The Friendly Local Game Store. You'll see a lot of discussion at times on line about the FLGS. Saving the FLGS seems to be a cause like saving the whales to some people. There's a signficant portion of the gaming community that looks at it like treason if you buy your game products online or through a large big box chain of book stores or the like. I have my own feeling about game stores and over several posts I'm going to explore my feelings on them and where I think they are going. I'd like to look at the letters of the acronym as a focal point for the discussion.
Let's start with F. Have you ever been in a game store that wasn't friendly? Chances are high that the answer is yes. And by friendly, I mean several things. The most obvious is that the people working there need to literally be friendly. They need to greet customers when they come in. They need to be working and available to you if you have questions. And when you are ready to check out they need to be ready to check you out.
Another aspect of friendly is the store itself. This combines several things but the most obvious are the store shouldn't be overly cluttered, it shouldn't be overly dark, it should be in a good location, it should have good hours, it should be clean, and well organized. I've seen plenty that failed on one or more of these points.
To be continued.
In general the FLGS is it's own worst enemy. They need to be offering value added enticements to maintain their existing customer base as well as drum up new business. Very few of them do. This is tough thing to deal with in the face of overwhelming competition. I'm sorry but I don't subscribe to the belief that I should support my local brick & mortar just "because" they're there. They need to realize they sell the same exact product, usually at a higher price, as the online retailers and adjust accordingly.
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