New Gaming Store

XHick·May 12, 2015·1 votes·298 views

Recently me and a few friends have been throwing around the idea of starting up our own local game store. Our idea is to setup a few consoles such as xbox one, ps4 , maybe even a Nintendo 64 or something and eventually get more screens and consoles as we grow. Along with the consoles we would like to have an area well people could bring in their computers and on certain occasions we are looking to host league tournaments and other PC games such as wow , smite, etc. We also have quite the MTG collection between the 3 of us and we have been talking about using a wall and behind the counter in the store to sell singles and packs. This is just a rough summary of what our plan is if anyone has anything tips to add or anything that you guys wish the game stores near you had let me know!!!

5 Comments

InphernalMay 12, 20151 votes

No one will take you seriously for being the "ideas guy". everyone hates that guy. come back when you have the realistic foundations of a business

XHickMay 12, 20151 votes

We aren't the "ideas guy " at all this isn't just a fun thing we are looking to do on the side. Running a successful business is not easy work and we know that.

InphernalMay 12, 20151 votes

{quoted}

We aren't the "ideas guy " at all this isn't just a fun thing we are looking to do on the side. Running a successful business is not easy work and we know that.

you dont need to reply to both of us when we're saying the same thing fyi

SerevasMay 12, 20151 votes

You need to do major market research in your area in order to figure out of there's any real desire for such a thing. An idea is great, but if there's no customers to back it up you're just going to end up broke.

A major problem you'll run into is that you'd need a tremendous amount of space if you intend to host league tournaments, you'd also want to be in a heavily populated area, meaning someone else probably already had the same idea, you need to compete with prices online for MTG cards.

Back before Amazon was a huge thing you'd go to stores like that to pick up your cards all the time, however now you can buy 3x as many cards for the same price online with free shipping to your front door so you don't need to even bother with the gas.

Furthermore most people have their own consoles anymore so they're not going to want to go somewhere and pay to play something on the spot (I assume your plan is to make them pay for playing the consoles in the store) when they can just go rent the game for chump change or maybe they have a gamefly subscription.

I had a friend whose father went balls deep trying to do the same thing and just wound up broke within a year and a half because the market wasn't there, and frankly he didn't have the parking for it even if the market did exist for his business.

I'm actually in real estate so believe me when I say that rent is more expensive than you might think. The space you'd want not even with anything built inside of it other than the basics (walls, electrical outlets, HVAC, etc.) around here (and we're pretty cheap in my area.) would run you about $6-10 per square foot and you'd want around 5000 SF to start, which might even be on the small side to be honest. So you're pushing 30-50k per year just in rent. Add to that your overhead expenses because your electric bill is going to be through the roof with just running all of that stuff and the AC you'll need to keep the place tolerable with all that heat being given off from the electronics especially if you're hosting a tourney.

Don't get me wrong, please don't think I'm trying to take a giant steaming dump on your idea, I just want to provide you with some realistic perspective.

XHickMay 12, 20151 votes

Thanks for the tips and this isn't just a "fun idea" we aren't looking into doing this just for a fun time. Two of us are majoring in business right now. We have been collecting and saving towards this for quite some time.

As for space and the league tournaments I think 5000+ sf for a store is a bit extreme. Snort store in town does something similar to what we are working towards and that store is not even 1k sf. Now yes I believe a store who is wanting to host tournaments for league and other console games will need to be bigger than that but there's no reason to move into anything near 5000 unless we get big enough and popular that we really new I extra space. A gaming store where I went to college had a similar setup to what we are looking at doing and they had 12 consoles and computers with tons of leftover space.