Hobby Comic and Game Store Closures, First Half of 2019

Are you all enjoying your Summer Break?  I know I am.  I'm getting a lot done and Desert Sky Games is on an absolute tear right now.  Much as I'm starting to get the itch to resume weekly writing, I'm going to continue to take advantage of the self-imposed downtime to work on projects, develop personnel, and spend more off hours with the wife and kids.

Obviously it's that time of year again, in which I count down the stores that hung it up between January 1, 2019 and June 30, 2019, that I know about. As I regularly reiterate, my information sources are imperfect, but I am confident that this list does not fundamentally mischaracterize the situation. I required a firsthand-source announcement or evidence of the discovery of the store closed in order to add it to the list.  A store that changes ownership to an entirely different business entity is typically counted as a closure, though I will sometimes omit such an instance if there was zero change in the store branding (not applicable for anything listed this time around).

Announced or Discovered Closed 

1. CHAIN OF STORES: ThinkGeek (Worldwide closure) 
2. DISTRIBUTOR: Aladdin Distribution (Burnsville, MN) 
3. DISTRIBUTOR: E-Figures Distribution (Southold, NY) 
4. 138 Comics (Lemon Grove, CA) 
5. 1st Person Games (Pocatello, ID)
6. Aardvark Books (San Francisco, CA) 
7. Abubika Gaming (Gastonia, NC) 
8. The Adventurers Guild (Edmonton, AB, Canada)
9. All the King's Men Chess & Games (Pitman, NJ) 
10. Angry Squirrelz (Moses Lake, WA) continues business in apparel and not hobby games
11. Apex Hobby Shop (Sparta, WI) other location closed late 2018, all closed now 
12. BC Comix (Howell, MI) One huge location built from 3 smaller locations, all closed 
13. Bearded Browncoats Comics and Games (Gainesville, FL) Ocala location remains open
14. BetaTCG dot com Gaming Center (Richland, WA) 
15. Board Game Warriors (New Westminster, BC) 
16. Caffeinated Gaming (Zieglerville, PA) 
17. Captain Jack's Comics (Minneapolis, MN) 
18. Chameleon Collectibles (Apache Junction, AZ) 
19. Coins Cards & Comics Colorado (Arvada, CO) 
20. Collectors Corner (Baltimore, MD) 
21. The Comic Cave (Springfield, MO) 
22. Comic Universe (Folsom, PA) 
23. Core Games Lansdowne (Burnaby, BC, Canada) 
24. Cosmic Comics and Games (Centralia, WA) 
25. Creative Kidstuff (Minneapolis, MN area) 6 locations all closing 
26. Desu-Nation (Temple City, CA) 
27. The Dragon's Hoard (Moorhead, MN)
28. Endgame (Oakland, CA) 
29. Ever Green Game & Hobby (Missoula, MT) 
30. Family Game Store (Savage, MD) 
31. Flashback Games (Tempe, AZ) 
32. Fodder Cannon Games (Charlotte, NC) 
33. A Galaxy Called Dallas (Garland, TX) 
34. GameCorner (Longwood, FL) has since reopened*
35. Gamers Guild (Kenner, LA) 
36. GameSpace (St. Mary's, ON, Canada) 
37. The Games People Play (Cambridge, MA) Oldest existing board game store 
38. GameXcape (Asheville, NC) 
39. Gateway Gaming (Naples, FL) 
40. The Geekery HQ (Astoria, NY) 
41. GMZ4U (Clovis, CA) 
42. Good Games 'N More (Inver Grove Heights, MN) 
43. Gorilla King Comics (Baltimore, MD) 
44. Graphic Action Comics (Newcastle, NSW, Australia) 
45. Hobbytown USA (Lake in the Hills, IL) - franchise location 
46. Ibuywargames (Woking, England, UK) 
47. Infinite Lives (Oswego, NY) other location remains open 
48. Inner Sanctum Collectibles (Cambridge, England, UK) 
49. Jay St Video Games (Multiple locations) One store still operating
50. Link to the Past Video Games (Spring Hill, FL) 
51. Little Shop of Movies (Vancouver, BC, Canada) 
52. Mad Ox Comics / Titan Comics / Games & Comics / Little Monster / whatever Marcus King is calling his store this time (London, KY) 
53. Magician's Forge (Ft. Myers, FL) 
54. Manawerx (Glendale, AZ) Closed and consolidated with North Valley Games; site re-opened under new ownership entity Amazing Discoveries Glendale LLC 
55. Mario's House of Video Games (Provo, UT)
56. Mile High Comics (Lakewood, CO) Main location remains open 
57. The Multiverse Comics (Hurst, TX) 
58. My Pop Culture (Tauranga, New Zealand) 
59. Mythic Realm Games (Mount Vista, WA) 
60. No Land Beyond (Baltimore, MD) 
61. Oregon Trail Games (The Dalles, OR) 
62. Out of the Box Hobby (Stevens Point, WI)
63. PhoenixMTG (Apache Junction, AZ) Opened at site of Chameleon above, then two months later closed and sold and re-opened under new ownership entity
64. Players Paradice Board Game Cafe (Milton Keynes, UK) 
65. Playthings (Madison, WI) 
66. Reality Shift Games (Narragansett, RI) 
67. The Record Store (Howell, NJ) 
68. Redbeard's Games (Dundalk, MD)
69. The Rook OTR (Cincinnati, OH) 
70. R.U. Game? (Brandon, FL) 2 other Tampa area locations remain open 
71. Saint Mark's Comics (New York, NY) 
72. Sanctuary Games (Hutchinson, MN) 
73. Sixth Chamber Used Books (St Paul, MN) 
74. SMASH Comics Games Toys (Sanford, FL)
75. The Sourcery Game Store (Fredericksburg, VA) 
76. Starlit Citadel (Vancouver, BC, Canada) 
77. Stiger's Battle Grounds (Hillsdale, MI) 
78. Tap Two Blue (Los Angeles, CA)
79. Time Vault Games (Portland, OR) 
80. Tom & Stephanies Sportscards (sic) (Philipsburg, PA) 
81. Toyriffic (Hudson, WI) Re-opened and closed again 
82. Two Cats Comics (San Francisco, CA) 
83. Two Kings Gaming (Williamsville, NY) 
84. Ultimate Games and Comics (Hanson, KY) 
85. Uncanny Heroes Comics (Lakeland, FL) combining to other location 
86. Vault 302 Comics (West Branch, MI) 
87. Vegas Comics (Henderson, NV) 
88. The WarStore (Southold, NY) 
89. We Know Video Games (Albuquerque, NM) 3 locations all closing 
90. Wizard's Guild (Athens, GA) 
91. Wizard's Tower (Stuart, FL) 
92. Wow Cool Alternative Comics (Cupertino, CA) 
93. Young's Hobbies (Coventry, England, UK) other location remains open
94. Ziege Games (Howell, MI)

