if you can’t be number one in a category, create a smaller niche where you can be. If you can’t be the top shoemaker, be the best running shoemaker. If you can’t be the best car company, be the best sports car company. Find a segment you can own. Even if that means being “the best dad on the block,” you’ve staked out your ground.

This marketing maxim harmonized with the monk’s question. It gave me a conceptual framework to accept the idea of not needing to be great in the abstract. I didn’t need to dominate the whole mountain—just find a trail I could enjoy climbing.

Over the years, I’ve continued to deconstruct this need for greatness. I grew up in a supportive household. My siblings were gifted, driven, successful. My parents’ story was one of bootstrapping from hardship to comfort. The idea of being “great” was never forced on me, but it was implied. It hovered in the background like a destiny waiting to be fulfilled. And it always felt expected.

But what about happiness?

As I tell my son: My job is to raise you so you're moral and self-supporting. Happiness is your job. It’s not guaranteed, and I can’t tell you how to get there. I can only point out the connection: moral behavior and self-reliance often lead to conditions where happiness can arise. Being great? That’s incidental. It may show up as a byproduct of living well, or not at all. Either is fine.

If greatness arrives, wonderful. If not, also fine. Happiness, too, is impermanent—welcome it when it visits, but don’t expect it to stay. And whatever it is, I can’t give it to my son, and it’s not the end goal of a spiritual path.

“Why do you need to be great at this?” remains my koan. I still nibble at the edges, still catch myself wrestling with that impulse. I enjoy defining greatness in others. But needing to be great? I’ve mostly let that go. It only took about 35 years of quiet reflection and stubborn internal debate.

These days, I carry a new koan:

“Does this bring me freedom?”

That’s the better question now. It’s what I use to guide decisions, big and small. One of my favorite corollaries is: “Debt is the promise of future work.” It’s a reminder that every obligation takes a piece of freedom with it, and that freedom—not greatness—may be the better compass.

Talking to Myself

2025-06-03T10:30:00.000-07:00

AI: Hey Gary, sounds like things are going well. You mentioned being up 20% last month and 25% year-to-date—that’s some serious growth. Are you feeling optimistic?

Gary:
Yeah, overall it’s been a strong year. We’re firing on all cylinders. That said, I’m seeing growing issues with product availability. A wide variety of board and card games are just missing. Not from lack of demand—but from lack of supply.

AI:
Interesting. Is that mostly China-based stuff, or broader than that?

Gary:
It’s both China and Europe. And I didn’t invest in the European products when this started. I had to make a choice and leaned into games from China when the tariff hit 145%. I didn’t do that expecting sales—I did it to hedge against unavailability.

AI:
So it was a supply continuity move, not a demand one. Have those hedged games started selling faster now that availability’s drying up?

Gary:
Not yet. I think they’re still in the pipeline—on store shelves, in warehouses. But once that inventory is gone, I expect a sharp spike in demand. It could also be that we’re seeing a broader consumer slowdown and my sales are outperforming what’s happening elsewhere.

AI:
Right, your “normal” might be stronger than the rest of the market, so you’re not seeing the same signs. Have you seen any distributor signals that a major wave of product shortages is coming?

Gary:
Distributor communication is usually vague, so not much there. But availability is murky enough that I suspect it’s post–Lunar New Year disruption and shipping shortfalls. Products just aren’t showing up.

AI:
That lines up. A lot of freight lanes were disrupted, and smaller publishers probably didn’t have the cash to rebook space. Are you seeing this reflected in pre-orders or early solicitations?

AI:
Not directly. What I am seeing is a lot of Q1 board game clearance, and a larger-than-usual glut from that post-holiday period. It feels like board game demand pulled back earlier this year and we're still dealing with the overhang.

AI:
That could definitely be the case. If that dip started in January, and you're seeing it now as empty shelves + clearance, you’re probably looking at a lagging demand signal. Are you still seeing strong sell-through in other categories?

Gary:
CCGs are still the engine, especially sets like Pokemon: Destined Rivals and Magic: Final Fantasy. Those are "high" normal releases for us, but I can’t adjust my orders close to release, so I’m locked in. That’s where the bulk of our budget went. If there was a real slowdown, my Open to Buy would show a surplus—and it hasn’t.

AI:
So the budget’s fully utilized, but inventory is disappearing in some areas and still healthy in others. That suggests the system is stressed, not necessarily demand. Any worries about where that money gets reallocated?

Gary:
That’s the issue. My Open to Buy doesn’t discriminate by category, so if board games vanish and RPGs are available, money shifts there. But that’s not a 1:1 demand swap. The RPG audience can’t absorb 50% more product. We risk over-investing in available categories that aren’t necessarily the strongest performers.

AI:
That’s a subtle but dangerous trend. If inventory starts chasing availability instead of demand, it creates imbalance that could hurt you in Q3 and Q4. Have you started capping some categories?

Gary:
Not formally, but I’m watching it. I'm cautious about restocking low-velocity categories too aggressively just because they’re in stock.

AI:
Good call. Have you adjusted prices much this year?

Gary:
We’ve mostly passed on increases. Where we’re already above MSRP—like with paints or sleeves—we’ve absorbed some of it. But overall, the expectation is to raise prices where it makes sense. It hasn’t been a big change yet, though.

AI:
That’s a smart balance. Hold the line where customer sensitivity is high, pass it through elsewhere. Have distributors changed anything about allocations or terms?

Gary:
Not really. They're just out of a lot of stuff. I threw what money I could at high-risk inventory, but now the second- and third-tier products are gone too.

AI:
Let’s talk publishers for a second. You mentioned some scary numbers—25% may go out of business, and half may shift to DTC?

Gary:
Yeah. The industry survey results were grim. A lot of publishers won’t survive the tariffs, at least when they were surveyed at the 145% level, and those that do might bypass distribution entirely. And there’s no domestic production solution waiting in the wings—nothing scalable. We’re probably looking at a permanent reduction in the number of SKUs available to hobby retail.

AI:
That’s seismic. You’re not just managing inventory anymore—you’re managing the slow collapse of part of the supply chain.

Gary:
Exactly. And there's no elegant way to solve it. If publishers disappear or bypass us, the game changes. Even if demand holds, we won’t have product to meet it.

AI:
Sounds like this is the summer to tread carefully.

