I’ve been thinking a lot lately about opportunity cost. My opportunity cost to have this business open is about $8K in fixed costs, and about $10K in labor. Per month. That is all before cost of goods. But there is another way to think of opportunity costs, and that is ‘”what is the cost of me working on a product line that I am trying to make profitable, like say Yu-Gi-Oh!, as opposed to promoting and refining our process to do with products that are already profitable.

If I limit my scope to CCGs in this matter I can look at the 5 titles we do the best with:

Magic: The Gathering
I have small events for this game, but big sales. We neither cater to, nor is my staff suited to cater to, the super-competitive crowd. We have nice casual games (FNM and other events). And our sales are sufficient to be in the 20% of gross overall for my “games” category of the store, which is about one third of the store overall. So, Magic itself is 6-7% of my stores sales. A nice chunk, a healthy chunk. We could put more effort into Magic, but we feel good about what we do. We stock about $3500 in cost of this product, and turn it about 1.25 to 1.4 times a month. About 16-17 turns a year.

Pokemon
We have small events infrequently for this, and have hosted pre-releases and city championships (outside personnel very adept at doing this come in and run events for sanctioned tournaments). We make money at Pokemon very well. We stock about $1500 in merchandise at any time, and turn it about 1.5 times a month, or 18 turns a year. Clearly we could do more with Pokemon, and I have a judge on staff.

Force of Will
Very popular locally. For this product we do no events at all. We have booster boxes, packs, decks, singles and bulk lots. We turn our $1000 of inventory about 60% a month, so maybe 8 turns a year. It is completely painless and sustaining at the moment. We do pay real money for expensive singles, and sell them online.

Weiss Schwarz
We carry it carelessly – ordering two to five boxes per week, selling them both in packs and boxes. No singles, no bulk lots. This is very easy money since we just put the product out and replace it as it sells.

Yu-Gi-Oh!
We don't have the specialized knowledge to carry Yu-Gi-Oh! correctly. And, frankly it seems as if there is no “right” way to do this. Konami is difficult to deal with and although I run a 5000 square foot store that is in a very nice location, and have carried their product personally for more than a dozen years – we cannot seem to get sanctioned by Konami. The product itself is also problematic.  Until recently we just ordered 6 boxes of each booster release. This usually meant we had about 30 days stock on that product – and then we would reorder as needed. Starting about a year ago this was not sufficient – because all distributors were sold out of all product within 30 days if the product was good. And if the product was bad, I would not be able to sell the six booster boxes at all, like – maybe half a box in boosters, and the others would not move until I sold them below cost. The customers were also an issue as they seemed to be the most argumentative, with staff and with one another. And although I have several great Yu-Gi-Oh! customers locally, any time we did an event that got traveling tournament players, it seemed we had theft problems too.

The amount of work I would have to dedicate to making Yu-Gi-Oh! “worth messing with” has always been a hurdle in my mind. So… I didn't. And, since Konami just banned my store from having access to product through wholesale distribution, without ever contacting me directly,I'd say it was the right decision.

For those who think “What did you do to get banned, Marcus?”

My answer: not a darn thing. We do not run cash events, I do not break street dates, and in fact I have ran my store by the Konami rules for four solid years while petitioning to be granted access to pre-release events. And the result: Konami tells every distributor we order from that they are no longer to sell us product.  And, if it can happen to me, it can happen to you…

Anyway, back to my opportunity cost. As the owner, I can only do so much, only work so many hours a week. The same goes for YOU, if you own a game store, hobby store or, even if you don't – you can only work X hours. Now, X is the variable, but it is also a constant in that you cannot increase X without decreasing Y or Z or something else (X can be work, Y can be leisure time, Z can be sleeping). With 168 hours in a week, you can only increase X if you decrease Y or Z.

As a business owner, I am cognizant of the time I spend working – and what I do with that time. And as such, I ask you this:  How smart is it for me to spend time building an Organized Play Experience for customers who will go elsewhere as soon as the cost is cheaper? And, how wise is it to build that OPE in the face of publishers who can just decide, arbitrarily, to cut off access to the product?

In my estimation – I will do the required activities to have access to the products I can sell – be they Magic, Pokemon, FFG board games or whatever. But I am ever mindful that every minute I put into organized play is a minute I do not work on another product line or sales stream.

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