Having gone to Gencon the last 8 years, and having always been there to have fun and blow some money on games I spent hardly anything this year. Not because of unemployment, or lack of funds (dual income, no kids, 6 figure salary and no drug habit), but because of the brazen disrespect that most of the 'big' booths (strikezone, toad, gamingetc, cool stuff inc)have for the intelligence of the consumers. I mean the prices were so savagely high, higher even then the price on the dealers freaking website - which I often showed them on my phone. The Gencon dealer room would be outstanding if you were, say, Amish and had riden your horse and cart there from Pennsylvania, and lacking internet access had no clue what things cost. You mention Igor. He isn't coming to Gencon because his prices are idiotic, hey Igor ... check out Amazon.com one of these days! Selling a non-rare book for cover (or 95% of cover) isn't really appealing. Oh wow ... a booster of SWM for full retail + tax, thanks Igor where will I ever beat that. Why not just hold out a jar and beg for donations, because that's all that anyone who is buying from you is doing, donating to your kids college fund. It gets worse, gamingetc's booth throws a big 10% off the whole booth sign up on Sunday. So I wander over with $1,500 scorching a hole in my pocket hoping to find something 20% too expensive to buy. I take a closer look, and they've simply gone around with a label gun and increased the prices on the labels, then ... discounted the price 10%. How dumb do you think the average con go'er is? (don't answer). Do these dealers really enjoy packing all this crap up? By con's end I really only bought from 3 dealers. Chimera Hobbies, who specialize in dead games and had some good deals ($1 packs, 25% off on live games like SM and DDM). Some other booth where everything was $5.00 .... I got 12 blisters of Battlefield Evolution (for the d20 scale modern mini's and tanks, jeeps, etc.) and some old booster boxes of Cyberpunk. Finally Hill's Wholesale Gaming always has great deals on sealed product, they are there to move product and by sunday always have the empty boxes to prove it. I had a long list of Heroclix, DDM, and SWM singles I wanted to pick up but everytime I looked at the prices I had to laugh, I was way better off ordering off my phone from the dealer hall. Until these guys get a clue (or internet access) they'll continue packing up the majority of their stuff. Also another note to dealers ... walk the freaking hall. When you have your Heroscape marked up 10% over retail and WotC has the same product 15 feet away ... you aren't going to sell it.
It's just a reality that brick and mortar stores will never be able to compete with price against e-tailers. Something to note is that the MSRP discount on a great deal of board games and fantasy games - in other words, the price the retailer pays for it - is pretty often only about 35 percent. Thus, to take a cue from Lloyd, if you discount even 10 percent off of MSRP, that cuts into the profit 25 percent or more.
(To illustrate: Let's say I have a product with MSRP of $100. I probably purchased that product for around $65. Thus, my profit is $35 - or, 35 percent. If I give you a 10 percent discount, that reduces my profit from $35 to $25 - a 29.6 percent reduction in profit.)
Now, as Marcus has said in the past, we are talking about actual dollars and not 'margin,' so that's still a nice piece of money to put in my pocket. Except that $100 of product has taken up a good bit of shelf space, which has its accordant rent/utilities/insurance/labor share, etc... Those costs are still present to the conventioneers, who pay gas, labor, an astronomical booth fee, insurance on their goods and also are outside their security sphere, which means their shrinkage from shoplifting is really, really significant. Having one game stolen means you have to sell three more to just break even from that.
So, if you're expecting someone on the convention floor to compete with eBay or specialty e-tailers, it just won't happen. Convention sellers are selling to people who take a lark on a game, love it, and want to get a copy of the game right then - not you.
That said, I think marking up anything above MSRP this day and age is pretty indefensible, and convention sellers are getting pretty outmoded because you lose the natural advantages of having your own retail space - time and ability to demo product for people, a full range of inventory you can get a feel for right then without time pressure, helpful local players who will sell your product for you, the capacity to attach a person to a gaming group associated with the product... basically, all the advantages retail has left over the Internet disappear in a convention setting. I think Marcus might be making a good call when he's opting not to sell at GenCon next year, because I just don't think independent dealers can really make it worth their while in this environment anymore unless they bring up some mega-discount stuff (like Chimera does.)
I'm more specifically citing singles dealers who seem to assume we are all amish. These guys are buying at less then 50% of sale price, so "what they have in it" is less of an issue. Even worse, the same dealer, his own website, having better pricing is idiotic in the age of the iPhone.
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