Pro Active Price Increases

2025-04-05T08:26:00.000-07:00

Consumers see retailers raising prices ahead of tariffs as something unethical. It seems to depend on whether they like your store. If the retailer is dealing with other issues, such as Target, the criticism tends to be much harsher.

However, If I had to absorb the full cost of expected tariff increases up front, it would put me out of business. The added costs are about twice my annual profits. Prices need to go up on existing inventory before you restock your shelves.

When I hear about an upcoming price increase, it is essential that I adjust my prices before I sell out of the current stock and have to restock at higher costs. If I can do this for about half my inventory, I estimate I can neutralize the initial cost impact of the tariffs. If I wait and take a "power to the people" approach, my business will not survive.

There is a downside, of course. Higher prices lead to lower sales. As we have discussed before, a ten percent price increase typically results in a twelve percent drop in sales. Larger increases are even worse, which means many products may need to be cut entirely.

To give a specific example, I sell Pathfinder, a roleplaying game published by Paizo and manufactured in China. If those imports continue, I expect to see a fifty-eight percent price increase and a sixty-nine percent decline in demand. That would be enough to make the product unsustainable in my store. In a case like that, I may keep prices the same but stop reordering altogether. Paizo is currently one of my top 20 publishers, so I'm hoping they move production.

Right now, I am stocking up as if it were the holiday season. We have just come off a post-election sales boom, likely fueled by just such an uncertainty. Trust the "wisdom of crowds" I guess. Among my investors, there is ongoing debate about whether to hold back spending or go all in on products most likely to be affected.

My approach is somewhere in the middle. I do not have enough capital to buy with the holidays in mind, but I do have enough to build a small cushion. That might help me weather a short-term disruption. I would not be surprised to see a surge in national wholesale spending in the second quarter as others try to get ahead of these changes. If you don't have the cash, spending close attention to price increases and long term viability of product lines, should be enough to survive unscathed.

Whatever your strategy, you need to be pro active with these price increases. Your customers may appreciate you being the last person standing at the low price, but you're probably not going to have enough money to survive.

Trump Tariffs and the Flight to Quality

2025-04-03T08:15:00.000-07:00

My first impression is that the new tariffs will increase my store’s cost of goods by around 23 percent, most of which will be passed on to consumers. I already had the spreadsheet made.

There will be a big attempt to pivot away from problematic products. This 23 percent amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars in what amounts to a tax, just pushed down the chain to the end user.

Here’s what I expect to happen:

Some games will become clearly untenable because they’re simply too expensive to carry. An $80 Catan? Sure, we'll keep carrying it, but we won’t be selling nearly as many.
Other games may seem viable at first, but as customer behavior shifts, we’ll end up stuck with them. That means we need to be more cautious. This always happens during a recession, and...
There will likely be a recession.
Inflation is likely to spike.
Unemployment could double, over 7%. That’s what economists are predicting.

We’ll probably see a “flight to quality,” where people adjust their spending habits. Big purchases like cars and vacations might get postponed. But hobby games? People will still buy them—even more so, even at 23 percent higher prices. Hopefully from me still.

This will definitely change our product mix. Board games and non–Games Workshop miniature lines could start to disappear from our shelves.

If I had to guess, I’d go through our best-selling board games, cut projected sales in half, and keep only the ones that still meet our metrics. I think about 20 percent of our current lineup will make the cut. We carry a lot of marginal board games. We carry a lot of marginal everything.

It’s possible we no longer carry marginal things—anything I wouldn't order by the case. That’s not good news for the game trade.

We’ll probably survive. We might even prosper. We’re selling life preservers on the Titanic. Great! Until your socks get wet.

This is not madness. It’s simply a regressive tax that helps fund tax cuts for the wealthy. There was nothing wrong with the previous economic order. Nobody was getting taken advantage of. Manufacturing isn’t going to change locations. The job market won’t fundamentally shift. We certainly won’t be hiring for a while.

Pokemon Supply and Demand

2025-03-28T09:30:00.000-07:00

Balancing supply, demand, allocations, and the realities of a collector-driven market.

Pricing hot Pokémon products isn’t just about looking at TCGplayer and slapping on a price tag. It's a balancing act between cash flow, allocations, local demand, and national market trends. Here’s a look at how I approach it—and why it’s more complicated than it might seem.

The First Variable: Paying the Bill

When I receive a Pokémon set, I usually have 30 days to pay the invoice. However, most sets are meant to last through a 90-day release cycle. I don’t want to sell out in 30 days just to cover the bill. I'd rather pace my sales over the full release period and focus on maximizing value, not just speed.

Being a legitimate Pokémon retailer also means I need to have Pokémon product available consistently. Going two out of every three months without stock damages customer trust—and it's often the result of allocation issues.

Allocation Lessons from the Auto World

To illustrate this, let’s talk about BMW.

Years ago, I looked into buying one and learned their dealerships didn’t play the end-of-month sales game. Why? Because they operate on yearly product allocations. If a dealer only gets 150 cars a year, there’s no reason to hustle to sell car #100 in July. They can’t call the factory and get more.

Instead, they maximize profit per unit and pace their sales based on the year’s allocation. I once found a loophole with European delivery, which didn’t pull from the dealership’s allocation—similar to a customer walking into a game store and asking to buy product direct from the distributor, with the store just passing it through for a small margin.

Some dealers said yes. Others said no. But the model is the same: allocation controls behavior.

Snowy Munich in January on summer performance tires is another story...

Pokémon Supply: 30-Day Invoice, 90-Day Plan

Back to Pokémon. Even though my bill is due in 30 days, the more important variable is how long the product needs to last. If my allocation is meant to cover 90 days, I plan accordingly.

This is where supply-side logic becomes critical—especially in a collectibles market where reprints aren’t guaranteed.

Demand: Local Appetite vs. Online Market

On the demand side, I consider both local interest and national pricing trends. Right now, a booster box of Journey Together is selling online for $244. My customers know this. If my price is even a bit higher, they’ll shop online instead.

At this high price point, price sensitivity increases. People compare. They wait. They choose convenience or savings.

Locally, Journey Together is cold. So many customers have washed their hands of it, they’re already asking to preorder the next set—which, ironically, I have even less faith in. I don’t want to sell them a $450 box with unknown supply and potential price collapse. And let’s be honest: they don’t want a $450 box. They want a $145 one.

