The Match Slip

In this episode, we're talking with Ben, co-owner of Player 1 Services in Kensington, Maryland.

Ben is a big-time Pokémon collector. In fact, according to Guinness World Records, he has the largest Pokémon card collection at 50,000 cards which he expects to exceed by the end of 2024.

A unique aspect of Ben and co-owner Rose's store is they specialize in Pokémon. They take special orders for products like Lorcana, Magic: The Gathering, and One Piece, however, their retail space is all Pokémon.

The demand to play Pokémon at the store is high. Events will max out at 50 players resulting in Ben's desire for more gaming space. He would love to have sanctioned events that could support hundreds of people, but finding the same to do so is no easy task. He'd like to purchase the space from three businesses that occupy the same building. While Ben is hopeful, only time will tell if those businesses move locations.

Ben and Rose employ a very knowledgeable staff. They all know how to play multiple Pokémon formats. The staff holds events every Wednesday teaching kids and adults how to play the game. Rose spearheads these teaching events through the "Pokémon Club".

With 2 million Pokémon cards in store, Ben wants to make it easy for his customers to acquire the cards they desire.

In this episode, we're talking with Luke, owner of Level Up Games in Glen Burnie, Maryland.

Luke started his journey into gaming at the age of 6. The first game he ever played was Pokémon. However, he took a hiatus from card games until he was 16. As time progressed, Luke realized he enjoyed buying and selling cards more than playing the game; which he didn't feel he was very good at.

Before launching the store in 2021, Luke had worked vending for a company on the Magic: The Gathering Grand Prix circuit. During this time, he never envisioned opening a brick-and-mortar store. He was hesitant about varying factors doing so compared to selling online. However, he was aware of the larger inventory that could be had with a physical location.

Luke is down on sealed products due to the low margins, but he says that Level Up Games sports the deepest and broadest collection of single cards. He maintains a philosophy of always buying more cards whether from locals or when attending conventions. Luke is always buying due to the number of enfranchised players in the Glen Burnie area. He says those players don't necessarily purchase sealed products as much as they buy singles.

Luke states that a benefit of his store location is brand loyalty. The physical location he's in previously was the location of a store called, MTG First. This store was very well-known to those in the area. The location has existed for about 10 years, he says.

Luke operates under the business philosophy of being comfortable with risk and moving on when something doesn't work out. One venture he wants to explore is attending conventions that aren't Magic: The Gathering focused. For example, he's looking at conventions geared towards sports cards and collectibles.

In this episode, we're talking with Cody Romano, owner of Everything Games in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. Cody opened the store with his dad over 12 years ago. Since that time, the store has seen accelerated success. While they started the store online, Cody soon realized that having a brick-and-mortar presence would be key to acquiring products.

The store has always remained in the same strip mall but has moved to larger spaces. For example, the store started with a little over 800 sq. ft. Within two years they've moved into a space with about 2,400 sq. ft. Finally, 8 years later, they have a little over 5,000 sq. ft. Cody says they need to expand again but may prefer a second location as the current location has been very profitable.

Many stores rely heavily on selling singles. However, Everything Games sells a lot of sealed products. Cody attributes this to the very causal environment cultivated at his store with Commander events seeing 30-40 people in attendance every Wednesday. Commander events are also held on Friday, however, Cody says that One Piece is the most popular game at his store.

Cody handles product ordering, chasing contracts, and putting his employees in the best position to succeed as part of his day-to-day responsibilities. With 10 employees on board, each is cross-trained on running events, however, employees are also given roles within departments like in a traditional corporate structure.

The store is broad in its product offerings keeping on brand with the store's name. During COVID, Everything Games branched out into video games, for example. Moreover, Beyblade and Barbies have been a very successful addition to the store. Toys have been successful in providing options for families and happy kids.

60% of sales are in-store, Cody says. Accessories provide the largest profit margin. Overall, sales have increased 10-fold, according to Cody, since the move to the space with a little over 5,000 sq. ft.

One of Cody's 10-15-year future goals is to buy a hotel that has an Everything Games inside to host events.

In this episode, we're talking with Lauren Bilano, owner of Twenty Sided Store. The store is located in Brooklyn, New York; Williamsburg in particular. The store has been open for 13+ years and is currently in its second location - one block from its previous location.

Lauren, who has a background in photography, is a storyteller by trade. Initially, she wasn't expected to be heavily involved in the store. However, once it was realized that running events were requested in high demand, Lauren became heavily involved. Her primary responsibilities include marketing, managing the store's website, and operations. Her business partner, Luis, is the store's buyer of products for the store.

