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(or "Tsk Tsk Discounters!")
(or "Linda's Rant")
I have heard the argument in Usenet News Groups, that discounters are good -- they bring games, especially collectible card games, into the price range where anyone with some ready cash -- well okay, maybe a ready credit card -- can afford to buy lots of the stuff. The manufacturers don't lose out on this deal; they still get paid the same amount, so they're still happy, right? So who does it hurt?
It hurts the gaming industry, and I'll tell you a story to shed a little light on why I say this.
We have a small store in Midland, Texas. We opened our doors on November 22, 1995, and around that time a card game based on the Japanese clan system, Legend of the Five Rings, came out. I bought a few boxes in, and opened some packs, and it looked really cool. We were busy learning the business, though, so I didn't have time to learn how to play (that card game or any of the dozen others we stocked at our opening), so I put the cards in the case, nicely arranged for all to see. And it sat there. It sat there for a long time, a good six months at least. A couple of our regular Magic players occasionally bought starters or boosters -- they played in their home, and liked the game well enough, but pretty much, that was it.
Then one day, a fellow discovered our store -- I'll leave him nameless unless he emails me and says I can put his name on this page (hi Josh! :) -- and shortly thereafter he adopted L5R as his game. He spent a lot of time in the store.
Our store, you see, has tables in the front and back -- 6 modest tables and one very large one -- which are open for gamers to come in and play pretty much whatever they like. A regular community of gamers hang out in the store -- not all of our customers, not by a long shot, but a small core of dedicated players, mostly school-age -- and whenever this fellow was in, and they were in and bored, he would teach them to play L5R.
Now, about a year later, it is our 3rd best seller in the store, after Star Wars and Magic. It is widely played in Midland and Odessa (our neighbor about 30 miles to the west) and is spreading to the outlying communities and still spreading quickly throughout the town.
If we had not had a physical location, a place where gamers can easily meet other gamers, this would not have happened.
And the truth is, if the discounters had their way and got lots and lots of business (if they got most of the business out there, which they would love), if everybody had ready access to collectible card games (and other stuff) at around wholesale price, we would not be in business.
We buy the products we sell from reputable distributors, who buy their products directly from the manufacturers. They give us a discount on the games, and we mark those prices up and sell them. For a long time the industry standard in retail -- all kinds of retail: clothes, records, games, most of everything you buy -- has been a 40% discount from the distributor to the retailer. Now if you think (as I once did) that that means the store pockets 40 cents on every dollar you spend, well that seems pretty outrageous, doesn't it? But someone with an actual store does not pocket 40 cents. If they're lucky they might get a dime back, and if they're like most of us, they'll put most of that dime right back into their business and live on a penny or two.
Most of that 40% goes to the landlord, the power company, the phone company, the local advertising media, the insurance company, and to pay for the bags and the till-tape and the repair to the air conditioner, and to repay the loan for the sign, the deposits (for the rent, power and phone), and the coffee pots and tables and chairs and shelves and cases and the cash register; and to cover the losses due to theft in the store, and the ones who cheat you in trades, and for stock lost due to poor folks reading the game books on the shelves until they damage them beyond saleable quality, or the hamhanded Mack who bends the cards in the binders. When we first opened our doors I was astounded at how much we contributed to the local economy by putting our "profits" right back out into the community! (And how little some folks appreciated how hard we worked to give them a nice place to play despite the fact we'd never get rich at it.)
Now I don't say all this to moan. I want you to understand. We love the gaming industry, we think the gamers are the coolest people in our town; that's why we opened the store: so we would have a place to work where we really had fun and where we could respect the people we met day in and day out. And we do! We enjoy our work and we like most of our customers and have adopted several of them as next-to-family and best-of-friends. But we wouldn't, of course, mind making a comfortable living for the huge investment in time and curtailment of any other personal life we live with to keep the business running. I calculated that during our first year in business, Dave and I earned $0.62/hour -- and customers wondered why I'd laugh when they'd (A) ask for a job ("Will you work for less than sixty-two cents an hour?") or (B) ask me to give them stuff for free!
So back to the point (what was the point, uhm...) given that we get a 40% discount, often better, sometimes worse, so that roughly 60 cents of your dollar goes to pay the distributors for the product, and most of the rest goes to pay everyone else who gets a piece of the pie, you can see that a business with a real store can't possibly offer the kind of deep deep discount on products that some of the discounters you find do. They don't have the overhead, so that cuts their costs, and they don't take anything like a personal approach with people, so they can "turn" a lot of product quickly, which makes their pea-sized profits on each box of cards they sell (or perhaps the shipping and handling charges) mount up enough to maybe make it worth their while.
A final point I'd make here to hammer this long point home is that the manufacturers of games actively discourage deep discounting of games. If it makes no difference to their bottom line, would they do this? No. They know just what I'm trying to say here, which is that games spread through gamers playing with other gamers, and that there is no other mechanic in the world for spreading their game that works better than a good gaming store right in the community. There is nothing that starts a product selling like having someone show you the game, like getting to put your hands on the product, like being able to get a few starters and boosters Right Now while your paycheck is still hot in your hand; there's nothing that spreads the excitement like an in-store tournament, there's nothing that keeps it going like trade nights, and the availability of singles, and friendly neutral ground to come sit and play with friends and meet others who play.
If the discounters gain most of the business, all of that will go away.
Now, for a few harsh words: Discounters cheat. Most of them have signed up as distributors, agreeing to sell to retailers only and not directly to the public, but they're going to do it anyway. Discounters don't care about the gaming industry, all they care about is making a buck. If those are the kinds of people you want to deal with then more power to you. You may feel free to also support industries that pollute the air and dump their toxic chemicals into the river than runs through your back yard, too. It's pretty much the same scam.
For ourselves, we will offer modest discounts on what we sell when we can do, because we do want to give gamers a break. You'll see boxes marked down if we're overstocked on the product or it's something that's moving slowly in our corner of the world wide weird; that's fundamental business sense. But we're not going to cut our own throats or anyone else's; we're just going to make an honest living. (We won't jack prices, either. Since we're now the only serious gaming store in the area, we could get away with it, but we wouldn't seriously consider it.) We started our business with the philosophy of offering the best prices we reasonably could and we will continue on as we started; our local customers trust us and believe in our good intentions because we were the first in the area to offer consistently fair prices, and we're going to stick by that -- while continuing to offer local gamers a clean and well-lit place to play, with free coffee and hot tea and cold water, and a friendly, open atmosphere. May the town you're in have such a gamer's haven, and if it does have one, may you give it your full support.
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