Sometimes, Market Prices Leave Your Community Behind

If the market price is too high for your local scene, you’ll eventually need to adjust downward to build momentum. But for me, right now, that’s not urgent. My Journey Together allocation was slashed. I have about 75% of my usual quantity—and it needs to last one to three months.

At current prices, that’s only about a three-week supply—not ideal. If sales were hotter, I’d raise prices above market. If I needed to move it fast, I’d price well below. That’s exactly what I’m considering for the slow-moving One Piece set right now.

Why This Looks Like a Black Box

To my staff and customers, pricing sometimes feels arbitrary. They’ll notice when we’re above or below market and ask why. The truth is, I’m often not watching the market that closely—until sales start changing. Sales velocity is my signal. When it shifts, I look at pricing. Pricing, after all, is a variable within that velocity.

What I Really Want (And Probably Won’t Get)

Ideally, I’d have unlimited Pokémon boxes selling at a healthy 35% margin. Instead, I get limited product, slower sales, and a higher 62% margin. As a store owner, I don’t want to deal with allocations and math problems—I want happy customers and a steady flow of product.

But that’s not the system we’re in.

And while many of my peers are angry with Pokémon for underprinting sets, I’m not sure who’s at fault. Right now, there’s nothing but Pokétrash left to order. My backorders trickle in, but the rest of the product line is obliterated.

Publishers often claim victory when a set sells out—but for stores, that’s rarely a win.

The Kid Problem

Many Pokémon customers are kids. A $244 box means $6.78 per pack. I can’t sell them for less—although some official events distort pricing with artificially low promos. I also can’t steer them to cheaper sets, because I simply don’t have anything else.

That’s the real dilemma: skating from one allocation-restricted CCG release to the next while trying to run the rest of the store like a normal business. For some game stores, this CCG nonsense is the business.

Magic Isn’t Much Better

Magic players aren’t immune to the chaos, either. There’s a ton of speculation around the Final Fantasy crossover, rumored to be the largest Magic print run ever. If that doesn’t ring alarm bells, you might not know CCG history.

Here’s the takeaway:
Don’t presell more than you can comfortably refund.
Don’t order more than you can fully absorb.

That’s the balance we all have to strike—until something changes.

Paying Suppliers

2025-03-18T16:13:00.000-07:00

How We Pay Our Suppliers

For those curious about the trade, here’s how we handle supplier payments:

Payment Terms

While not a payment method, terms dictate when we pay our bills. They’re harder to secure these days, but I have 30-45 day terms with most suppliers. These terms influence how I buy products, with the goal of selling them before the bill comes due. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t.

But how do I actually send them money?

Payment Methods

Credit Card Up Front
- Many suppliers accept credit cards without extra fees.
- The IRS considers most cashback rewards non-taxable income, so I take advantage of that.
- Since I personally guarantee my company’s credit, I also keep the rewards.
Mailing a Check
- Yes, this is still a thing, and it’s how I pay most of my suppliers.
- I use electronic banking through my local community bank.
- Games Workshop recently announced they would no longer accept checks. For them, I wait until I’m past due or over my limit and then email them to charge a credit card on file.
Payment Portals
- Almost every supplier has a portal now (looking at you, ACD).
- Some link to credit cards, while others pull directly from my checking account.
- Asmodee’s portal is my favorite—it allows scheduling payments on a credit card, meaning I can combine supplier terms with my credit card terms.

Managing Credit Cards

I recently added a Capital One Spark Cash Plus, which has no preset spending limit.
This helps spread out large purchases, preventing a single $40,000 bill from hitting right when sales tax and payroll are due. Instead, I make two $20,000 payments at different times of the month—far easier to manage.
I use this card exclusively for two major vendors who account for half of my credit card expenses. It also simplifies QuickBooks entries with a single "Cost of Goods Sold" entry.

Previously, I relied on a Chase United credit card for travel rewards, but I don’t travel as much anymore. Watching my frequent flyer miles stack up into six figures, I decided it was time to switch things around.

Deal Breakers

Let’s talk about interrupting my flow—something I absolutely despise.

Take PG&E, for example. They’re the only bill (aside from taxes) that can’t be auto-paid. Every bill must be manually scheduled. It’s a failure point and a needless interruption.

The same logic applies to suppliers. If I can’t schedule a payment, my workflow is disrupted. Fortunately, most suppliers allow either scheduled payments or checks.

However, GTS Distribution is a headache. Paying by check often leads to delays, forcing many to make manual payments—something I consider unacceptable. Yet, I still use them, send my checks, and just hope they open their mail so the spice can flow.

Crown of the Grognard's Legacy

2025-01-22T11:09:00.000-08:00

When I was in IT and finally had some money, I spent it on miniatures. I would drive out to Concord, near where my store is now, and visit Games Unlimited. This legacy game store was the king of their local market. They had a small mezzanine level where they kept their role playing stuff, including every Reaper miniature on its own hook. Nobody else had this breadth and depth of stock, which is why I drove 30 minutes to get there.

That mezzanine wasn't air conditioned, so in the summer months, you would rush up, grab what you were looking for, and exit as quickly as possible without getting scolded for running in the store. Our own mezzanine can't handle the heat when it's over 90 degrees, so I have more sympathy now.

I would take these minis to another store, Gamescape San Rafael, where the manager would speed paint them for me using an ink technique. I am told he got fired for doing this on the clock. My bad. I had an assembly line of recently bought, to be painted, and painted miniatures on their way to my table.

I once couldn't make it to Games Unlimited, so I started pulling large numbers of minis off the Gamescape wall to buy, when the clerk accused me of attempting to shoplift. Running a good game store is hard. You can see why I thought I could do better.

In case you were wondering, I was running a home brew Ptolus inspired game, based on Monte Cook's notes and some other odds and ends, before there was a Ptolus product. That Ptolus campaign lasted in various forms for 10 years.

Eventually I would open my store, becoming a small competitor of Games Unlimited, one of six stores within that recommended 10 minute drive time. Games Unlimited had the traditional young grognard at the counter, some relative of the owner, who would take your money while telling you your game was bad and you should be ashamed for playing it. He never told me this, but his customers would regale me with these tales of poor customer service.

