I have been wondering this fall, with the Christmas shopping season in its final stages this past week, just what is the method by which to project VALUE to the consumer? The past 30 days or so were the busiest of 2015, and with it we have just now passed the best time to market for 2016, while we had hundreds of first-time customers in the store, and hundreds more of the only-once-or-so-a-year customers.
Back in July and August when I began planning for this event, I began to look at how to project the right image into my customers’ consciousness. And, with that process, I thought, "What is it I want to convey, exactly?" Friendly. Fun. Dependable. Drama-free.
I decided that what I wanted the customers to leave here with was a sense of Year Round Fun!! That this store is a place you can trust will be here next time you want to shop here; that we are here for the long haul; that this is a place that is fun to shop; and that we have knowledgeable personnel.
As such, I took a very direct approach to improving the store's layout, selection of merchandise, special ordering and comic subscriptions intake methodology; and implemented a new plan for phasing out older lines which grow stagnant and adding new lines of merchandise that sell well, and especially things you cannot find at Walmart, Target, or Barnes & Noble.
Along that line, I added two new major distributors, neither of which is in the US. I added new staff who would revitalize the store's energy. And, I ran a 6-month sale which ended just last week--allowing us to target older merchandise to phase out, while maximizing profitability.
The new staff and I worked to improve our used merchandise buying procedures to take into account what we need, what we can accept, and what we just won't buy.
And, the results are in. I have lowered our COGS (cost of goods sold) while improving our gross sales and net profits for 4th quarter 2015.
We will also end the year with a much better, and healthier, inventory mix than we had at the end of 2014.
In the 50+ categories we track for sales, there are no real surprises. We mostly liquidated our Games Workshop inventory mid-2015, so the sales of that line have flat-lined. Privateer Press, HeroClix and D&D/Pathfinder miniatures have all about doubled in sales. Our video game sales have ticked up about 10%, while our cost of goods for video games has dropped by about 15%, so our net profits in that category have really improved.
But one of the best changes has been in events. Once I started charging a price for events that made every event make a profit, and stopped giving out 100% of entry fees in prizes (staff running events must be paid) we stopped hemorrhaging money on events. We've dropped events from 15 a week to just 9, on 6 days, having no event on Tuesday, and doing two events on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, each.
Now along with all these surface changes, I have also had weekly training meetings for staff to get the staff knowledge base up, and our customer service skills improved to the point our total headcount for the months of October, November and December 2015 beat all previous same months for this location. And, we did this with a $200 a month advertising budget, which was nearly entirely spent on social media outreach.
Customers have responded to all of this with enthusiasm for better events, a more friendly gaming environment (all the prize pigs left when they couldn't beat noobs and win boxes), and a better stocked and staffed store.
And, for the first time at this location, I have had several customers return saying they had stopped visiting this store due to one issue or another, but had seen on our social media outreach that we had been working to address their issues. Frankly about 50% of those issues were with an unfriendly gaming environment, ruined by power gamers trying to flex their mad skills in a very small pond.
Others mentioned former employee interactions that had turned them off, but were excited to come back when they learned our staff had changed, and we had a new focus at the store.
All in all, I'd say that 2016 looks like a record setting year for us, and maybe next week I will make some predictions for game lines, comic companies and distributors I think will do well, and maybe those I think won't.
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The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
