Daily Revenue: The Transparent Bloggening

It's been awhile. I started this blog with an err towards transparency in game store ownership, namely because "How to run a game store" isn't a book that's readily available like "How to run a business." As most of you know, the store has had trouble maintaining these past few months. I'm close to securing investors to afix the future of the store's sustainability, but beyond "How are things?" most of you probably don't know what a month looks like or what a good month is within the world of AQ. I think the overall point of this post will be to clarify the facts: what the store makes versus how the store operates.

For reference, I'm going to focus on two 30 day periods that are incredibly different and give you an idea as to what's going on in terms of daily activity. The first month starts 2 days before the Battle for Zendikar Prerelease.

I ordered 54 Prerelease packs and spent about $700-$1000 just for Magic product for the weekend, with another $500~ for board games and such expecting a busier than average time of people being in the store. The 3rd big green bar on that graph is the day of Prerelease, where I basically made back the entirety of the order plus a little extra as people were preordering product that was to release the next week. After the weekend, I ordered in my booster boxes and spent another $2400 just on product for release day. Mind you about a quarter of my product was already preordered from the past month. The day of release is the other big mustard yellow bar, which as you can see about made what I ordered's money back before the end of the weekend.

What to take away from all of that? I basically broke even every week, ordering product and selling it immediately. The only way I was even able to order in the release day product is because I have 30 days to pay the prerelease off. And you can see the middling back and forth bar graphs of day to day sales never exceeding $600 for the rest of the month. But enough days in a row and hey, bills got paid more or less.

Something I'll be pointing to more directly in the next month analysis is all those days where it looks like <$100 was made. What's going on there?

Here's November as my next best example of a "Non-Magic Month." Off the bat you can see where the "Magic-effect" exists. I made $4,000 less simply because there wasn't a  release. Every week I order around $400-$600 in restock, new product and such. Unless there's new Infinity/X-Wing releases, the orders are relatively small. The benefit of this month was three-fold: The first spike in the graph was actually a minor release of the Magic: Commander decks. The second spike was literally just someone getting into Infinity with a few friends and a pile of Magic singles. The last cascading spike was Black Friday weekend.

I ordered around $1700 in non Magic product this month. Probably $800 in Magic. Rent is $1600. Utilities around $300. Taxes of an $8,000 month are about $1000. That's about $5400 in bills on a month that made $8000. Where'd the other $2600~ go? Typically it goes to the previous month's bills, to pay off an invoice before it is due instead of waiting till the last minute. Or because of how sporadic sales are, I immediately pay rent the second there's enough money to do so, which takes' a considerable amount off the top. And because some of the monthly income is from Magic online, those payments don't post into the account for 2 weeks, so they appear under this month but aren't there until the next.

The point I think I'm getting at here is that it's week-to-week when it comes to staying open this past year. You can see 6 days in November where next-to-zero dollars were made. 4-5 days in the Zendikar month above that. Some of those days I was closed, but not all. Sometimes the door's open and I just flat out don't see anyone all day. And 80% of the days in the month are sub-$200 totals. The average purchase in store is about $25, which means at minimum of 8 people came in to make that day close to average. Naturally not everyone that comes in buys something, but there's enough preorders coming in and regulars that continue to choose AQ that 95% of the people I see are people I know by name.

For a more broad reference, the above is a category breakdown since June. Far right is Magic sealed product, followed closely by Board Games, followed sharply by Magic singles. The 4th bar from the right is in-store items like drinks and line-items, which are mostly preorders and Infinity. That little red bar near the middle is RPGs. The things I order are obvious from that graph. But what isn't as obvious is when those sales occur. If you refer to the other charts, you'll see most Tuesdays (Board Game Night at AQ) make almost nothing related to board gaming. Nor does D&D night typically make anything because new D&D books come out on Fridays. So if you were me and attempted to work 7 days a week since July you'd probably decide that the slowest days are the days you'll be closed and that is the main reason I've been closed the past few months at least 1-2 Tuesdays/Wednesdays a month. Circumstances being what they are: It's more effective to not open and give people a place to play for free than it is to sell the same amount of games on the weekend when it's busier.

I'm just following my own line of thought here, but if I met more people I didn't know, or had the stock levels to appease every new person who comes in looking for "X" game, then my average daily sales would increase; in theory. And that's why I'm finding investors: More product diversity so that I'm not just ordering one week to appeal to the next. Because in all these day-to-day uncertainties of sales, I err on the side of "I need to get in X-amount of preorders for soandso with X-amount of best selling games if next week is to average X-amount of money." I can't err on ordering too much, just enough to know that 30 days from now I'll be able to handle paying for the order that I got in to sell. Turn around on product in ridiculously difficult to track in game stores unless you know the game is great, which is why Magic with the most volume and most consistent releases, tends to save game store's from losing their minds trying to keep up with what to order. "How much Zendikar do I order? As much as I can afford. When will it sell? Within the first 3 days of release, to its' entirety." You can't make that assumption with Munchkin or Settlers of Catan; they're different beasts.

Hopefully this whole thing doesn't feel whiny or ranty, but I legitimately appreciate folks that have gone the extra mile to order things from me when I don't have them in stock. You understand I lack stock levels and now you should ideally know a bit more about why, but at the end of the day you accept that I am trustworthy enough to get it in for you quickly so that you can return and continue to use the space for your gaming needs. The silent agreement between a game store and it's gamer clientele survives only on that trust: We both know you can get it cheaper, but you willingly pay for my overhead and I try to deliver you the best service I can to justify that cost. Hopefully with more cooks coming into the kitchen I will be able to find that extra money in the months to come and reward your trust with a better store than either of us could ever imagine.