I liked all the games and had time to listen to you tell me about your campaign. I was in a learning mode and legitimately fascinated. I also had every role playing game in distribution on my shelves. It was dumb, but it marked me as an ally to the RPG community. I was ignorant to most things not D&D, but open to learning. I also had every Reaper miniature in stock. So why brave the attic? Three years later I moved to a three times larger location, Games Unlimited's owner fortuitously retired at the same time, and they closed the shop.

The shop closed because the grognard couldn't wear the crown. I grabbed the crown as they departed, their last gasp an attempt to sell the store to a regional competitor, and hoped I would be worthy of it one day. Being all things to Games Unlimited customers, minus the grognard, became a goal. Of course, there were many things we did things differently, as I would explain to customers, because there was a reason they closed. We inherited a lot of their business. Six years later I was wearing the crown when realized I had become the surly grognard, at which point I left the front counter for good. The crown apparently has side effects.

Perhaps one day I will head west on a white ship with my fellow crown wearers, weary, a bit physically broken, but happy the business day is finally over and the doors are locked.

Crown of the Grognard's Legacy

Rare, requires attunement

This tarnished silver crown bears the faint embossing of miniature swords, dice, and scrolls along its band, and its crest is shaped like the mezzanine of a grand hall, complete with tiny shelves carved into the metal. Despite its unassuming appearance, the crown emanates an air of authority and nostalgia, its weight heavier than it seems, burdened with the memories of countless gamers and the spirits of bygone game stores.

Properties

Merchant’s Wisdom. While attuned to the crown, you have proficiency in the Persuasion and Insight skills. If you are already proficient, your proficiency bonus is doubled for checks using these skills when interacting with customers or negotiating business deals.
Stockmaster’s Precision. The crown grants you the uncanny ability to always know what’s in stock. As an action, you can name an item, and the crown will give you a mental image of its exact location within your shop or storage area.
Beacon of Fellowship. While you wear the crown, customers and allies within 30 feet feel a faint sense of camaraderie and are subtly compelled to trust you. You gain advantage on Charisma (Persuasion) checks to foster goodwill or encourage purchases.

Curse: The Weight of the Crown

The crown is a relic of legacy, and its influence comes at a cost. Over time, the wearer begins to feel the strain of its expectations and the voices of customers past, present, and future weighing on their mind. This curse manifests subtly at first but worsens with time:

Heat of the Mezzanine. The crown’s wearer becomes inexplicably sensitive to heat. Any area above 90 degrees Fahrenheit feels unbearable, causing the wearer to suffer disadvantage on Constitution saving throws made to resist exhaustion while in such conditions.
Grognard's Burden. Each day you wear the crown, there is a cumulative 5% chance (to a maximum of 50%) that your attitude begins to sour into that of a traditional grognard. This manifests as surliness, dismissiveness, or an inability to recognize the value of other perspectives. This effect lasts until the crown is removed and a Remove Curse spell is cast.
Indelible Nostalgia. The crown instills an unshakable longing for “the old days.” The wearer has disadvantage on Wisdom saving throws to resist becoming distracted by memories of their past or lamenting changes in their field.

History

The Crown of the Grognard’s Legacy is said to have passed from shop owner to shop owner, carried on the shoulders of those who sought to dominate their local market and make their mark in the gaming community. But each bearer learned the crown was more than a symbol of success—it demanded sacrifice. Legends say those who wore the crown too long became reclusive, bitter, and obsessed with their ideals of the "perfect store." The crown’s final bearer abandoned the counter entirely, realizing that its weight could only be endured for so long before it consumed them.

Do you dare to don the crown and seek to carry on the legacy, or will you forge your own path, free of its burdens?

Leadership

2024-11-13T07:23:00.000-08:00

I went on a walk with my son yesterday. He's on the last stages of his Eagle Scout rank requirements and he's been roped into a leadership position. This is vexing for him. The younger boys look up to him and like any good leader, he's reluctant, doesn't feel up to the task, and would prefer if everyone would just do their damn jobs. They are not doing their damn jobs and he wants to fix this.

I gave him my advice. Most of us who lead are often thrust into the position out of necessity. We don't want the job. You can't run a business of any size other than subsistence, without eventually being a leader. The first lesson of leadership is nobody wants the job, but if we don't do it, then who will? Good leaders are reluctant leaders. Eager leaders are often the last ones you want leading. If you feel like you don't belong in the role, like an imposter, that's a good sign.

Leadership is about consensus building. There are times when top down leadership is necessary, often when it comes to safety. For example, it's reasonable to say if you don't bring your canteen and flashlight, you can't come on the camping trip. You are making it dangerous for yourself and others (real example). Most of the time, however, we want to build consensus both with other leaders and within the framework of the organization.

Before we have a meeting and make pronouncement, we need fact finding. What is it that is causing problems? What gear is being left behind and how do we prevent that? Who are the problem people? You discuss solutions with senior leadership, and if necessary, meet to implement those solutions.

Perhaps we have a gear check meeting a week before the camping trip to ensure the scouts have their "ten essential items" ready to go. We identify that it's the middle aged scouts who are the problem, old enough not to have their parents pack their gear, young enough not to have their gear sorted properly. You discuss first, meet later, then implement a plan. Meetings are where we finalize ideas we've already hashed out, if we need one at all.

We need to keep the organizational goal in mind. In scouts, they want to have fun. Everyone is there for camaraderie and enrichment. You can create a regimented, militaristic, hierarchical, hard-ass boy scout troop. In fact, my son came from one that was so difficult, it disbanded after that group of kids and their parents, who set the tone, aged out. When everyone quits, you've failed at management.

For my son, the goal is safety, enrichment, and fun. The leadership is going to be strict about safety. You can't go without your flashlight and water bottle. When the boys are too tired to do their hike because they've been playing video games on their phones until four in the morning, enrichment suffers. And when everyone works twice as hard when a small group of kids won't do their assigned tasks, it's certainly not fun. The approach is as light a hand as possible to keep everyone safe, engaged, and having fun.

Who would have thought I would know anything about this stuff? Few of us business owners have formal management training. We are reluctantly thrust into the position, wishing our reports would just do their damn jobs. We want as light a hand as possible, as in the boy scout example. I expect many store owners have the same leadership objectives as my son: safety, fun, and that elusive enrichment.

