The Process of Opening a MTG Store...or any other retail Brick and Mortar ~PART 1~

Comments · 370

• CO

  @CohibaFan · 10 years ago

  I looked into opening a comics and gaming store last year after I was laid off from my full-time corporate gig. I was under no illusions about the amount of capital it would take to open a nice store but I was really surprised to find out how hard it is to make a living from owning a store. In fact, what I found out -- from talking to about a half dozen comic shop owners -- is that many successful comic shops (whether they do gaming or not) are owned by people who already have money (a trust fund, a sizable inheritance, they struck it rich in their previous career, or are backed by a rich uncle) and/or alternate income streams (income-generating real estate investments, for example) and generally do not need to worry about their store generating enough money for them to make a reasonable income. The few exceptions I found are people who opened shops 20 or more years ago and have been able to buy up tons of inventory for cheap over the years and who have developed a long-time established customer base.<br><br>But for newer stores, I think most owners are very likely just scraping by and probably making less than minimum wage (when you consider any income they are making divided by the amount of hours they work every week). That is, if they aren&apos;t already hemorrhaging money.<br><br>While I was confident I had enough money to open a store I still needed to make a reasonable income and it became clear to me that probably wasn&apos;t going to happen. Of course I&apos;m not saying this is the case for everybody. I expect there are some newer stores out there that do well enough that the owners can have a staff and still generate a reasonable livable income for themselves, but I expect that is pretty rare to find. As much as I dreamed of having my own store, the realities I discovered made it impossible for me to pursue that dream. I still hope it can happen some day, but I think I&apos;d have to move to an area of the country that isn&apos;t already served by a good store (or to an area that is underserved) and where the cost of living is pretty low, and maybe it could work.<br><br>One piece of advice I received, and I think it&apos;s a good one, is to try and buy an existing store rather than opening a new one from scratch. You might be surprised to find that some shop owners are very open to getting out of the business. The hard part is figuring out the valuation of the store. I was in talks to buy an existing comic shop but when I saw the books (the accounting kind, not the comic book kind) and saw how much money the business was losing every month, well, no deal. Plus the owner&apos;s valuation of the shop was way inflated (in my opinion), especially considering the business was losing money. Now I&apos;m back working for the man (again) and trying to figure out how to make a comics/gaming store actually work. Can&apos;t let the dream die! &nbsp;:-)

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• BN

  @BNTmodels · 5 years ago (edited)

  I had a store like that. People were free to play in my store. But then they ONLY &nbsp;came to play. They bought &nbsp;their cards from the internet. One dat I had a guy come in, walk into the play area and suddenly it became very quiet... So I peeked around the corner.... turns out that guy was taking orders from my customers... He was collecting money so he was going to buy cards in bulk from his parents bedroom, and then sell those cards at wholesale prices in my store in the game-room.<br>Two weeks later my store went bankrupt.<br>Customers then told me they were sorry my store went under, because now they no longer had a place to play.

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• JE

  @jessew5152 · 10 years ago

  Small business owner (clothing). Your videos are spot on, and your unedited presentation is great. My startup costs were on the lower end because A) I live in a small city in a rural area and B) I bought out the inventory, counters, racks etc at liquidation prices from another business that was failing. In the last 10 years, in my shopping center (4 storefronts), I have seen 6 businesses start and fail. Only one of them knew when to call it quits, the rest ruined themselves financially because they were so invested they didn&apos;t see backing out as an option.<br><br>Business is stressful, harsh and very rewarding, but I can&apos;t say I don&apos;t sit back sometimes and think &quot; I work almost 60 hours a week and my take home profit is probably less than a McDonalds manager... what am I even doing?&quot;

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• JO

  @jokuel111 · 10 years ago

  You forgot to budget air fresheners for the the smelly customers.

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• SW

  @swiftbear · 8 years ago

  Man you are spot on about the soul destroying, life sucking, &nbsp;lost the will to live, can&apos;t sleep at night cause you know you have to serve the next day feeling working for someone else. And that is what motivates people to risk the large percent failure rate in trying to start ANY business, and make little to no money cause it is better than being told what to do an being a slave to someone else. &nbsp;I am on that quest right now trying to break free but its difficult when you are so drained from the corporate grind...

  8

• FO

  @ForceOfLight · 7 years ago

  Rudy, honestly I admire you so much. You can just save this for yourself, and yet you are finding a way to tell people how to not mess up they&apos;re investments. This is pure awesomeness mate, massive respect.

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• AD

  @adzgb12 · 4 years ago (edited)

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOTFIvxIsEY&amp;t=354">5:54</a> got me crying 😂😂

  1

• NA

  @Nathaniel1415 · 3 years ago

  Your job absorbing your creativity was spot on bro. That’s what up!

• JO

  @joshfreeman7999 · 9 years ago

  Holy shit... a lan line. You the real deal Big R.

• NE

  @NextLevelAutoDetail · 5 years ago

  Don’t like magic, don’t plan on opening a card store. Watched till the end. Your an intelligent guy Rudy.

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• FR

  @Fragmonkei · 7 years ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOTFIvxIsEY&amp;t=10">0:10</a><br>&quot;So, I wanna talk about opening a game store.&quot;<br><br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOTFIvxIsEY&amp;t=652">10:52</a><br>&quot;..Philosophy of life, meaning, and purpose; ya know, I&apos;ve thought about that stuff.&quot;

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• WE

  @weeman2470 · 10 years ago

  I&apos;ve been looking into opening a store and this kind of reaffirms what I was thinking. 15k to open, 20k for stocking product, and 10k-15k in a business account to cover the first 3 -6 months of overhead assuming you only operate at a 30-50% return on your monthly overhead.

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