You will have less time to play games than you did before you ran a games shop
Most games shop owners are gamers at heart, but running a modern hobby games store is much harder than most people imagine. Rather than just selling things, we spend a lot of time developing and supporting lots of small gaming communities within the larger one. There are so many games available now, and trying to support everyone means that you always have more to do than you have time to do it.
Organised Play events are as important to the business as selling games
Of the 11,500 square feet that makes up the store, we use approximately two-thirds for event space. We run organised games and tournaments every single day, seven days a week. Knowing retail is not enough; you have to learn event planning, scheduling and how to put on consistently good events of really varied sizes. There might be three groups of eight people for a bunch of board game events, 160 for Dungeons and Dragons on a Tuesday evening or even multi-day events of 150+ attendees from all over the world. There’s always lots to learn and a lot of people to keep happy!
Customer experience is customer service
For many years, games stores have been offering experiences rather than just products and, even though the rest of retail has now cottoned on to this, the key thing you learn is that every customer should be happy with the experience they have with you. It doesn’t matter if it is an event, a purchase, a return for refund or a brand new inquiry, these are all equally important to the customer and so they are all equally important to you. It’s never about upselling or convincing people that they need something, it is about their experience when they deal with you.
How many people will fit comfortably into a room playing games just by eye
This is a skill you pick up by osmosis; you definitely don’t try to gain it on purpose. But, after some mental recalibration post Covid (no one wants to be crammed into too small a space after the pandemic), it is possible to know, with a small margin for error, how many people you can put into a space with tables and chairs. You do also find that you walk into any new space and immediately think things like, oh, I could get a 100-player tournament in here.
You never have enough space.
This is true for the homes of gamers and is definitely true for games stores. In the last 30 years, we have gone from market stall to nearly 12,000 square feet of store and still we continually fill the space and wish we had just a little more of it. I don’t think it is a greed thing; it’s a wish to get more people to join in, or to carry a few more lines to cater to another part of the community.
Jim has run Patriot Games for nearly three decades and continues to love his job. He has a dedicated and knowledgeable team around him that share his passion: striving to give the gamers of Sheffield a community and a place to be themselves and enjoy playing together.