October Dip

2024-10-18T08:03:00.000-07:00

My store has seen tremendous sales growth post COVID, a lot of that is a result of expanding inventory. Common in the game trade, we are somewhat dependent on new releases for profitability. We are "front list driven," meaning we make our money on new stuff, rather than selling the same old stuff. October has always been a slow month, as there must be some common wisdom to avoid new releases in this month. I'm talking about my top 20 publishers that make up 80% of our sales. There are plenty of board games and RPGs releasing right now that will languish for another six weeks.

I have a calendar spreadsheet tracking sales, and when there's a projected profitable release, I change the background of that day to green. These green days help me forecast. September and November have three "green days," releases where we'll make windfall profits. October has none, although the one off October release of the D&D Dungeon Master's Guide might move the needle.

This pattern of hot September and November and slow October repeats itself year after year. I draw down inventory in September and try not to spend money, knowing bills will be due in a lean October. I may borrow money in October to cover expenses and pay it off with holiday sales (hopefully). The October dip is about a 30-40% decline compared to sales in September and November. This pattern has repeated for as long as I've run the business, although the depth of the dip is exaggerated because of the increased height of the surrounding months.

The solution, if there is one, is attempt to make your own rain. Perhaps have special sales in October, although people are not buying as much (perhaps why releases are thin). We've had a couple big clearance sales. I would prefer to shift sales to Black Friday, but November doesn't need any help. October sales are up 10% so far this month, compared to last October, but that's not enough. Perhaps there is no solution. Every business will have a slowest month. Some will know it in advance. As much as it pains me to save up for slow times, at the moment that's the strategy that seems to work best. It does feel defeatist. I want to be the raging bear all the time. I don't want to hibernate. Rarr.

Remote Management and Time Abundance

2024-09-26T08:25:00.000-07:00

I've been on a path to reclaim my time after many years of long hours. This is a desirable entrepreneurial goal, although in my trade, it's frowned upon. Small business requires passion, connection with the community, intense degrees of product knowledge, and an always-on mentality of monitoring social media and responding to customers. Signs of disconnecting, signs of financial progress, are looked down upon by both customers and industry peers. Well, let them watch.

Step one is deciding it's your money or your life, and you no longer care what other people think. This is not to say you let things slip, disengage, become unresponsive, but you simply value your time away from the business and take steps to maximize that time. This huge psychological barrier, keeping you chained to the business, is often self imposed.

The analogy I like to use is the circus elephant. The baby elephant has a small chain attached to its leg and it learns quickly it can't escape the chain as it pulls against it. As the elephant becomes an adult, it could easily pull up the stake that chain is attached to, but it learned as a baby it couldn't get away. That's what it can be like working in your small business. You can't get away, because you've conditioned yourself to this previous truth, after many years of long hours.

At a certain point in growth, it's entirely possible to simply not work a part of the business you don't like, or take a job your can do from home. My manager had to fire me from the counter in year nine. I was burned out, surly, and didn't belong as the front man of the business. Many people would have quit in this position. I had the luxury of choice, with the chain off my leg. I wonder how many years I worked the counter with that chain?

Step two is developing processes, procedures and most importantly, the culture that allows you not to be there all the time. Policies and procedures are necessary for operational survival with a qualified manager, while the culture is the strategy that leads to more or better processes and procedures. Having a moral compass, understanding employees come first, that profitability is important, that everyone who walks through the door deserves respect, prevents many problems that lead to phone calls in the middle of the night. A solid culture means sometimes staff push back on you, because we don't do things like that here. Culture is not top down, culture is a promise we make to each other.

Step three is figuring out what work, if any, you should continue doing. I spent a couple months traveling six years ago, while the entire store was delegated to a manager. The store did not fail, but it was essentially in a holding pattern. I've been to stores where the manager has left and a new one hasn't been hired yet, and it's like a zombie circus, where employees just keep doing the same things each day, although they've become stale and ineffective. I've been doing this long enough that I can recognize the signs of the undead. A store is a dynamic environment and requires dynamic management. It's unlikely you will get that for long by entirely delegating the business.

My next foray into remote management came four years ago after COVID. I had completely taken back the store as the sole employee for a time, and I identified key elements of the business that drove growth, but also jobs I wanted to do. I wouldn't have understood this without a complete shut down and ramp up.

Buying product was 10% of my job while I worked at the store, a necessary nuisance that interrupted my time with customers. When I took that 10% of my job home, it exploded into a full work week. Thankfully I had new money in the business to support this expansion, which resulted in about a half a million dollars a year of permanent sales growth. I began to enjoy buying, and although I know how I could be better at it if I were there, it seemed to be the key to successful remote management. I could grow the store remotely as a buyer. The down side is it ended up expanding into a pretty normal work week, albeit one that could be time shifted. If you can't make time, at least shift time.

Step four is similar to what one encounters when contemplating retirement. You might have millions of dollars in the bank, as some of my retirement age friends do, but you need something to retire to, not retire from. Without the direction of your next step, you will be like the adult elephant with a little chain on its leg. The same is true when you begin sculpting out time from your small business. If you don't have something you want to do with that time, you will either keep on trucking at the counter, or simply sit around lonely at home. For the vast number of my peers in the hobby game trade, they would honestly rather be at work. Sometimes I would too!

I have a dream of long term travel. Last year I spent four months on the road in my RV with my son. We traveled and lived throughout Central Mexico, exploring 31 Pueblos Magicos, or magical towns (there are over 150). We had adventures, immersed ourselves in the culture, had various hardships and enjoyed an amazing trip with plans for future trips in coming years. The business coincidentally experienced an enormous bubble during this time, making it appear like I must be some sort of financial genius.

On our way back, the bubble burst and there was a realization I was probably a few years out from having the funds to take a trip like that again. It was more expensive than we budgeted, and the business return to normal required a steady hand back on the wheel. From a buyer perspective, we had to analyze and re-imagine some of what we were doing. This year I've lived on half the money I spent last year. Which brings me to another point.

Step Five, which could be in a different order, is deciding what's enough. At a certain point in your life, you may realize debt is the promise of future work. I would like a bigger house in a nicer area, but I don't want to work any harder for it. I would like to renovate my house, but I don't want to work any harder for that. You might want a new car, but are you willing to work harder, put in longer hours or more years working? If you're going to work harder and longer anyway, you can find yourself in a debt trap. I am at the stage where I have enough, granted, I have an expensive RV with payments and fees, but that was part of my escape plan. Anything new in my life needs to be paid with cash, because I don't want to work any more than I do now.

