Frank Miller & Tommy Donovan of Richmond Comix in Midlothian, Virginia and Rick Ralsten of The Time Capsule in Chester, Virginia read Dave Leubke's recent Talk Back (see "David Luebke of Dave's Comics on WotC Premier Stores") with much interest and had this to share:

We read with much interest Dave Leubke's comments about losing his Premier Store status and his overall comments about gamers and game stores in general.  Of particular interest was the following quote:

"The odd thing about this is we made money for WotC without in store play.  We have found that other local stores that have gaming going on in their stores also had problems with theft, fencing stolen merchandise, drug dealing, loitering on retail property at 3AM in the morning, and more.  We run a clean store in a great neighborhood and our landlord will not allow or tolerate organized play as it is occurring these days."

As the owners of two of the three Premier Stores that run regular WotC events in the Richmond area, we've never had the kinds of problems he suggests.  We both also run "clean stores in great neighborhoods" and we are both very proud of our business reputation and our customer base, of whom a large percentage are indeed gamers.  We enjoy great relationships with our retail neighbors and our landlords, have never had any issues with either law enforcement or the local community, and in general do our level best to promote a fun and family-friendly environment at our stores.

We understand that Mr. Leubke is frustrated with his inability to order product directly from WotC any more, and we would respectfully suggest that there are many great distributors out there who will gladly fill his Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons needs.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.