Want to own a game store?! This is what it costs!

[@MTGUnpacked]

I have tremendous respect for anyone who owns a game store. I honestly don't know how you do it, but I'm glad there are people like you out there!🙌

[@pokemonwonderLLC]

This is a man who truly loves his job, much respect Rob. Great having you on the podcast this week. Look forward to connecting with you again in the future!

[@Camille_Boomer77000]

These videos are fascinating. My biggest takeaways are that I will never think about opening a tcg store (not even from living room! 😂)and that I will continue to shop at my local LGS.

[@justinmorris2199]

I started watching your videos as we were starting our shop and you have been such an INCREDIBLE resource. We're on hold due to an injury but I want you to know that you have saved us so much time and money. You're a trailblazer and a real one man, I will never be able to tell you how much we've benefitted from your content. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

[@robertharrison5455]

Good Video, People think store owners are raking it in. Did you include Workers comp, Unemployment Insurance, Phone, Heat and Credit card processing. Keep up the good work

[@AngelCoqui]

And taxes

[@kevinmelon902]

Thank you for the insight Rob. For your next video, can you provide a breakout of your top and bottom lines by product and sales channel? Would be a very interesting follow up.

[@VesuvanVault]

Seems overwhelming! As much as I would love to open one too, this video really made it real and a great down-to-earth understanding of what's involved on monthly expenses ALONE. Truly mind-boggling numbers

[@Zjivarra]

I have one more revenue stream that you can maybe put through a trial and see if it works out. Build a few sleeved up set cubes, or block cubes that were known to be extremely popular limited environments(using the 6:3:1:1 ratio for different rarities in the set) and then charge a reasonable rental price for people to draft with the cube in store. Allow as few as two people to winston draft from it, or 2-8 people to play sealed deck from it, or up to 16 people to draft it. As a store with cards on hand already, you might be able to put together a number of cubes like it that will justify my next suggestion … Start a store membership, or cube/draft enthusiast membership, amd with it they also allow people to play with sleeved up precon commander and or other decks for other formats in the store. People want to play a variety of magic, but the greater majority of people cannot afford ownership of a lot of cards. I speak for myself when I say I play prerelease, maybe get a bundle, and occasionally splurge on a commander deck. But if I knew that with 50-150 dollars a month I could have access to play 10+ draft environments and 20 commander decks whenever I want, I would pay it. You could even have a premium membership level that grants access to some more top tier stuff like an all foil cube or master sets -set cubes.

[@ricardoblikman2676]

Hahaha I remember in 1995 i worked in an lgs and our water piping froze. We closed the toilet but some people still dare to challenge me and go in to take a shit becouse my college did not mind cleaning it. I made that on my shift people that sneaked in to take a shit had to scoop it empty with an empty Ice age boister box! hahah they cried!

[@Dreamitcollectibles]

I been working since 2018 to open a store. Lots of ups and downs since then. I always figured you need a nice wallet to do so. Thanks for the video! Hopefully one day I can get there!

[@therandomdot2563]

If folks ever chime in "well, why don't you spend time optimizing xyz". The problem is there's only 100% of this guy's, his employees' and $ to go around. A lot of that time is spent on upkeep.. maintenance activities. Gotta order inventory, catalogue it, stock the shelves, run the store, sell product, etc. You can waste so much time just on "treadmill" activities that you have little to no time left over to actually analyze and optimize anything. A store owner that has the luxury to show up and just mill around while rest of staff are handling all the "treadmill" stuff.. this guy just explained how that's a big payroll cost. So, you gotta pick-n-choose your battles on how to optimize your business. Sometimes you're just treading water. Other times you have an epiphanal moment on how to do something better and realize it's a good time and cost savings and go "damn, why didn't we do it this way sooner?" B/c you never had time to stop and think about it. You were too busy spending all your time just maintaining.

[@rng-gamez]

VERY TRUE, people who have zero experience with owning a business very often know exactly how to operate a business at 100%

[@ManhattanAquatics]

Keep up the great work, you're only 1 hour away from me so ill have to visit sometime.

[@allen0k0le]

It’d be great to get a video of how all your tools you pay monthly for work. The breakdown of mox alpha, Amazon repriced, eBay/TCGplayer tool. That would be pretty cool. Keep chugging along my guy.

[@jonathanleang1651]

Hey brother I have a quick question. How do you keep your payroll at $3,600 a month? I also just opened up a shop as well, but I'm actually not there working which is probably the main factor. I do understand you said you have 4 part time employees. I was just curious how you split their hours and shifts. Because I'm not personally there at my own shop my weekly payroll alone is around $2,100 so almost $8,500 a month if I not more. I'm trying to find a happy medium between where I am at now and you. Thank you for your time.

[@rng-gamez]

You just have to work more. I do 60-90 hours a week so I don’t have to pay more people. And they only work 10-20 hours a week

[@josephpurdy8390]

Do you have a preference for products that you sell? That promote the sale of other products you may have for other games? Does the notion of selling a game without all the pieces for that game in one package bother customers? Unlike older board games that usually came with all the pieces inside of one box.

