Rook's Comics and Games

Retail is funny. It has a split personality. On one hand, we wan to be your friend and build a really great community and to make sure that everything we do benefit’s the customer. On the other hand, this is how we make a living. If people don’t buy stuff from us then we don’t eat. This is where marketing comes in. Marketing is essentially a whole bunch of dirty psychological tricks used to get people to spend more. (If you are interested in the psychology of retail and marketing, read some of Paco Underhill’s books. The amount of knowledge that professional retailers have about your subconscious is scary. )

Sara and I try to strike a happy medium between doing what’s best for the customers and what’s best for us from a profit standpoint. The best policies are ones which fall into both categories simultaneously. That is, policies that benefit both us as retailers and you as consumers. One such policy that has been gaining in popularity is the idea of customer loyalty points. These are the sorts of programs where you get x points per dollar spent of something very similar. These programs have a lot of things going for them. Because of these benefits, we have decided to implement a customer rewards program for Rook’s. We don’t have all the kinks worked out but let me go over whey I think this will be a boon to loyal customers.

Our loyalty program is a very basic version. For every dollar that you spend, you get one point. Those points accumulate and can eventually be turned in for a discount. There are several reasons why I think this is cool for customers.
1) You get your points on almost everything. We are going to include Warhammer and Flames of War in this program. These are two product lines we have never offered any type of discounts for before including special orders.
2) You get your points for special orders and off the shelf items. I think this will turn out to be better than our 10% off special order policy.

Facebook is going well for us. It grown into a good communication tool for our business. Currently we have 202 fans. You can check out the demographics of those fans here. http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3802358&id=119651476386 There are a couple of interesting things going on. We are pretty heavily skewed toward men but with 28% female fans I feel like we are doing well. Customers of this industry have traditionally been male but I don’t see any reason why gaming and comics shouldn’t be enjoyed in equal number by women. I think our actual customer’s base is more male than 72% but I am happy that there is some female representation there.
The next interesting data comes in the form of age. 83% of our face book fans are under the age of 35. This was surprising to me. There are probably several things going on here. First we should look at the average age of Facebook users. The latest data I could find quickly (Feb. 2009) shows that 78% of Facebook users are under the age of 35. This seems to line up with our demographics very well so maybe our numbers are not the weird after all. Another factor to consider is the character of Rook’s. I think that Rook’s does try to target that 18-34 market. This is a function of our available customers but I think it might also reflect on Sara and I personally. We are smack in the middle of that age demographic so it makes sense that we would connect with those customers well.
The final thing that we can see in the demographic data is location data. Almost all of our fans are from the United States and at least 62% of them are from Montana. I don’t know of a way to drill down further than what it shows but I would expect that the number of Montana fans is actually above 80%. This tells me that most of our fans are actual people who are likely to visit Rook’s sometime in the year.

As I said last week, Sara and I are headed to Las Vegas on Friday to attend GAMA. This is a trade show for the game industry. Trade shows are a little different than conventions. The main purpose of a game convention is to give something back to the fans of the games and for the organizers and booth owners to show off / sell cool new stuff. The show floor at GAMA is very similar to a game convention. There are a bunch of manufactures there and their booths are set up similar to a game convention. The only difference is that they are trying to sell things to retailers, not the end customer. A slight difference but it matters for the sales pitch. Most of the products they are trying to sell are also not even available yet and cannot be bought at the booths. They are set up just to influence purchasing decisions made by a company once the attendees have left the convention instead of impulse buys you would make at a game convention.

The show floor is the fun part of GAMA. If it were cheaper to go, I would go every year. Getting a feel for what new stuff is coming out and what new companies are forming really helps us with our buying decisions. If I feel that the people running a game business are nice and competent then I am much more likely to buy into that game. Making face-to-face connections with people in the industry can also be useful later on when we need help with a damaged product or we want some support for a big tournament. Manufacturers also like to show off their games with quick demos and displays of upcoming products that will be available later in the year. Although we do usually get a lot of free demo products, going to GAMA is not really about the schwag for us. Those little perks are cool but the information one can learn is far more valuable.

Rook’s is having an auction! I got this idea from a retailer in California named Gary Ray. He runs a very cool store and he has had a lot of success with his auctions. We are going to have this auction on May 2nd, the day after Free Comic Book Day. This is a Sunday so we can take over the store and not have too many people mad at us.
The way the auction works is thus:

1. People bring in items they wish to auction. We will have a “buy it now” phase followed by the auction portion. If you would like to sell your item for a fixed price than you fill out our auction form and indicate the price at which you would like to sell your item. If you would like to auction your item then when you fill out the form you can indicate what the starting bid will be.
2. Somebody buys your item. The person who bought your item will pay you in store credit. Basically, the purchaser will give us cash or store credit and we will then put that same amount onto your account.

The auction is as simple as that. Of course there will be a few more rules involved but that is the general idea. I think the auction is a really cool idea for several reasons. One, it helps us out. All of the cash generated by the auction turns into store credit. This keeps the money in the store which is why it is worth our time and effort to set up. Second, it should help out everyone in the community. This type of auction is basically an exchange among customers. You are able to get rid of something you don’t want and acquire something you do want. We are allowing people to use store credit earned earlier in the day to purchase others auctions later in the day. This way it is totally feasible for somebody to essentially trade items with no money leaving their pocket. I see this auction as win-win. It keeps money in the store which, as an owner, I like but it also allows customers to trade off items for something more valuable for them.

 The last couple of days I have been embroiled in a discussion about PDF sales and the current trends of the RPG industry.  What got me started on this was a blog post by Fred Hicks, a writer/publisher of RPGs.  He essentially said that for small publishers, it is almost always less profitable for publishers to make the effort to get a print book into Brick and Mortar retail stores.  I think that his reasoning and numbers are sound and so I agree with him.  This also coincided with a conversation on a Industry Forum on the same topic. 

There are a couple of topics I want to address with this.  The first is that I am working from the premise that B&M stores provide a vital and valuable service to the roleplaying community.  This is the first point that I would like some feedback on.  Do retail stores actually provide a valuable service?  Can you bypass B&M stores and use other social media to find players and setup games?  I would really like to hear feedback on this. 

 Rook’s held a Worldwake Pre-Release on Saturday and Sunday.  We had three events planned for the weekend.  On Saturday was a Worldwake sealed deck tournament.  Then after that we held a Worldwake draft.  Finally on Sunday we held another Worldwake sealed deck event.  This is the same format that we had for our very successful Zendikar Pre-Release event.

Starting next week, we are going to change the day that we send out the newsletter.  Now, as you probably all know, we send out our newsletter on Monday.  The two things that our newsletter primarily does is inform customers about events that are happening and to showcase some cool new products coming in.  As we are thinking about these two things, Sara and I realized that we don’t get new product in till Thursday or Friday and our main events primarily run

Rook's has a lot to look forward to in 2010. We just concluded a very good year and we wish to continue our successes. There are many changes we are considering but the main thing that we are going to focus on is taking care of our existing customers. In 2009 we tried being very friendly to walk in traffic. After looking at the numbers, I feel like our efforts towards walk in customers didn’t pay off. That is to say that we didn't garner as much sales as I would have liked compared to the cost of extra products necessary for this pursuit.

We have been having some problems with Battlefront Miniatures lately and it got me to thinking about our relationship with the manufactures of the games we sell. First off, some information about the game industry. Most prices in the game industry are determined by the Manufacturers Suggest Retail Price. This is where the price for a product is set by the manufacturer. Of course, I am allowed to sell something for more or less but it is very difficult. The price of the products is usually marked on the package and the manufactures also advertise the products at a certain price.