View from the Counter

So that didn’t work then did it….

Over the last five years, my brother and I tried to grow Playtime into a profitable business by opening a new store every 6-12 months.

Why do that? I hear you ask – well, it was a defense mechanism as much as anything else, the bigger you are the more we could benefit from economies of scale – marketing with publishers, buying professional labels, carrier bags etc, professional branding and merchandising in-store – the list goes on. Five years ago, we also saw the bigger indies doing well – Software Store and Eplay were winning awards and seemed to be going from strength to strength.

So why didn’t it work? Well, we were going well until last summer, then some American banker invented the words “Sub-Prime” and “Credit Crunch” and by the time we came out the other side of Christmas, we just weren’t selling as many games as we needed too. That it meant we had to shut the business should come as no surprise really – we are in a recession after all.

It is ironic that of the 10 stores we had when we shut, nearly all would still be profitable – if they were run by an owner operator – like most other “indies” are.

We found that we could run a couple of stores fine on our own, but when you get more than 3 or 4, you need to employ managers to do it for you – and good managers cost money, and they need area managers to help them, and purchasing managers to buy stock for them, and marketing managers to support them, and personnel managers to advise them – and the list goes on.

When you have the costs of a head office to cover, you need a lot more than 10 stores to make it work. This is the crux – in retail you either do it all yourself as indies across the country still do – or you need to have national coverage, to cover the costs of running a full head office. From our experience, there really is no in-between.

Playtime Barnsley – more piccies

I have added some more piccies of the opening to my gallery

Playtime Barnsley now open

We have officially launched the new store in Barnsley and I have posted a few piccies of the characters who came to help us tell the good folk of Barnsley….

Watch out - he breathes fire....

Playtime Barnsley shop fit

The shop fit is well underway and as promised I have uploaded some piccies here of the work being done:

A full set for those really interested is here

Playtime Video Games is coming to Barnsley

We got the keys to our next shop in Barnsley last week so the shopfitters have been busy stripping it out and getting it ready. The address is 8-10 Market Street, Barnsley S70 1SH and we hope to be open in a couple of weeks time. It used to be a health food shop with treatment rooms on the first floor – not sure what that means but apparently it wasn’t very popular and they went bust. I never like to hear of people going bust but I can’t really see the people of Barnsley going for that sort of thing!!!!

Hopefully they will go for Playtime’s games instead. I always get excited at the prospect of a new store. The store will need new members of staff which I always enjoy. We started Playtime because we live and breath games – so if you offer someone else the opportunity to work in the games sector, its like bringing someone else into the brotherhood. If you are a gamer, what could be better than working in a game shop? We cant think of anything else really.

Barnsley will be our 10th shop and will take us to over 50 people (in the Playtime brotherhood!!! – that sounds sinister). Once the shop is a bit closer to opening I will post more updates, but in the meantime, here’s a mock up that our signwriter has done for us – I’m sure it will be better once it is done.

 

As you can see, after the Meadowhall store, this will be the second store where the sign is the same as our new URL – www.playtime.co.uk – It will be interesting to see whether people assocoiate the two with each other – ie the high street store and the online store. It will also be interesting to see if we get any of our Meadowhall customers coming into the Barnsley store – I know a lot of people who live in Barnsley go to Meadowhall to shop – it is that close.