The Haunted Game Cafe | game business

Starting a Game Store – Signs, Logos and Knowing Your Brand

A good exterior sign for a retail store is an expensive and time consuming process. We started our search for a sign company right after the lease was signed, and it turned out to be much more difficult that we thought.

This process has highlighted even more strongly to me the necessity of knowing exactly what your brand is and how to describe it to someone. Especially in describing it to someone with no background in your genre (fantasy, science-fiction, general gaming, or in my case spooky.) When working on any project that requires artistic skill, it’s vital to be able to give constructive feedback to the designer. As a former designer myself, I can assure you that limitations and instructions from the client are welcome and important. The last thing any designer wants to hear is, “Do anything you want”.

For example, here’s a few of the guidelines I’ve been using:

Don’t try to make it look like Halloween decorations. Rubber spiders and plastic zombies aren’t us.
Do try to make it look elegant and overly ornate. Imagine a once elegant Victorian hotel that has gotten old and creepy.
Don’t be “on the nose” about anything. No skulls or scary stuff.
Do try to work spooky stuff into the details. Ghosts or scary faces can and should be hidden in the details.

As a client, it’s vitally important to find a designer who is willing to listen to your guidelines. We went through several designs from several sign companies, none of which set the right tone. The problem with strong themes seems to be that people have preconceived ideas about what they should look like. No matter how often I tell a designer that I want elegant and ornate, the first design I get back is often a grinning pumpkin! If this happens to you, do yourself a favor, cut your losses and move on. Don’t be like me and waste weeks trying to get your message through to someone who just isn’t going to get it.

The good news is that, just as I was considering hiring and expensive, out-of-town company, I found a small one-man shop here in Fort Collins. Dan Seese is an old-fashioned sign painter and an expert in ornate, Victorian signs and window painting. Check out his work at Dan Seese Studios.

In less than a week, Dan turned out over a dozen different designs, each time asking for feedback and adding to my comments with his own artistic skill. The finished design is only a start. There’s still a lot of work to do on the carving of the sign and the color and texture of the finish. But, I think it’s a fantastic start.

Exterior Sign Design

We Have A Location!

After months of searching, looking at dozens of spots and long negotiatins, we finally have a location! The space is located in a shopping plaza with Young’s Cafe, a local Fort Collins landmark.

It’s a big space, which will allow us to offer more seating, a larger coffee bar and many, many more games. There’s space outside for tables and chairs.

There’s no doubt that having the coffee bar has been a huge asset in the search for a location. Both landlords and neighboring stores all seem to want a coffee shop in their plaza. I’ve gotten a much warmer reception (and probably easier negotiations) than if I had been just a game store.

So, on to the build-out phase!

Starting a Game Store – The Fixtures

If you’re considering opening your own game store, you might want to start looking for store fixtures right now. Even if you’re still in the planning stage, you might want to scan the business section of Craig’s List once a week, just to see what might show up. It’s sad to say, but with the economy the way it is, picking up high quality used store fixtures has never been easier.

Having said all that, I’d advise you to be patient. Don’t jump at the first thing that looks usable. That’s what I did when, after only a few days of following the posting’s on Craig’s List, a glass display case came up. It was a little beat-up, but I figured, “When is something like that going to show up again, and at that price?” Well, turns out they show up on a pretty regular basis. So wait for exactly what you want, and don’t settle for anything that looks worn or broken.

Another important thing to remember is that these things are bulky and heavy. Unless you’ve got a very large spare room, you’re going to have to rent a spa Forty shelves stuffed into a Mini ce. The fixtures for my 1200 square foot store have filled a 12 x 25 foot spare room and have spilled out into the garage and the basement.

In addition, unless you’ve got some very large friends and your own truck to help you, you’d better budget for a moving company to move these things. That can add between $60 and $200 in moving expenses to the price of the fixtures. (By the way, a Mini Cooper is not the right car to start a retail business with!)

On the seriously plus side, there are a lot of very high quality store fixtures available now that can be got for as low as 30 cents on the dollar. In addition, it’s not uncommon to pick up an entire store’s fixtures in one go. That way, your fixtures will all match.

ABC News reports on rise of board game sales

ABC News did a feature on the recent rise of board game sales. Although they pretty much stuck to Hasbro’s standard games, they did recap why board games are popular during tough economic times.

If only they had mentioned the revolution that’s happened in board games in the last ten years. But, instead they stuck with talking about Hasbro’s updates to their classic games. (At least there’s some nice shots of Axis and Allies!)

Watch video of the story here.

Our Coverage of the GAMA Trade Show

GAMA Logo The Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA) annual trade show in Las Vegas is one week away, and The Haunted Game Cafe will be there covering it. Last year, we posted video interviews with many of the large game manufacturers about their latest games. This year, we plan to add live blogging of press events as well as Twittering from the showroom floor.

The GAMA show is designed to bring retailers, distributors and manufacturers together to see the latest games and to do some business. Last year, Flying Frog was showing off A Touch of Evil, Fantasy Flight was previewing Battlestar Galactica and Conan and Mayfair was showing off Toledo, Bacchus’ Banquet and the Pillars of the Earth expansion.

There are also many seminars on retailing and game publishing. If you’re interested what goes into starting and running a game store, check out some of these seminars on MP3 from the cool guys over at Pulp Gamer. They record many of the seminars and give them out free as podcasts.

Do I really need a business plan to sell games?

I mean, don’t I just rent an empty place in a strip mall somewhere, put the games on the shelf and sell ‘em to people?

Well, sure you can. Just be prepared to have a lot of surprises roll your way. For example, should you be happy or scared when you figure out that your rent is costing you 30% of your income. (Answer: you should be terrified. All your fixed costs should be no more than 10% of your gross income.)

In business, surprises are mostly bad. Sure, there’s the occasional pleasant surprise, but most of the time they fall into the, “Oh, S***!” category. A business plan is an attempt to eliminate as many surprises as possible. Think of everything you can now before it sneaks up and bites you on the ass.

The downside is, of course, these things aren’t easy to write. Particularly if you’re new to business. They’re especially good at forcing you to grok all those business terms you think you know the meaning of, but you really don’t. I’ve been puzzling over the exact meaning of Long Term Assets for the last two days. I eventually had to go to the library and get a couple books on reading financial statements.

Then there’s the long list of unknowns you’ll have to write about. The first draft of my business plan was half blank, mostly because I had no idea how to answer the questions. How much money will you spend on advertising? What kind of advertising? An exactly who are you advertising to? How much money do you expect to make the first year? How about three years from now? Will it be enough to hire more people so you won’t completely crash and burn from working 80 hours a week?

The upside is, of course, the tremendous feeling of confidence it gives you. You may not have all the answers, but at least you’ve got a pretty good shot at finding them

I’ve been working with Business Plan Pro by Palo Alto Software. It’s a great program that walks you through each section of the document, explaining what each part is for, why it’s needed and giving a few examples. The best part is, the software keeps track of all the numbers for you. If I enter my rent in one part of the document, it automatically fills it in under any other section that needs it. I recommend it.

Next time, shopping for fixtures. “Hey mister! Got any old display cases out in the barn?”