Back to One

Happy Halloween everyone!  The end of October also marked the end of my Tempe location, so for the time being, the new store at 3875 West Ray Road in Chandler is the one and only Desert Sky Games.  Our game room is open, it's gigantic, and its capacity is continuing to increase as we bring in equipment and assets from Tempe and deploy out our rack and fixture.

The effort to build a regional empire that I described last year around this time, and then revised, and then revised again, has finally coalesced into the establishment of One Big Hub Store, which was really a prerequisite to the model I wanted moving forward.  Spokes/branches don't work unless a hub serves them, there are underlying logistics that are mostly transparent to the end user but we did not have them in place and could not have them in place for as long as the Tempe location was configured like a hub, but was not situated adequately to do business as a hub.  Now that the far larger Chandler store is unambiguously the one and only company HQ, branch locations may follow for the low price of buildout and equipment.  Look for our first in the spring, unless we decide to hold off a bit longer and lay in reserves.

Note that the business name no longer includes "and Comics."  Comics are still happening here, though.  I've been asked a couple of times whether that meant we had shed the category.  While I think that's coming at some point, it's not happening yet.  "Desert Sky Games and Comics" was just a really cumbersome and inelegant brand representation, and I saw plenty of industry stores doing dependable business in comics without bolting on the word, such as Millennium Games, Madness Games, Nerdvana, et al.  "DSG" needed to stay lean and mean in the market mindspace.

They say you never have a second chance to make a first impression.  In case anyone reading thought that was only a canard, let me tell you, it's proving more and more real every day.  From day one, DSG Chandler's shelf presence was strongest in TCGs, board games, and miniatures.  We have the video games out but not really set up like we want.  RPGs, comics, and other subcategories are only partly set.  Lo and behold, sales of TCGs, board games, and miniatures far and away lead the pack.

I don't think there is a tremendous market difference between Gilbert and Chandler.  What I think is that Gilbert spent 2012 and 2013 sucking at board games, so the customer public knew to disregard us to some extent.  We ramped it up in 2014 and 2015, but in addition to fighting against our own prior poor impression, the board game market itself went into some upheaval during that time, which I've chronicled extensively on this weblog.  In 2016 I was ready to be out of the category, despite being a board game player myself.  I had a category I loved that didn't love me back.

But as of 2017 we saw some of that work begin to bear fruit.  We started to focus on finding key titles and getting in deep in advance, sticking with protected brands, keeping mainstream-accessible low-price titles available, and like such.  In May and June, we ran a moving sale culling everything that wasn't the latest and greatest; we knew the rebuild would bring back anything that was still relevant.  And then with the move to Chandler, we had a chance to fix that brand impression.  The result has been a board game category that consistently finishes in the top 5 every day, rather than almost never doing so.

It isn't the answer to all things, not by a long shot.  Any category whose buyers were truly as fickle as that would not be worth catering to.  What I hoped to do, and appear to have done, was to be positioned as a legitimate source that people will check first, or almost first.  As long as some number of them do so sometimes, that should suffice to drive core sales in the category and present a dependable day-to-day revenue figure.  My responsibility then shifts to ensuring that the back-end economics are not wasteful or broken.

One category at a time, we need to get the stock deployed cogently, the organized play (where applicable) scheduled and running effectively, and then the marketing underway.  The brand impression has to bring people in knowing they will find things that surprise and delight them.  And when that is happening every day, we will know the time has come to resume the branch expansions.

Mostly There

We were able to get the front area of the store and one restroom up to code on time to open them to the public, so there's a delightfully spooky passageway between the two zones and it's nicely in keeping with the Halloween season.  Meanwhile, the HVAC is finally fully online throughout the building, and we're down to needing overhead lights, ceiling tiles, and some miscellaneous hardware installation in the closed space, and then it can join the open space.

Construction isn't finished yet.  That's the way of things in commercial property.  It's done when it's done, and not until then.  I've made a habit of magnifying the delay, expense, and logistical difficulty that any construction is going to cause my business, and yet I still manage to undershoot the mark.  It's that bad even when it's better than par for the course.  Stores aren't wrong to seize opportunities to move into "finished" space even when that space is not optimal for the deployment.  The difference extends to more than cost savings, but also time savings.  You get to operate right away in full, with cash flow.

We prepared in advance for the cash flow irregularities we knew would accompany the move, and we did some borrowing in the end, and mostly we've weathered the storm fairly well.  It helped that our TCGPlayer Direct business basically never stopped.  We ran uninterrupted singles sales throughout the move and it wasn't storefront volume but it was a damned sight more than zero.  The Tempe location also stayed open and business as usual.  A store move where you're simply dead in the water for any length of time?  You shut your mouth, nobody needs to hear such horror stories.