This year I'm on the beach, to use a consulting term. I am taking a year off from travel. I am attempting not to promise myself future work by engaging in new schemes involving debt. Next year I hope to take a trip for two or three months, but it's honestly fifty-fifty whether that will happen.

Step Six, which also could be in a different order, is understanding the limitations of delegation. Anyone who manages people understands the job won't be done exactly as you like. In the case of small business, it's also likely you will be the driver of innovation. If you're not willing to come in and innovate, it's likely you'll know precisely what needs to get done, but it simply won't ever happen. Remote working means you come in and do the innovation yourself, if that's what you want to happen, or accept you don't have the people on staff to make those projects happen.

This is where the absurd degree of small business expectations is compromised by your personal goals. You will not have the best business you could imagine and you will have to live with that compromise. You might know the answers to all the questions, but you'll leave the solutions unimplemented in your environment. So because of this, we don't talk about the topic of disengagement. Best practices are often designed for survival and profitability, not personal happiness. Work-life balance is a term used by employees, not owners. Step six is re-defining what success looks like. Step six is a necessary compromise. Success, in this model, is owning your time completely. I have wealthy friends who are envious I've managed this. It doesn't come without sacrifice. But you might decide to make that sacrifice when you realize what you have is enough.

Lightspeed POS

2024-08-01T09:37:00.000-07:00

Many retailers who use the Lightspeed Point of Sale system woke up to an unpleasant surprise on Monday. Lightspeed was drastically raising credit card processing rates. Every retailer has a negotiated rate, based on volume. In my case, our rates went from a 2.1% to 2.4%, a 14% increase of additional fees of around $375/month. Here's the thing though, although the rate is a shockingly large, this level of increase is not uncommon at the moment. It was Lightspeed's approach that caused a lot of pain.

Their phone lines were inundated and sales reps were flooded with angry customers. I waited 90 minutes on hold before getting an email of sales rep. If Lightspeed had been somewhat apologetic, explained costs had gone up, had raised rates to correspond with annual contracts, not mid contract, it wouldn't have been a big deal. That is not Lightspeed's way.

Lightspeed has onerous contracts when it comes to credit card processing. If you move away from their processing, they impose a monthly penalty, well in excess of any savings. In my case, the penalty would be $680/month, if I didn't keep up the transaction volume on my Lightspeed credit card processing. They gave me one month before the new rates go into effect. So much for partnerships.

What are retailers doing? Contractually, we're obligated to suck it up and pay the higher rate, which will absolutely sink some businesses. If you're on the edge, losing .3% of your net income could tip you right over. Still, contracts are broken all the time, and if you're a large business, a broken contract every decade or so is probably no big deal.

However, to break your contract with a hosted POS system is a bid deal. They will cut you off. You would need to completely change POS providers, migrate data, move DNS to your new host, and completely divest yourself from Lightspeed. Migrating from an older version of Lightspeed to their hosted version during COVID took two months. Afterwards, you'll be disputing charges with your bank, possibly canceling a credit card, but that's all manageable. They'll attempt to collect and eventually ding your credit. Survivable.

What about legal remedies? I contacted my lawyer and his first question, "What does your contract say?" There may be some unfair business practices, laws being violated, but that is something a state attorney general would have to take up. You're not going to be able to start a crusade over this. If you signed a bad contract, you're pretty much stuck, unless you decide to break it. Many judges will let you hang yourself with your own rope, even if you signed something not legal. Legal remedies are off the table.

The other option, and all options are on the table for me, is do the heavy work of researching a new provider and migrating over at the end of the contract. For me, that's accepting Lightspeed dinged me for over $2,600 in extra charges in credit card processing, albeit charges I would have likely paid anyway. That is because my next best option is no better. I shall explain.

My next best option for a POS provider is Shopify. Shopify credit card rates are publicly listed as 2.6%, and from talking with peers, I think I can get that down to no lower than 2.4%, right where Lightspeed is putting me. Shopify does not have a penalty for using third party processors, but neither do they have third party processor integration. Without integration, you end up running credit cards on the side, resolving returns and disputes on the side, and generally having a not great POS experience. But you could cry over complicated processing while leasing a new car with your savings (assuming you can find cheap processing). My peers who use Shopify just pay the money and use Shopify's integrated processing. That's what I've been doing with Lightspeed, but mostly because 2.1% was pretty good at the time and not worth fussing over for a tenth of a point.

So there's no clear option, no cleaner shirt on the floor. If Lightspeed had handled this differently, had they not been, what's the technical term? ... assholes, this could have been avoided. A softer hand explaining rates are going up and competing rates are no better, would have avoided anger and rage quitting. If they had bundled higher rates with new contracts with onerous penalties, this would have been fair. Instead, after 90 minutes on hold trying to talk with someone, I finally had "my" sales rep send me an email saying pay up or eat the penalty, with a helpful link to their website explaining what I had agreed to.

Lightspeed used to be a great company, with fantastic customer service, thoughtful product upgrades, and reasonable pricing. They were a breath of fresh air after feeling abandoned with Microsoft RMS. Lightspeed is now LSPD on the New York Stock Exchange. They report to shareholders, spend their time on acquisitions, and half ass new features nobody asked for, like their awful demand forecasting. Their goal is to compete with their rival on the New York Stock Exchange, SHOP, rather than serving their customers. Lightspeed lost its soul and it's really a shame.

The Event Problem

2024-07-16T10:23:00.000-07:00

There are two problems hitting game stores: rising costs and failing events. Costs are easy to understand. I'm keeping my store open longer hours, dedicating space to events, paying staff to supervise and hopefully sell product, and and running precious air conditioning to make the space habitable. These costs have skyrocketed. Failing events include a few issues, such as Magic standard (FNM), the cash cow of weeknight events, losing its mojo, Pokemon flailing, the long tail of Dungeons & Dragons reducing interest in new product, and the shortage of alternative options. Finally, we have social change, in which young people are reluctant to get together in person. These are just my observations and some stores are able to overcome these headwinds better than others (I'm thinking out loud, not looking for advice).

