Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanzaa/Happy Winter Capitalism Festival is a retail season that everyone knows has an impact on commerce, but never seems to have the same impact every time anymore. When I was growing up in the '70s and '80s, back when we used stone tools and hunted tatonka for fur coats and meat, every Christmas season was basically the same. Starting the day after Thanksgiving, everyone spent every dollar they had in local stores until there was nothing left to be bought, and then on the 25th there was an orgy of pleasure (of gift-giving, not the other kind, you pervert) followed by a frantic run to every convenience store on the planet for AA batteries. You could basically set your watch to it. (Watches were a thing we wore then.)
Even in modern times and the Amazon Age, the Saturday before Christmas used to be its own kind of little Christmas for stores, especially small independent specialty retailers like we have here in the game trade. Indeed, the several Saturdays before are supposed to be just wonderful for us. Absolutely go-time. Even this year with the latest possible Thanksgiving and thus the shortest possible holiday shopping window.
Some stores are still seeing that affect despite all the attenuative factors, in most cases because a given store is very well positioned for mainstream customer footfall, such as at a newer mall, or in a newer shopping plaza with strong anchors. Even where that is not the case, real holiday sales happen in earnest at destination stores that have made substantial capital investments, like Mox Boarding House as reviewed in my Seattle visit two weeks ago.
As for us and, as I am informed, as for stores like mine? The entire holidays this year was just another bunch of weeks, and in fact November was down a bit, owing to no year-over-year big release like we've had the past few frames: Iconic Masters, Unstable, Ultimate Masters, Keyforge Call of the Archons, and so on. This year, we got the Throne of Eldraine Gift Bundles, which sold great except nobody had enough of them. The new Star Wars Destiny expansion was delayed into 2020, a shame given the release of a popular and well-received Star Wars Episode IX movie. The top board game release of the year, Wingspan, came and went from stock. Despite DSG not being "a board game store," we moved cases upon cases of that game, when we could get any.
No surer was this the spoken truth than the weekend before Christmas for DSG, which saw sales... exactly in line with regular norms. Those norms are targeted to cover all the bills and be profitable, so it's not like we're eating ketchup sandwiches here. But the last time the holidays were truly bananas for us was back in 2015, before the post-election slump of 2016 and the it's-too-late-now new Amazon reality of 2017 and 2018. Our Amazon FBA sales have been off the charts this entire 2019 holiday season, by the way. Even when the price online was higher than in-store.
The sales activity we are getting in the gift-giving or even holiday-esque sense is mostly Dungeons & Dragons dice, books, and figures; Magic box sets of various kinds from Game Night to Commander 2019; Pokemon in general; and some of our various new-sealed video games, which is a distinct minority of our massive video game stock. Those sales are offsetting a slight drop in "ordinary" sales of Magic singles, used video games, and other bread-and-butter activity. Party games still have yet to launch for 2019. We have them in stock. They've sold modestly. Usually right before Christmas and New Years, those shelves get scoured bare. We'll see.
The best thing about this year is that we're missing very little in terms of sales we could have gotten, but failed to get because of a structural problem or omission.
Merch always varies of course, and had we received even more Wingspan and Eldraine Gift Bundles and additional restocks of titles like Gloomhaven and Marvel Champions, we certainly could have sold more than we did. Any amount of Nintendo Switches we had traded in likely could have sold, but as it stands we've still got inventory. We went through plenty of Playstation 4 systems in both directions, buying and selling. And the WizKids Dungeons & Dragons unpainted figures are dependable sellers, such that the most demanded SKUs don't last long on the peg. I ordered slightly lighter than I should on Pokemon packs, so that mistake goes against my personal scoreboard.
But beyond merch, DSG is robust and functional right now. We have near-perfect payment interchange, with all credit cards and all contactless services available, lacking only really in some pay-over-the-telephone functionality that is rarely requested anyway. We have perfect gift cards, a workflow we solved either last year or 2017, memory fails me, and that I've never had to give a moment's thought since. We have near-perfect loyalty star administration and redemption, with excellent data providing me the insights I'll use to fine-tune after the first of the year. We have gate-access to some of the best brands in the game business for our Amazon seller account now. We have the best singles kiosk in the business via TCGPlayer Pro. Finally, though I prefer off-the-shelf options in most cases, we have some custom-coded software solutions providing us access to buying prices and store credit administration right there at the registers. Even my workstation has higher physical work capacity now, enabling me to process bigger and better video game buys into merch faster.
Desert Sky Games has certainly had its share of stumble and trial in 2019, but we're immensely better now than we were twelve months ago. We broke into the two-comma column this year for the first time. The end-point net income is only a small percentage of that, but it was enough to clear out the last of our bank loans and put us in a strong position facing forward. Now I can move into 2020 and focus a little more on some things that have gotten short shrift lately, such as my personal health. I'm looking forward to what tomorrow brings.
I wish you all a joyous holiday of whichever type you celebrate, and a safe New Years. The next blog article here on The Backstage Pass will be in January, and will be our semi-annual Store Closure list and review. See you then!
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