View from the Game Store is a weekly(-ish) column by Marcus King, owner of Titan's Entertainment Cafe in Battle Creek, Michigan.  This week, Marcus explains his conversions from an organized play hater to booster.

Writing for ICv2 has been a lot of fun and I hope that someone will step forward to fill my spot here with the weekly-ish style column for game retail business.  Whether it is tips of the trade or insights for aspiring would-be shop owners, the column has gotten me a lot of responses from folks throughout the industry.  And, I have really enjoyed it.  However, I am stepping down from writing for a while to concentrate on other projects, including some home searching, writing a book, and other things--like taking my son fishing, and car hunting, and other stuff a Dad needs to do.

This last weekly-ish column is about Organized Play.  I have long been an opponent of organized play in a store.  I thought it was a waste of time and space and I felt that most retailers who had a space devoted to tables and chairs and such would be largely better served to devote that same space to other products.  And, in fact, that is still my primary position on the topic.  It is hard to sell what you don't stock.  Higher sales can come from selling the people who come into your store more stuff--or by offering more stuff, thus bringing more people into your store.

I have opined, and have also collected the data, to support the $10 rule.  Over the course of a month, we literally sell between $8.90 and $11.02 worth of merchandise to every person who walks into my store.  The average is just about $10.  Over the course of the year, when we do headcounts (we've been doing them for 3+ years now), we average about $10 per person over the course of any month, and any year.  There are days, certainly, where we average $25 per person or only $5 per person.  But at the end of the month, if we have a headcount of 3,200 people then we'll be right about $32,000 in sales.

I have done much to try to affect that average but try as I might, it averages out to about $10 per person.  So, I gave up on trying to sell more to the same people and have been trying to bring more people into the store--and so far that is working great.  Part of drawing new people is to offer stuff that new people would be interested in, thus the movies, music, hobby stuff like models and rockets and rock tumblers, and of course the comics, video games, etc.  These tactics clearly have worked for us.

But, over the past year, we have been doing more and more organized play, too.  First we had 3 tables, then 6, and then 9.  Now we have 15 tables and a dedicated 1,200 square foot space to play games in.  And the players have been coming in larger and larger groups.

Our organized play consists of doing Games Workshop events, Wizards Play Network events, and a few other things--like demo days and RPG night.  And those players who come in increase our headcount and thus our sales.  Both GW and WotC have great organized play options and if you own a store you should look into them.  It requires little work, but it pays off in big sales.  And sales are what its all about when you own your own small business.

I hope everyone has enjoyed my brief stint on the ICv2 with my weeklish columns.  I hope there are other retailers out there who will step up and contact Milton about taking over this column.  Mostly, because selfishly, I would like to read it!

Game Well,
Marcus King

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.