The above is going to make it sound like we've been chaotically swerving hither and yon in terms of business approaches, but the reality is a lot more boring and straightforward than that, in which the core operations remain as unchanged as possible every time we undergo an adjustment batch, so that we can have some isolation on the adjusted aspects and then actually learn useful information from the sales, profitability (or lack thereof), and logistical experiences that follow.
In that respect, this holiday season has been something of a breakthrough for me because some things that I've been iterating out for up to six years now are finally concluding to where I have clarity on where the market is and where my target audience's mindset is. The feeling of reaching that apex evoked for me the part of Ori and the Blind Forest where she makes it to the top of Sorrow Pass and picks up the final skill, "completing the circle," and setting off the orchestral score's swell of triumph and exultation as Ori realizes that she is finally ready to save the forest and set all things right. My admiration for Gareth Coker's composition work on this piece is immense.
No, I am not suggesting that I have finally "solved it all" or have some godlike understanding of the hobby game industry that transcends all else; it's surely impossible to have that, and I still have to read, listen, learn, and iterate every day. What I'm saying is that I reached a waypoint, if you will, a crossroads, at which several major plot threads at once all are resolving, and that has given me a clarity about some things that I have spent literally years in exhaustive trial and error on.
And at the risk of having several of you throw your drinks at your computer screens (or even more likely now, your smartphone screens), I can't spill the beans on most of what I concluded. At least, not here in this blog article, and not in detail. What I can tell you is that I am going to start making substantial changes in my business in Q1 2019 that I expect to have stick for a while.
Some tantalizing factoids that will surely stoke speculation:
★ The biggest growth channels for DSG in 2018 have been online sales channels, all of which posted substantial year-over-year gains. TCGPlayer, Amazon, eBay, and the website. We have been approached by Massdrop, Walmart.com, and Wish, and I'm assessing whether to spend attention and resources exploring those options. Software integration is a major limiting factor.
★ The publisher responsible for the lion's share of DSG's revenue has just told the public that it is going to pay players $10 million to move to a digital platform. While I don't think the sky is falling, I do think there will be short-term market consequences from this.
★ Our marketing game is peaking right now in measurable effectiveness through the Square Retail Loyalty program, and that has opened our eyes to some product lines that are working better than we thought, and some that are underperforming the health level we believed they were at. Data analytics are really undervalued in this industry and one of the biggest unforced errors I have committed in six years in business was sticking with Light Speed Retail as a primary POS from 2012-2016 and then Crystal Commerce from 2016-2018 despite both being deficient for this purpose.
★ Creating or restoring value, separate from pure reselling, has been a windfall for DSG. From disc resurfacing to system and controller refurbishing, these have been areas where we can field highly competitive prices while realizing comfortable margins, all within masterable processes with knowable logistics. There is nothing like this in tabletop.
★ We preach the blue ocean of mainstream customers as the massive market to target that has the greatest potential to sustain our businesses. However, there is still an opportunity to make money catering to the needs of enfranchised customers. It comes down to how or whether the business structure is compatible with that.
★ It has never been a better time to be a tabletop gamer hosting game nights at home. From luxury gamer tables to smartphone-integrated board games to helper apps for wargames to meetup webapps (including the granddaddy, Meetup itself) to high content quality at the top of the tidal wave of releases. Back in 2012 when DSG first opened I wondered whether we'd be seeing basically "iPad game tables" within five years. That's not how it played out, but a lot of the assumptions baked into that question ended up emerging anyway.
★ I have consistently underestimated the attraction of "treasure hunting," so to speak, as a thing that gets people to visit the brick-and-mortar storefront. We spent 2018 doing a number of things that poke this nerve and the patient consistently responded.
★ There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. We all knew this already, I'm just mentioning it again because it's highly relevant to a lot of what I am about to be doing.
Hopefully the foregoing will give everyone a sense of where my mind is at as I get ready for 2019 to be the year where business transitions align us to a much closer degree with the combination of our resources, our sourcing partners' offerings, and our clientele's revealed preferences.
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