[@merelythepawn]

That seams like a lot. Thank your accountant for deductions.

[@Svergara1]

There is no construction, its just NJ state workers banging tools in a random room making $50 bucks an hour.

[@rng-gamez]

Count me in!

[@Svergara1]

@@rng-gamez Oh sorry no more room, but make sure to pay ya taxessss

[@usho7481]

Hahha while high and smoking up like in Central Park!

[@Svergara1]

@@usho7481 Time Square and Central Park are crazy these days, people selling weed on every square inch....can't complain lol

[@Misstucci]

Interested in how you feel about mox alpha. Was in the alpha and found nothing beyond a simple off the shelf web scraper can give you.

[@ricardoblikman2676]

In 1994 when I was 16 the first rule I have learned from my LGS owner is that every product that is below 40% will be rejected becouse retail cant make profit otherwise (excluding expensive products). With 4th edition / chronicles / ice age / fallen empires almost every shop started to sell mtg even a gd kite store and people selling off at distro prices. It was the end!

[@bigegames2019]

Well that eliminates every TCG ever.

[@ricardoblikman2676]

@@bigegames2019 Not really there are some tcg's that give good prices. But mtg was wrecked after that. The only money you can make is speculating on singles and old boxes but WOTC smashed that in 2019.

[@jareddollen1113]

what is the sorter?

[@turnushq]

yah, Rudy doesn't own the patent on white boards! Glad you whipped it out.

[@JohnSmith-mj7cz]

Broke your toilet with a dump? What a legend

[@rogueinvestor2375]

That's what happens after you eat at Taco Bell.

[@sidequestgamescollectibles240]

A bit dissapointed. Seeing that whiteboard, I was expecting an intro like "FOLKS Rob from RNG Games. METAZOO!!" LOL. But seriously, I love this content. Very accurate. Stuff just stacks up as you scale. It's scary.

[@firecrest3325]

Amazon repricer was great when i sold food on Amazon. Stopped doing this when the food prices became very unstable

[@himmyneutron5769]

Could you use a Ethernet repeater for the Internet?

[@shoeboots]

Wait are you saying someone literally destroyed your toilet with a dump??

[@ryancastner6200]

I am a simple man, I see a white board, I thumbs up

[@lordxbug]

Professor Robbie… LETS GO

[@0190Zonengabi]

is this rudy?

[@Crocodonk]

I'm happy for you that you can turn some kind of a profit. I sell on free Ebay & TCGp accounts, only have to buy product + shipping supplies and so far I just lose money.

[@TachibanaTengoku]

selling sealed on tcgp is how you lose money lol stick to singles. And do not rip product, at least not pkmn

[@gamersparadise743]

what's the best way to get inventory then?@@TachibanaTengoku

[@Salesbae-v8h]

Smart move, eliminate the competition with scare tactics. The worst part of all these small time sellers trying to start up, is one bad experience has a big effect. You get one or two bad cards off TCGplayer, you might not come back. That's a bigger deal than people realize. I'm getting more and more orders messed up from tcgplayer everyday.....and the cards show up in the most insane packaging......taping a raw card to a piece of paper and shoving that into an envelope is insane, i dont care who you are.

[@LL-m-n9u]

Didn't think Mox Alpha would be that high out the gate. Maybe it's just me.

[@steelcitycollector]

Did they fix the AC?

[@rng-gamez]

They did thank god!

[@dclangaming9256]

This man just put you on game

[@nikolajmadsen5921]

Whiteboard video :D Sehr gut, in rudy's spirit

[@harryg6169]

So how much do you have to sell to break even?

[@sewer_8512]

Sounds like he’d need roughly $400 per day in profit. So if he makes $10 from a box sale he’d need 40 of those. If you look at tcg player sales you’re definitely not moving 40 boxes a day. Seems like a losing battle if the numbers are true

[@ricardoblikman2676]

$100,000 of new products a month. Its hard to get an exact profit on second hand buy / sell becouse for every $1000 of cards you sell you have $10,000 of cards you will never sell in inventory.

[@Svergara1]

The only way he can stay sustainable is cause of his hustle. Some stores his size don't want to spend the time and energy to shift through singles and sell them online. Those are the stores that got hit the hardest with CMM. So instead of being stuck to box prices he concentrates more on singles. Also don't forget magic isnt the only game hes playing / paying.

[@bigegames2019]

@@ricardoblikman2676 He is not buying that much, so no way he is hitting that.

[@bigegames2019]

@@Svergara1 Singles sales are most profitable when they are out of your moms basement, not out of a brick and mortar store.

[@raysieelmo]

The scary thing is this doesn't even cover the biggest spend of all, inventory. Inventory that as we've seen in recent times is lucky to even allow a store to break even.

[@bigegames2019]

100k of annual expenses means he needs to sell 500k of MTG annually just to break even...because he likely gets the industry 35% margin off TCGs and has to sell them under retail to be competitive online. But more than half his expenses are geared to selling online, so if he dropped selling online...he would be operating at under 50k a year....and would not need to push as much product, and could likely charge retail in store. so his break even would be closer to 150k in sales.