Lauren's family has a background in the restaurant and cafe business. Those experiences have taught her the importance of starting small and simple when starting a business. She feels her "superhero power" requires incorporating many SKUs within a small space: 1,200 - 1,500 sq. ft.

Overall, Lauren does a lot for the store. She is always looking to create new experiences in the store, in addition to supporting independent and local creators. In conjunction with Mystic Aether, a world created by Lauren, she has developed 9 RPGs and hosts a radio show every other Thursday on Newtown Radio.

In this episode, we're talking with Travis, owner of Kingslayer Games. The store spans three locations in California: Fountain Valley, Oceanside, and Lake Forest.

Travis started his foray into retail in 2015. Having gone to school for business, a storefront was a "front", as Travis calls it, to enable more product purchases from distributors. Initial plans were for the store to be a comic book store. However, after one week, customers asked to play Magic: The Gathering. Three weeks later, Travis was hosting his first Magic: The Gathering Pre-Release event.

With three stores to oversee, Travis employs 19 employees: an Operations Manager, three Store Managers, a Warehouse Manager, and an Organized Play Manager. Regarding hiring, Travis' two requirements are kindness and obsessiveness. The latter refers to an obsession with a particular game, he says. Moreover, he's also able to provide health benefits to his employees.

Travis' day-to-day duties involve managing cash flow for each store, creating content to help scale the business, and staying on top of his calendar, email, and to-do lists. He says the latter is one of the things he's always looking to improve upon.

With three stores, Travis doesn't always get the opportunity to meet his customers. That said, he streams events twice weekly on Twitch to engage with his customers. Moreover, he'll also make it a point to play in events with his customers. The engagement with his customers allows him to receive instant feedback.

To deliver the products his customers want, he leverages the onboarding process of Discord by allowing customers to select their favorite games upon joining. The customer segmentation by "roles" is based on the games they've chosen. Travis can use these "roles" and market products only to customers who seek out a game they've said they are interested in.

In this episode, we talk with Final Boss Games store owner Remington in Springdale, Arkansas. Remington and his two business partners, Bennett and Trevor, started the store in February 2024. As a collective, launching the store has been a long time coming. While they always talked about opening a store, during COVID they put the building blocks in place to make it a reality.

The store focuses on the competitive side of gaming. This ethos stems from Remington's engagement with Magic: The Gathering qualifier tournaments before becoming a store owner. The three owners employ two hourly associates which has lessened the immense number of hours the owners were putting in. When Remington decided his competitive playing days were concluding, he knew he wanted his store to serve that same joy and competitive dream for others.

Bennett and Remington service the Magic: The Gathering side of the store while Trevor handles everything Pokémon. However, Remington's main role is managing large-scale tournaments - the defacto tournament organizer at the store. With 4,500 sq. ft of space and 4,000 sq. ft dedicated to play space, Remington believes in providing as much space as possible to the community to grow and expand amongst the games offered.

To facilitate community engagement, 100% of the tournament entry fee goes directly to prize support. He notes that the store doesn't make money off events, but it's a way to get customers in the door. The store can support up to 120 players in total. For the owners, when finding a store location this was a must. To support this number of players, they checked out 10+ locations in person and even more online before settling on Springdale.

Remington notes that certification to hold events across multiple games is a tedious process. However, he's now looking to be approved by Wizards of the Coast as a WPN Premium Store.

In today's episode, we're talking with Charla, owner of Gamers Haunt in Asheville, North Carolina.

Charla purchased the store from her friend in 2019 and has been running the business for 5+ years. The store specializes in Magic: The Gathering and a little Dungeons and Dragons; one of Charla's favorite games.

Charla notes that the community has brought her joy since taking over the store. Her store specializes in casual play while the Modern format is reserved for competitive play. While her store receives solid turnout for Standard and Commander, she doesn't recommend those new to Magic to start with Commander. With the number of cards a player has to memorize in Commander, Charla feels it's a better option to introduce Standard to new players due to being a 60-card format with duplicate cards included in a deck.

Due to having a small staff with one part-time and one full-time employee, Charla can offer free Friday Night Magic events. While she has recently introduced a "pay what you can" concept, she can afford to do this because of her large selection of singles. Singles are where she makes the bulk of her revenue. Additionally, she doesn't sell singles online as she prefers to reserve those cards for her local players. She's noticed that if it's easy to get players in the door, they'll be more likely to purchase singles.

