Permit Hell is finally over, the signs are up and the lights are on, and your soft opening went smoothly. Over $500 in sales on day one, and almost two grand in your first week!
Now you're running your introductory events, spicing up the pot a bit with slightly aggressive extra prizing. Not so much that your brand-new customer base will be angry when you walk it back, you hope. But enough to make nearby incumbent stores look greedy for running their events at break-even.
Your suite still smells like paint and IKEA pressboard, and your restroom is gloriously clean. Elaborate price labels appear above every barcode on your merch.
Your store rating is a smooth 5.0 on Facebook, Google, and Yelp, thanks to your spouse and their friends.
The store's bank account is flush with your entry capital, and you're safe to put in ambitious orders. Your stockist assortment just showed up from Games Workshop, and the invoice on that ain't due for months. And with a little extra marketing push, you should hit Core in time to sanction the War of the Spark prerelease.
Sure enough, everything is looking great for your new business. As NBN would say, The World Is Yours.* Best of luck, and go get 'em.
...
What?
Oh, that asterisk? It's nothing, I wouldn't worry about it.
No, I said it's nothing. Forget I ever punctuated it. The World Is Yours. There. Feel better?
Seriously, it's fine.
(deep breath)
Okay. The thing is this. You are about to start getting customer inquiries, and there's a certain subtext that's kind of lost in translation until you become fully fluent in the language. Fully proficient in the parlance of our trade, if you will.
Until that happens, you're going to hear what the customers are asking, and you're going to give the "ultimate perfect customer service" answer, and you're going to back that up with action, which is going to mean spending resources. And the thing is, it's totally not going to have the result you expect.
And the reason for that is that a seemingly innocuous question almost always has a tip-off of some kind, a subtle indicator of what's really being asked. And you'll miss that subtext. And the payload in that subtext is where you lose money. Sometimes lots of it quickly, sometimes the death of a thousand cuts. Bottom line, you're gonna get rolled.
What do I mean?
Look, I only have so much time here. I have tax preparation to do. You won't have to worry about that until next spring. But to show you my heart is in the right place, I'll translate these first few communiqués for you, and you'll learn the rest as you go.
Ready?
Customer asks: Brand new specialty store, looks great! Which credit cards do you accept?
Customer means: Will you sign up for merchant services through my commission account?
Customer asks: Awesome, a new comic shop! Do you carry indie comics, like, locally-produced books?
Customer means: Will you buy my self-published indie comic book? It's about a comic writer and artist who lives in a grubby apartment and makes edgy observations about life and sexuality. It stars all my friends.
Customer asks: Sweet, a new store! Do you guys sell Yu-Gi-Oh cards?
Customer means: Will you overpay me for my years-old, beaten-up Yu-Gi-Oh cards? I need cash to buy vape cartridges.
Customer asks: Hey, a new store. Will you guys run Yu-Gi-Oh tournaments?
Customer means: I was banned from the other YGO store in town for shoplifting. You have lots of nice stuff on the shelves, by the way.
Customer asks: Glad to see another new store. Will you guys run Vanguard tournaments? (or any anime TCG)
Customer means: I buy my booster boxes at a nickel over bottom wholesale online, but I need a place to play and people to play against. I will never spend one cent in your store that I am not required to spend to play the game. I have a lolicon playmat that younger customers shouldn't see, but will.
Customer asks: Finally, a new minis store! Are you guys going to support Firestorm Armada? (or any fringe wargame)
Customer means: I bought $730 worth of fleet/army from Miniature Market, but nobody around here plays. I need you to train playmates for me and bring in product to sell them, but not to me, I already have mine. The other wargames/minis stores in town already figured this out, which is why they won't stock my fringe wargame.
Customer asks: Awesome, a new comic store. Do you buy old-school vintage rare valuable Pokemon cards?
Customer means: I found my Ash binder from 20 years ago and I'm late on my mortgage payment. These Machamps should be good for a grand apiece. They're 1st Edition.
Customer asks: Wow, a new tabletop store, huh? Are you going to stock [Kickstarter Trash of the
Customer means: I'm hoping there's some way I can still get the exclusive backer limited edition at a discount, since I was too late to back it before the cutoff. I don't want the retail edition, that's leprosy. Paradoxically, I'll never play this game, or I'll play it only once before the next shiny title launches its crowdfunding campaign, and this one will go on my shelf for all eternity.
Customer means: I am incapable of original thought.
Customer asks: Sweet, a new card shop. What's your buy rate on Magic bulk? Is it more if it's sorted?
Customer means: I am a backpack dealer and this stuff is picked as clean as an animal skeleton in the desert. The established Magic stores in town already stopped buying bulk from me.
Customer asks: You guys do board games? Do you have this Fantasy Flight board game, or can you special order it for me?
Customer means: Amazon has it at double MSRP and I want to flip it. It's between printings, but I am hoping you don't know that or understand how it works. If by some miracle you have it on the shelf at MSRP, I will actually attempt to haggle you down further below the spiking market price, because I'm already winning, so I may as well go for the throat.
Customer asks: What percentage of entry fees is your prize payout? (v1)
Customer means: I was banned from the other store in town that reliably fires eternal formats.
Customer asks: What percentage of entry fees is your prize payout? (v2)
Customer means: If it's one cent less than the store I'm at now, you'll never see me again, but I will reply on local Facebook Magic player groups every time someone asks about your store by telling them you are a gouger and never to buy here. If it's one cent more, I will be here every day grinding, chasing casuals away, haranguing you to fire events with five or six players at full prizing so I can win easily, and on social media I'll complain about your price gouging on boxes. Boxes should never cost more than "85$."
Customer asks: What percentage of entry fees is your prize payout? (v3)
Customer means: My brother-in-law owns the clubhouse store eight miles away that you opened against, and we need to make sure we publicly undercut you in response to your grand opening tournament announcement. We will punctuate that by selling boxes "while supplies last" for "80$" (there are three boxes available under this "sick deal" but we will keep that quiet) and we'll make sure the town loudmouth buys the first one and give him a free soda to post his glowing reaction on social media immediately. Hope you're ready for a race to the bottom.
Customer asks: Oh hey there you got games. How much cash could I get for some brand new PS4 controllers, still in the box?
Customer means: I stole these from Wal-Mart and they won't take them at GameStop because they know better.
Ten customers ask: You sell board games? Can you get a copy of Unobtainable Hot Boardgame when it comes back into print for me?
Ten customers mean: Each of us are calling every store and asking this. Demand seems like it's for hundreds of copies, ten or so for every store in town. In fact, real demand is only a handful of copies, perhaps fewer as some of us are friends and can share a copy. You will restock many copies when you should restock one, or possibly zero. Once it's in stock at Amazon, that's where we're going to get it anyway. You will have ten unsellable copies gathering dust on the shelf.
That's great,, I hope this can help them to be less intimidated about making comics. I love pointing to xkcd and Dinosaur Comics, just because the images are SO simple, and I've just posted here in the comments a comic by Gary Northfield that features a single leaf per panel. The kids could do something as simple as take a photograph of an apple and show the same exact photo in each panel, just giving it different speech bubbles. Maybe there are two flies on the apple talking to each other - they might just be little dots.
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