Let's take a look at costs, my costs in particular. I will be your model today. Despite the ever present predictions of the death of retail, and rising inflation, retail rental rates since COVID have only gone up 3-4% annually. Rent for our 1,000 foot game space costs $3,000 a month, 8% higher than 2021. It doesn't include our second floor mezzanine, another 1,000 square feet of game space, which we don't pay rent on (why we built it).

Labor rates have increased an average of 17% across the US since 2021, but the bottom of the labor market has seen the largest rise. We tend to pay towards the bottom, which in California is 45% higher than most of the US. We've seen a 40% increase in labor since 2021, partly because no events during this period meant fewer employees. In the case of evening events, I am paying two staff members $20/hour, including all the businesses labor costs, to maintain the store while events are in session, for four hours. That's $160 in labor. We'll only look at weeknight events, since our weekends are clearly profitable. I want to say we make money on weekends and lose money on weekdays, but it's more complicated than that.

I won't include all the utilities in calculating that four hours of week night events, but it's pretty easy to figure electricity. Electricity has skyrocketed in cost. We have a unique situation in that 2021 was the only year we had no evening events since 2007. We can easily compare 2024 electricity costs to an event free 2021. Our electricity is up 58% from no event 2021, costing an additional $366/month.

Overall for event space, each month we spend $3,000 on rent, $3,200 on weeknight labor, and $366 on electricity, which we'll round up to $400/month when you consider additional supplies like toilet paper and the like. The toilet paper and other bathroom expenses, when we resumed events, caught us by surprise. Week night events therefore cost a total of $6,600/month, or $220/night. This is not news to me, and I've often considered our events space similar to a (once luxury, now standard) hotel room. It needs to be rented out every evening in some way that makes up for that $220. That's $220 of profit, not gross sales or store credit.

What's going on with events? The event "anchor" each week, for as long as I've owned a store, was Friday Night Magic. FNM is a "standard" card event involving purchasing and opening product to play in the event. Product is built into the event fee, so it's a forced purchase. Stores will move boxes of booster packs throughout the month, if they can get reasonable attendance.

Unfortunately, standard events like FNM have become unpopular because of WOTC changes. Attempts by WOTC to fix standard have not been successful. We went from packing the house during FNM to getting perhaps a dozen people on a Friday night. Our event calendar is blocked off for FNM, but it shouldn't be. Instead we've needed to shift events to make room for an overflowing Commander night, a pre-constructed format in which we don't sell product (not even Commander decks, ironically). Therefore, Commander makes us little money and it cannibalized a profitable FNM.

The other event, which draws so many people we've had to limit it, is Dungeons & Dragons. D&D is an event where, without monetization, you expect players (mostly DMs) to buy game books from you. D&D has been flagging in its tenth year, with plans to only refresh the edition over the coming two years. The idea here is the IP is more valuable as a potential digital placeholder than an actual role playing game in book form. Corporations be like that.

This leads to very little incentive for most players to buy more, although the refreshed core books should sell very well. The hope that D&D players will somehow maybe, possibly, buy a book from you after those core book sales is pretty slim. Plus we've established in other posts DMs buy most of the books and players don't cover their ratio. D&D groups are generally 4:1 players to DM, but sales tend to be 2:1; for every book a DM buys, four players buy two books. Oof. If you want to talk about freeloading and event space, start with that ratio. If we could have a D&D event that only included DMs, that would be a great thing. You could charge them to sit around and argue about what they wanted to run.

There is a lot of flailing when it comes to other games. We've gone full line on Warhammer 40K this year, but energetically, that game does not bring in a lot of new players. You can debate why 40K doesn't innovate with rules, but generally see WOTC: the product is the models, not the game play. Pokemon has struggled this year with lackluster releases, the community we built during COVID has dwindled, and the income statement warping, stratospheric, high margin sales, have slowed tremendously (but not back to pre COVID levels). My CCG concerns as we pivoted to One Piece and Star Wars was we would be overstocked and potentially sunk by debt, but instead we saw enough shortages this summer to see our fledgling indie CCG community dry up and blow away in the wind. It's Grapes of Wrath over here in CCG land.

We struggle to get young people re-engaged in society. This was a problem pre COVID and now it's a bit of a known crisis. It's not some kids, it's most kids. A lot of people have returned to in store play, but growing that is much harder. My own kid (and some friends) don't see the value of going out with people, when you can hang out virtually. I don't think it's healthy, and from the owner of a Third Place, it may one day re-define how we allocate resources.

These are all headwinds and known problems, and it has to be said, there are stores overcoming all these challenges, innovating, finding other products and interests to engage people, and of course, better monetizing events and de-linking events with product sales. My store is profitable. It is struggling financially, due to higher costs and lower sales, but we will grow through this tedious problem. Part of growing through this is event monetization.

Event monetization is a topic I've touched on before. But look at it this way, how do I net $220 each week night through events? I if can't incentive people to spend thousands of dollars on product, which is what it takes with such a nut to crack, how do I instead monetize that space to earn back my costs? Assuming a 10% net margin, I need to sell $2,200 of product during an event to break even. Our plan to charge a small $5 fee to use the 100 seat space will cover costs, even if we only manage to fill our space half way. Also worth noting to those who ask what more do they get in return, $10 would be the cost to actually "professionalize" events with paid coordinators. We're far from that.

But Did You Die?

2024-07-07T08:54:00.000-07:00

I know I'm not supposed to, but I want to talk about Gen X Club. There was a muscle car forum discussing zero to sixty times (stay with me here), a common way to measure car performance. Seven seconds was pretty good back when we had muscle cars, but nowadays it's just a minimum reasonable speed to merge onto a highway. I no longer have a muscle car, but I have a sports sedan and a heavy duty truck that both do it in seven seconds. No big deal. The difference with a muscle car, as I explained to the younger group, is while doing your zero to sixty, you might die.

Muscle cars nowadays are expensive collectors items costing upwards of $270,000 for rare specimens, but back then it was what we could afford. As a teen, a 25-30 year old car was what I could buy for $900, what I paid for my first car, about $2,500 today. That age and price of car happened to be a bunch of tired muscle cars, which back then were pretty well shot at 100K miles. My friends had them too. As cars go, they are pretty awful.