[@PersonalJ3ZUS]

​what do you mean? It seems to me the vast majority is specifically brick and mortar costs. The online tools listed added up to less than 1k if I read that right. Perhaps I'm mistaken

[@PersonalJ3ZUS]

Without online the store likely wouldn't support itself well.

[@mikeross4937]

Tell those nerds to eat some fiber if they are breaking your toilet. LOL

[@austinp3979]

No pink visor smh

[@lcronovt]

Please support your Local Game Stores.

[@tytaniium]

Definitely should have mentioned how much write offs offset a lot of these expenses.......

[@Earnham]

These expenses are write offs. What other write offs can be used to write off against your expenses?

[@chexcollects]

Do you even know what that means? Obviously they’re write offs…there his expenses.

[@sewer_8512]

You must be selling a huge volume of singles online to make $400 in profit a day just to break even. You’d be better off opening a small oil change business or something

[@Svergara1]

Id rather hustle singles then get under a car.

[@sewer_8512]

@@Svergara1knocking a drain plug loose and removing an oil filter is easy my dude. Every 5-10 minutes you have a car serviced, way more profit than trying to sell singles guaranteed

[@Svergara1]

@@sewer_8512 my dude, that's not how one starts a business. First location, where is this hypothetical place located? Equipment cost? Also, passion is something that one should have, even if making money is your only passion......also what about knowledge of the business market / knowledge of the upcharge / consumer spending patterns? Just case the potential upside may have a consistently higher value, doesn't make one business "better" than the other. Of course I don't have the space or time to express the data behind my thoughts, but just saying, if you'd rather sling singles, doesn't mean changing oil is worse...or better.

[@sewer_8512]

@@Svergara1 blah blah blah. Cardboard vs car maintenance, no question what has higher probability of making it 😂

[@bigegames2019]

He amped up his online sales and bragged that they did 400 one day and that it was a record so far this year...so he is likely doing between $10-100 daily as an average...and that math means selling online is losing him money hand over fist...yes it looks like big numbers at the end, but all the numbers needed to get there, and still sitting in storage are losses to his long term equity...and will eventually burst the cash flow bubble.

[@cjx6462]

Wow with this information now I know ALL LGS are multi million dollar business. I need to open one!!! (Sarcastic)

[@libertyjones1451]

According to MTG Lion you'll go bankrupt repairing the toilet alone. MTG players are notorious toilet assassins.😅

[@chrish7830]

Why do 4 employees contribute just 20% of the work? Expect more from them or cut the dead weight.

[@rng-gamez]

That’s more of a me issue. I have trouble letting people do things.

[@thegoodbuddiesanimepod462]

Christ, dude. He said they were part time and if you break it down if there are on average 4 employees- if they’re paid evenly (which they’re probably not) that’s like $180 per employee per week. Dead weight is a bit harsh, they’re probably doing plenty. Rob, I do hope you are actively searching for a good front man/woman/person for your store that isn’t you for when it’s financially feasible for you to do. I promise it’ll help you out a ton.

[@chrish7830]

4 people that COMBINED manage 20% of the work (his words) is either dead weight or incompetent management/delegation. There will always be things only an owner can due, but an 80%/5%/5%/5%/5% is a recipe for failure when that 20% is responsible for a significantly larger than 20% of expenses.@@thegoodbuddiesanimepod462

[@thegoodbuddiesanimepod462]

I get the math, and this isn’t a crack at Rob- but you get what you pay for. He said he struggles to give more responsibility. These folks are likely just on the registers, straightening the floor, and restocking what product they’re allowed to. More responsibility = more money full stop. That 20% of work is a must, otherwise he’d just do it himself.

[@chrish7830]

It’s absolutely NOT “full stop”. Ever work fast food? I did. I cleaned bathrooms, ran the register, cleaned the counters, mopped the dining room, worked drive thru, and wiped tables, all for the same pay as the person next to me. It’s called cross-training, and it doesn’t necessarily mean more pay. People don’t always get wage increases when they get tasked with a new job responsibility.. Literally did everything that could be done short of management level tasks/scheduling. If his people are doing nothing more than 5% of the work, again, that’s on him. I read his response, he has problem delegating. That’s bad management, and I know from whence I speak, as someone that managed 130 employees and an additional supervisory staff of 12, for over 5 years. Expecting more of employees at the wage he’s paying them, whatever that may be, is not unreasonable. @@thegoodbuddiesanimepod462

[@TachibanaTengoku]

I've come to the conclusion that Rob lives in the back and leaves the customers to his employees kek Jokes aside, it's rooooooough making money with an LGS. Yall lose money on most products or barely make anything after accounting for overhead Wait, 3800 in payroll? Does that include what you pay yourself? Cuz that's high af

[@chexcollects]

No it isn’t high. That’s 4 people 15 hours a week making $15/hr.

[@mikeross4937]

I think I will just buy singles.

[@Sinistra359]

Much respect to you and for all the lgs out there! 🫡