New game store opening this Tuesday, May 6th!!
After the most difficult few months of my life, my store is just about ready to open. And it will open this Tuesday, May 6th. The address is 3264 1/2 N Clark St in Chicago. Just half a mile south of Wrigley Field. For all the members of NA nearby or visiting from other areas, I hope you will stop by sometime. This store has just what you like, tons of NES games, systems and accessories. Along with all the other systems too. Well, not really all of them...I do not have any of the newest generation. So, everything up to PS2, GC, Xbox, DS, PSP I suppose. Depending on trade ins for Wii, 360 and PS3. And I will be giving out free gifts randomly throughout the first month.
Besides selling and buying games & systems, I will also offer disc repair and eventually, system repair. You can test out a game before purchasing it. You can have fun playing on the SNES and PS1 display systems.
So, I gave you a sneak peek of a few parts of the store. Please take a look.
If any of you have comments, questions or suggestions for me, I would really value your input. Please send me a PM. Thanks!
Besides selling and buying games & systems, I will also offer disc repair and eventually, system repair. You can test out a game before purchasing it. You can have fun playing on the SNES and PS1 display systems.
So, I gave you a sneak peek of a few parts of the store. Please take a look.
If any of you have comments, questions or suggestions for me, I would really value your input. Please send me a PM. Thanks!
Comments
I am also planning to accept wish lists. Anything you need can be faxed or emailed to me and I will put the items together for you and can then ship them out. More ideas on the way...
I actually think there is an E-bay store Retro Games already, sorry to be a buzz kill. I'm sure your variant may be available but may cause confusion
Don't fall into the trap of getting caught up in the day-to-day and manning the store yourself all the time. Train employees to be as proficient with buying and selling as you, and get out there to pound the pavement, buying and promoting. An owner should seldom be at the POS slinging change for two reasons:
first of all, as an owner the store is your investment, not your job. If you want a job, just go work for someone else, don't put your money and liability on the line for what you can get paid doing elsewhere and earn benefits and stuff.
And second, the dynamic between you and your customers changes completely when you start taking bills from them at the POS. You want to be the angel of games, they guy that's hooking up demos for interested customers, that's talking shop with anyone coming through, the one that's promoting at local cons and running tournaments and giving out prizes. Not taking their money. That's for your lackeys to do. Once you take one red cent from a customer, you cease being a friend and start being their supplier. The only time you should ever handle cash is in the back room when you're checking the register. That's not to say you can't actively sell things, and not to say you can't acknowledge good customers, you should always thank a customer for a significant purchase and recognize them. Just don't take their money. It may sound stupid, but take my word for it. It's sort of a boss/employee dynamic then. That one degree of separation makes all the difference.
Can't wait to come check it out!
MLN'er
i wish i could open a store like this.
~~NGD
Some advise on the bad side of things. And you probally already know this. I wouldnt leave any of the games over 10.00 out where they can get stolen. And kids are probally the worse theives. they seem to like to load their pockets with gameboy games. do you have one of the metal detectors at the entrance exit of your store. Its a shame to say but you have some juviniles that pretty much get away with murder. In west virginia pretty much all you can do to a minor is call their parents. they can get caught a dozen times before much of anything is done to them and a lot of them know this. I know its a shame people have to steal but losing hundreds of dollars worth of inventory will hurt any business.
But on a good note the pictures look great nice clean look about the store
Just out of curiosity, what are the white boxes at the bottom of the pictures?
wrldstrman, regading security and theft, that is one of my biggest concerns. I am kind of a paranoid type of person unfortunately. So I am planning to keep all the PS2,Xbox,GC,PSP,Wii,360 games behind the counter inside of an organizer. The cases will be left on display like gamestop does it.
Looks like your big day is tomorrow. Please let us all know how it goes. I've always wanted to open up my own store, but just couldn't justify the monthly rent cost for a decent store location here in NJ. It just seems cheaper and like it would make more sense to me, to sell games through the internet, directly out of my home. Major kudos for opening a store. Do you think you'll be able to get by without carrying the new stuff? I know that not much profit is made on newer games, but do you worry about losing potential customers that aren't interested in older games?
Profit on newer games comes almost entirely from 1. Paper goods (strategy guides, which you get on almost 40-50% discount) and 2. trade-ins/used sales (as good or better discount, but slower turnaround and costs you time in revising your buylist weekly). Even though you only get a 5% discount on new release games, it drives traffic through the store. You obv can't stay open on 5% but if you look at the sq footage of your average Gamestop, you'll see just how much is devoted to profitable items. Once new releases hit the store, they go back behind the counter and the floorspace is repositioned for future releases, while usually just a poster is put up advertising what just came in.
He said he's doing psp/wii/360 stuff in his reponse to Doug and I assume this is used items. Another problem for carrying new releases is, you either order from the company by the case (suicide for anything that's not GTA4 or SSBB) you'll have to go through a warehouse redistributor and that brings you down to a 2.5% discount. They cut deals often if you pick up shitty old unwanted games but those are the ones you'd do best just taking trade-in on and selling used.
So, tomorrow is the big day. I am very excited to open the door, but still have a slight case of the butterflies. Wish me luck!