How to Open a Game Store

How to Open a game store
In this post, honestly, I am not sure what to write since I do not know what exactly people are wondering about. But, anyway, I would like to write about it as much as I can since I don't see any article regarding this on google. Maybe your question will help to improve this posting.

Game retail business is roughly divided into online and offline business. Either of them are disregardable. Those online and offline sales are actually compatible with each other and make the business more close to be perfect. I can talk about more as time goes on. But, I would like to focus on game retail business in actual offline store only in this posting.

Before talking about actual process, I would like to talk about some prerequisites before opening.

Personally, I've opened my shop about 2.5 years ago. And, I've been selling game on eBay for three years before opening game retail shop. The funny thing is whenever speaking with any successful gameshop owner, I can find that many have flee market experiences for years. I've never been in flee market, but ebay is similar in some sense.

Many people think fund is the most important to open a business. People may disregard this fact, but actually your experience is more vital. Some people may think they know a lot since they play games or reading magazines. Basic interest helps, but business is different matter.

Nowadays a lot of business fails. In my case, I was so called "power seller" on ebay before I opened my store. We have had a lot of difficulty managing the store, but those experiences and ebay itself have supported us very much. Good experience would be vital to every business.

In actual process, opening gameshop is not much different from other retail stores.

First thing you need is a good business plan. The simplest plan would be getting items from wholesales and selling in your store. But, there are too many people doing that already. You need a little better unique plan to attract people and make profits in different way.

In case of Gamestops, their unique model was accepting used games and give store credits for them. That was great since most of stores like Best Buy are just selling brand new items only. Gamestop model is especially great in recession period like these days.

CybKnight's original plan was being in relatively lower rent location and compensating the crowds by online sales. By staying in a little lower rent location, we can suggest lower prices on every item. Also, by selling on Half.com , we can accept a lot of items gamestop does not accept like classic games, PC Games, DVD and Guidebook, and deal items nobody else deal.

After setting up your profit model with some experience, the next thing you need is fund. Game is considered as relatively low start-up cost item. Also, it's considered as recession proof item since the market is increasing regardless of recession.

I think the original start up cost CybKnight actually spent was around $30,000 in 2006. Our 900 sf store rent was around $1,200 per month at that time and it should include security deposit of 2 months rent. Certainly, we had three months free rent in the beginnng like many other stores.

When I checked our earliest photos in our store, I can see that the store was pretty much empty compared with now. But, still we tried to have top sellers and many customers came to buy in the store. Nowadays people are familiar with Super stores with scanner, but I notice that still people like small stores they can find some used items cheaper and even negotiate.

The funny thing is when you actually open a store, you may not remember all the customers, but you will remember first few customers who bought something. Personally I have a superstition that if we lose first customers, we will lose entire business. So, I am doing extra hard job even if we lose money whenever they come back. (I can talk about this later, but you can make more money when you don't care for money.)

As time goes on, we reinvest our profits, so inventories has been bigger than ever. But, those earliest customers are still coming back and good friends of ours.

After having reasonable funding, business plan and experience, the next thing you need to do is looking for a retail location and wholesaler information.

By this point, I recommend you to be involved in eBay at reasonable level. Probably, you will open your shop in few months from this point. After opening the store, it's hard to expect good profit in the beginning, so you need some supplement incomes to support the store.

When you are looking for a good gameshop location, all you have to look for is demographics and indirect competitors. Right now, it's slow in economy, so it's great time to find a quality location in good price. Location is very important since it's better not to move out once you settle for many reasons. Important thing is a lot of poor locations are extremely over priced just because it's near big street. I can say that 90% of all locations are not worth for high rent and getting into there will guarantee you to fail in one way or another.


After these, you need to look for a quality contractor and sign maker to build your store. Gameshop doesn't cost a lot of money on interiors like restaurants. But, still, interior and equipment would be the biggest portion of your start-up cost. My recommendation is to find quality contractors although they are more expensive. Expensive ones are not necessarily good ones, so you should be careful. At this point, I can say that we were pretty lucky in choosing wholesalers, contractors and a sign maker.

After these, I can say that you are pretty much ready for opening. That doesn't mean the hard work is over. From that point, you have to try harder to improve your store everyday.

If you have any specific question, let me know.