* Stores sometimes close and promise to reopen soon.  I'm counting the closures here, not out of any animus against those stores, but because the success rate of re-opening tends to be very low, they often re-close again (see Toyriffic), and I can't feasibly babysit those stores to see whether they are the one who ends up bucking the trend and re-opening and sticking.  Having said that, it sounds like GameCorner might have defied the odds and gotten back up and running for real.  Well done!

After posting these articles I typically receive a flurry of additional store closure info, so I figure I should also publish the ones we know about that didn't close just yet but already announced that they're done, so well-meaning folks know they don't have to send those in. Here:

Already announced closing 2nd half of 2019

1. Big Daddy Games (St. Augustine, FL)
2. Epic Loot (Centerville, OH) consolidating from 3 locations to 2
3. The Final Dungeon (Woodstock, GA)
4. Rivertown Comics & Games (Red Wing, MN) 
5. Wonderland Games (Lake Charles, LA) 

So, the list grows again. Fifty stores, then 59, then 69 (dude!), then 78, now 90-plus-multiples and going up as I add more from edits, and you have to extrapolate that I probably know about maybe 10% of the real closures, most are anonymous holes-in-the-wall in Nowheresville, West Carolina, so the real number is probably 900+.

How many will close in the second half of 2019? Speaking in the editorial voice, I don't think as many will close, solely because so many already have and we're bound to see a regression to the mean attrition rate.  And there are still two new dumb bastards hanging up a shingle and a dream every time some earnest retailer turns in their badge.

Something I want to emphasize again is that a store closure should not be assumed reflective of ignorance, incompetence, or laziness on the part of the owner(s). Though that does happen probably more often than it ought. The reality is, the deck is stacked against small businesses in America (and even in Canada and the UK and elsewhere, as you can see in the list). Virtually every imposed cost hits with no economy of scale to absorb or mitigate it. Virtually every loss ends up at the feet of the ownership, who get paid last. Virtually every entitlement takes away the next dollar and there's no way to be sure where the dollar after that will come from. I mean we kind of know, but until you have it, you never really know. Every day I wonder if that's the day that the general public will make an irrevocable turn away from every niche product line I happen to carry. Sales don't have to go to zero overnight to kill off a lot of businesses. In fact, in a heated bubble market, a simple slowdown of the growth rate might be enough.

I've spent the last seven years pouring my every effort into making Desert Sky Games the best it can be, and I've seen peers working every bit as hard who caught a few worse breaks and they don't have stores anymore. I've seen people who stuck it out and survived long-ago downturns weathering the current turbulence with aplomb and a healthy reserve; I've seen people whose stores did fine during the last famine run out of gas this time and have no back-pocket solution to call upon. I've seen people with no business running stores have Brewster's Millions scenarios allowing them to piss away untold fortunes paying area grinders to love them temporarily. I've seen people with no business running stores get roped into "investments" by fast-talking turn-key hucksters, both on the tabletop side and the video game side of the swimming pool. And I've seen the churn affect stores from 500 square feet to 500,000 square feet, which is why these lists will never really end.

As I remind you all every time I make these posts, DSG is still for sale and always will be until I've handed over the keys, but nobody who can afford it wants it, and nobody who wants it can afford it. Guess I'll get up in the morning tomorrow and spend another day trying to raise my game.