With a willingness to try new things at her store, Charla will create events like "Standard Skirmishes". 6-8 week-long events with prize support. Again, she offers the ability for free entry or "pay what you can". She even offers $5 rental decks for players who want to try the format before committing.

Furthermore, the store hosts summer camps for different experience levels, and after attending GAMA for the first time, she wants to carry more independent games. Moreover, she'll be participating in Free RPG Day for the first time.

Looking to the future, she hopes to have a place with more space and the option to rent out Dungeons and Dragons miniatures, and she's in the planning stages of a weekend convention for Magic. Moreover, she would like to work with other stores in the area to create a "scavenger hunt" gaming concept so that the stores can support one another.

In this episode, we're talking with Gil, owner of Brother's Grim Games at the Long Island Tabletop Gaming Expo.

Gil's store is located on Long Island in Selden, NY. In 2007, he bought the store, originally named Monkey Head. As a store owner, one of his biggest challenges is knowing how much product to buy. This incorporates recognizing when a product has plateaued and is about to decline. There are no restocks after the initial order when purchasing a product from a distributor.

While competing with Amazon is challenging, Gil says customer loyalty is the best way to overcome that. That loyalty has resulted in a few thousand regular customers. Moreover, new games entering the market bring in new players. Nowadays, he's seeing customers bring friends, families, and parents. Furthermore, sets like Universes Beyond from Magic: The Gathering also have brought new players in.

Gil always strives to make his store nicer. Over the years, he's expanded units to increase the square footage. He's also open seven days a week with four employees. In the early days, Gil would work 100 hours per week but is now down to 30 hours a week. His focus is the store's financials, purchasing, and insurance.

To continue getting word out about the store, Gil attends conventions. He used to travel outside New York attending conventions in about 20 states. The networking opportunities with those in the industry were valuable to him. He still attends local conventions.

In this episode, we're talking with Alan Reid, owner of Meta-Games Unlimited. In addition to running the game store, Alan also has a full-time job. His desire to open a game store stems from his previous background in competitive Magic. While being a competitive player from 1994-1996 had its enjoyment, as time went on he wished to be near family and friends. This would lead to the beginning of his store in 1997.

While the store has been around for 27 years and counting, Alan credits his friends with whom he had played competitively for helping make the store what it is today. He initially started with a 750 sq. ft. store and would later expand to 3,200 sq. ft. However, today, the store is 10,000 sq. ft. culminating as its fourth location since its opening. Moreover, Alan notes this could be considered the store's fifth location when the expansions are factored in.

With 9 employees total, some of whom have been with Alan for over 20 years, Alan stresses the importance and appreciation for his staff whom he relies on for helping build the store's foundation.

With an open free-to-play space, pinball tournaments, Games Workshop events, RPG events, and Magic: The Gathering events, Alan's store boasts many opportunities to accommodate his customers and hold multiple events per day.

These days Alan mostly plays board games while focusing on relationship-building with vendors, stocking up on products, and providing his customers a great place to play.

Editor’s Note: The store owner, Jon, has told us The Enchanted Deck is no longer running. However, he says he would like to have it up and running again at some point in the future. We’ll be sure to let you know if we receive any updates.

In this episode, we’re talking with Jon, owner ofThe Enchanted Deck - an online-only store. However, he does hope to have a brick-and-mortar store in the future; potentially within the next couple of years.

In July of 2023, Jon would stream on Twitch with a “rip and ship” concept selling packs of cards Pokemon cards. However, in January of 2024, The Enchanted Deck was born as an online store, but now he was selling various TCGs. Having worked as a salesman for Best Buy for 10 years, Jon feels he has the experience required to acquire customers and learn what they want.

While Jon doesn’t face the overhead a brick-and-mortar store would, he does face the difficulty of acquiring products from distributors. Because he’s an online-only store, Jon says that acquiring said products is limited. Initially, he was only able to buy Pokemon products. While distributors have asked when he will open a store, Jon said they he wants to do it the right way when it becomes a reality. One of those things he wants is to make sure his store would be WPN-ready from the get-go.

Being a new dad and having a full-time job, in addition to running The Enchanted Deck makes it difficult to consider opening a brick-and-mortar store at the current time. However, Jon does participate in conventions that he can afford to go to, to get the name out there regarding his business. He’s also noticed that online “buy, sell, and trade” Facebook groups have been a great way to attract new customers and build relationships. 

Additionally, Jon utilizes online ads to grow the business and is constantly updating his website to make it as easy to use as possible for his customers.