These muscle cars were fast, that seven second time, but they had poor brakes, they didn't turn well and they had no safety features other than a seat belt. Most didn't even have head rests. It wasn't uncommon to find yourself facing the wrong direction in traffic after spinning out, even when you were taking it easy. This was just a Generation X feature. We spent our childhood nearly getting killed on our bikes, which we rode endlessly, and easily transitioned to dangerous cars. It was not uncommon to have school announcements that some kid had died; it was just life. That we had no money to keep these tired cars in good mechanical condition was a big part of the danger.

You might complain about nearly losing your life on the highway, but the common refrain from friends was "But Did You Die?" I now use it all the time when my players complain about the difficulty of my D&D adventures. It turns out they want to nearly die; that's their play style and you better not fudge it. All rolls out front. Generation X is the self raising, "come back when the streetlights are on" group of kids who had adventures all the time. We did it because we were bored. Later in life, with a kid of my own, I've been telling my shocked parents about some of those adventures.

We're the generation that keeps their head down, works hard, and strives towards internal authenticity, with the catch phrase "purchased experiences don't count," direct from Douglas Coupland and the book Generation X. We are Cold War kids who look for the mushroom cloud when we hear an explosion, accept we're a shadow of our Boomer parents, and worry our struggles aren't authentic, versus trying not to struggle.

We keep our identities secret, having grown up in a time when we would be beaten senseless for our Dungeons & Dragons books. Teachers let kids handle their own disputes and bullies ruled the school. Whatever made us different was kept in the closet, for safety and later, to avoid marketers. We did pretty well, despite wars and recessions and living in the shadows. I think our shadow natures make us more receptive to the problems of younger generations.

As adult employers and managers, we are bemused by the various requirements and hand holding younger generations demand. However, we are absolutely on board. We are about it, as the kids say. As a generation that lived without guard rails, that played on concrete playgrounds without foam padding, with high expectations in a resource poor market, that risked death to drive to a minimum wage, part time job, we are absolutely on board with people chasing their authentic selves and holding others accountable. We would never ask them, "But Did You Die?" That's an attitude our parents might have had, or inflicted on our peers so they'll accept the next "adventure."

We will absolutely encourage a younger generation to not struggle like we did, not risk life and limb for $3.35 an hour, to enjoy their Disneyland versus risking death exploring abandoned houses, or making home made explosives from the Anarchist's Cookbook because they're bored. We value our near death experiences, our adventures, but we are also a bit jealous of younger folks insistence on full authenticity and truth, and their expectation of a work-life balance. If we have a problem, it's not that they might not come back when the street lights are on, it's that they may never leave their bedrooms.

Business Ethics

2024-06-03T09:38:00.000-07:00

I took a business ethics course in grad school. I didn't want to. I didn't care about business, and ethics was something informed by personal morality or whatever path you're on. I needed a cross-denominational course, being in a Buddhist studies program at Graduate Theological Union. The "Union" part of that meant I needed to take a handful of courses from the Judaism program or various Christian schools. After bailing on Dominican philosophy, feminist theology, and struggling through Christianity in film, I figured the Lutheran business ethics would be a breeze. I heard they had good coffee.

At one point in class, we were given a scenario. You are the CEO of a drug company. A drug your company has developed saves lives, but causes severe birth defects. The drug has been banned in the US. However, there has been an outbreak of a deadly disease in a developing country. You have the opportunity to save millions of lives by exporting your life saving drug to this country, but it will cause severe birth defects in thousands of children. Do you export it?

Everyone in the room agreed they would sell the flawed drug in this developing country... except me. As the CEO, I figured my job was to protect the company, and thousands of children with birth defects is what people would see, not the millions of saved lives. Of course, this is a moral dilemma, and the rest of the class time was spent discussing this very issue.

By the end of the class, my mind was changed, the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few and all that, and I agreed I would sell the drug. What's more surprising though is I weigh this decision in my mind about once a year, for the past 30 years. This decision changed me and forever after I have been open to scrutiny on my decisions, and more than willing to change my mind. How many classes could have accomplished that?

In religious literature, merchants are scum. Money changers in temples, greedy merchants selling bad food, you name it, the business community was predatory. Today I still see predatory merchants. My opinion on this is it's a form of confirmation bias. Business is brutal, margins are thin, and if you were an asshole to survive early in your business, you believe you need to continue being an asshole as a form of core competency. If you stop being an asshole, you will be trampled by all the customers and employees waiting to take advantage of you.

If this sounds like you, believing you need to be an asshole to survive, let me attempt to change your mind. You need to be firm. However, you'll do much better with a flip side of compassion rather than venom. It's an illusion that you have to be underhanded and nasty to make it in business. It's true you will likely be taken advantage of, if you open yourself up to the world in this way. There is some pain embracing the world, but it will make you stronger, if you can avoid cynicism. In the long run, you will be far more successful, metaphorically touching millions of lives, even if there's some relatively minor suffering along the way. I try to get through it with a good cup of coffee, as the Lutherans taught me.

The Water Frog

2024-05-21T13:04:00.000-07:00

One day a customer came in and bought a water frog. This was a rubber toy frog, filled with water and glitter. You could shake the frog and it would make an odd, warbling noise. Some people found the sound of the water frog disturbing, which meant everyone needed to hear the sound of the water frog. Warble, warble.

The water frog was part of a collection of toys I had recently brought in. That customer came back later and bought all the water frogs. This guy sold toner. That was his gig. It wasn't a glamorous business, and he was always looking for ways to stand out. He decided to buy water frogs, tape his business card to the bottom of the frog, and put them on all the chairs at various business breakfasts and get togethers. This got him attention, because who doesn't like the water frog?

My order for water frogs grew as his business grew. I was ordering water frogs by the case. When the regional warehouse was empty, I would empty other warehouses. I was always on the hunt for water frogs. How many water frogs do I want? All the water frogs! My sales rep called me:

"I don't want to know what you do with those water frogs, but I'm sending you all the cases."

"Well, actually, we're using them for..."

"No! I don't want to know."

We went through cases and cases of water frogs. At first I was cautious, not knowing when the gravy train of water frogs would end, but eventually I had water frog cases stacked in the office. My POS records show I bought them for 50 cents and sold them for $2.50.

Eventually the entire toy line was discontinued, along with my water frogs. It turned out nobody else was ordering water frogs. I snagged the last couple of cases, but when that was over, the reign of the water frog had ended. My toner guy stopped coming in and eventually all the other toys went away. But I'll never forget the water frog.

Warble, warble.