Episode 10 - November Was a Birch - 12-27-2013

It has been quite a while since annals had been added to the story of Gamers Link Chicago, and that is because it has been a tough few months.  I began two new jobs since the last installment, both of which involve being in front of my computer screen for a lot of my night.  So, not only am I extremely busy, I am also not particularly inclined to spend much extra time staring at a blinking cursor.



To make matters worse, we had a really slow month with November.  Like, really slow.  56K modem slow.
Why was November so bad?  Well, to begin with, we over estimated how many Commander 2013 boxes we were going to get when it came to WotC allotment.  We pre-sold most of them to our good customers for a great price, and we could not fulfill those orders when the product came out.  They didn't really mind waiting for them at the price point, but it meant that we lost any possible sales from having the decks available for sale.  We have a Target right next door to us, and a few other game stores in the vicinity (we will get to that next week), so people were buying them, just not from us.

Because they were buying the decks elsewhere, we lost any possible sales for singles, sleeves, or other accessories that may have gone along with that sale.  And since the customers are not made out of money, Theros sales dropped quite a bit, which was a huge seller in October.

With the holidays looming, I think everyone got a little more spend-conscious, but really I think the biggest things that killed us in November were the new XBox One / PS4 that came out.  The adage about the customers not being made from legal tender applies even greater here, because they are dropping a bunch of cash on the system, not to mention all the games that come along with it.  It has been a really long time since we saw new systems from those companies, so people were even more excited about it.

Personally, I am a retro gamer, and I am pretty ambivalent towards spending a lot of money for amped up graphics, so being slaughtered by video games is aggravating ever more so.

November may have been bad, but December has already put us through January, and paid off some big debts that are due.  Born of the Gods is coming out in February, and I know we are going to sell it like crazy.

Thanks for your patronage!  We love you!

- Cassidy Silver