The best part is that, when everything is finally open and the transition is long since paid for and our clientele has all found us again (and a huge portion of our clientele made the transition without a hitch), we will get literally years of enjoying the cost savings of a below-market lease rate and enough room to continue to grow operations without climbing up the walls.  It will be a little while before we're freerolling, but if we can reach the lease renewal point and continue in place, the sky is the limit.

I'm afraid that's about as much bloggery as I have ready right now, as the store punchlist is a mile long at this point even without the back-end space open.  So much to do.  We're going to Grand Open in November so it's early bird time right now, and I want this place looking awesome for the big unveiling.  Right now, it does not look awesome.

The Price of Open Doors

We made the move.  DSG Gilbert is entirely empty, and DSG Chandler stands in neonatal form, much of its merchandise and racking still not properly deployed on account of the game room still awaiting completion of construction.  As such, we had to do a Phase 1 deployment, to be followed by Phase 2 (completion of everything but the back room), and finally Phase 3 (all done).  As you might imagine, this is frustrating and slow and has built-in redundancy.  But we're open now.

Bottom line, DSG Chandler opened its doors to the public on September 29, 2017.  And there is a world of difference between being open and not being open, in terms of brand strength and optics and logistics, but especially sales.  People are buying things, sales are high for an opening frame, but less than what we'd have seen in place at Gilbert with our established draw.  I'm glad to see as much traffic as we are getting, with another few days still yet to wait for the sign company to move our marquee so people can even see us.

The worst part so far is the loss of sales from where we are not caught up.  Where the item someone wants is packed away in one of the many boxes scattered about the store and attempting to guess its location is laughable, and we have to tell the visitor their money's no good here.

Moving a card-focused shop is easy.  There's not a lot of live inventory on the floor, so if you can get to your singles and packs, you can basically operate.  TCGPlayer orders proceeded uninterrupted all week, so we had that moved and operational very rapidly.  Boxes of cards.  Take down off racks, move, put back up on racks, back in business.  Friday Night Magic drew three pods of drafters and a nice healthy raft of Magic sales.

The same is not true of other product categories, where if it's not merchandised properly on the floor, it's tough to sell anything.  Our regulars have been patient while we dug in boxes for a requested product here and there.  But even today my heart aches at each visitor who walks in, looks around at the almost nothing on the racks, and walks out, because I know we not only missed any sale, but also made a terrible brand impression.  We had a short window to move and that's a consequence I accept.

I should come in late, or early, and do some more setup.  But at my age, I no longer have the physical stamina to keep up with it.  I've moved homes something like ten times.  Moving a store is orders of magnitude worse than moving a home.  There are a lot more items that will only fit into a moving truck, and a lot more heavy or unwieldy items that were designed to be installed securely, safe from public damage, and largely not moved or adjusted in day-to-day use.  I had a staff and payroll and no sales coming in to support them, and insurance and tax issues precluded our use of volunteers, so largely it fell upon our own team to lug all the contents of the Gilbert store into a truck and back out again at Chandler, all by main strength.

By the second day, my back and legs were shot, my hands were cracking (despite gloves), my neck was sore, and each night I was collapsing into bed like a corpse.  I have kids, so of course I had to drive them to school at oh-dark-thirty every day before starting up the entire process again.  I can't remember a week in years when I more fervently needed a mulligan.  None was available.

Two days with the moving truck was barely enough.  Two large loads, each taking the better part of a day to deal with, followed by a day of sending small vehicles full of the remains back and forth ad nauseam while I coordinated with contractors and hurried to prep for what they needed.  Finally a walkthrough, which I only had to postpone once, and then passed.  Thus endeth the glory of Gilbert.  And assembly of the Chandler store ramped up with a vengeance.

Friday, we got our all-clear to open very late in the process but had people in immediately at that point.  There's a spooky and fun lamp-lit pathway through the darkness to the restroom in the back (the one that's up to code; the other needs tile work) and enough seating up front for maybe 32 players at most.  Griffin and Jake built us a batch of grid gondolas and we're starting to populate them, but on Friday it was a race against the clock to be ready for FNM.

Around mid-day Saturday, I hit the wall.  I just collapsed to my desk and could barely move.  I had to stay at the store, though, because our crew was already stretched to the limit in coverage and I was the only person who could run assorted spot logistics.  Moreover, we had to rebuild the store opening and closing procedure to account for the new facility.

It might have been nice to throw a pile of money at the move and just let the concierges do it.  But that wasn't in the cards.  Our budget only went so far.  Wounds heal, sleep renews, and we made it through the weekend.  After Sunday I was a little better rested, after Monday better still.  Even in my elderly decrepitude, recovery abounded.  Plenty of deliverables to muddle through in the weeks ahead, but they seem so much more achievable now with clear heads and strong hearts.

We are open.