great video. theres a nice lgs here in town. and they have zero online presence. its incredible. i would imagine they could make more buy selling product and singles online but they choose not to.
There is a question of addressable market in NZ. I can't imagine that there would be more than 1% of the population that would be interested in playing card games, let alone MTG. And they would be distributed over both north and south Islands of NZ.
So thoughts from a NZ perspective. And a filthy socialist one, too, so I’m not the best person to listen to in regards to starting a business. But if there are “high margins” then they are high for a reason. Costs are going to be high too. For actual shop space, certainly. Successive Government policy and a lack of real taxation or regulation in the area has made property into a giant bubble here. Mainly residential, but obviously there’s a flow on effect to commercial property too. So rent on a decent sized shop in a decent location is going to be real steep. Furthermore your target demographic will likely to be renting, and rents at the moment? I make pretty good money from my work, but at the same time an absolutely insane portion of that goes straight to my landlord. Inflation has been at 8-9% for the last few years, food prices especially have gone absolutely mental. So disposable income for hobbies? Let’s just say I’m not just going to impulsively hit up a draft for FNM. Especially now that Play Boosters are a thing. Ditto for Prereleases. I could no doubt fit these into the budget but obviously that means I’m having to pull back spending from somewhere else. In my case your questioner is probably better to look at getting into doing singles online as that’s more likely to tempt me! Location is the other thing: honestly I think the bigger towns tend to be well covered for hobby stores. There’s a few smaller towns that could probably support one, or would probably support a better one if you knew what you were doing. But obviously there’s risks in smaller markets as you discussed with the Utah guy. Using Wellington as an example: 3rd largest city, and has at least a half dozen decent LGSes I could name (even with me not living there). So starting a new one there? Tricky. Especially when you consider that the students at Victoria probably pay the most in rent for the worst houses out of any University in the country. Also our “business focused” right wing government is doing the thing where they are squeezing governmental departments causing mass redundancy’s of public servants. Most of whom living in the capital city, Wellington, and speaking of target markets: a lot of people who do these sort of jobs are the people who are into TCGs, board games, etc. What else? There’s a couple of hobby store chains which are expanding fairly consistently at the moment, even in the face of the cost of living issues we have, so if they aren’t already operating where you are looking at setting up then there’s a good chance they’ve been thinking of it. Probably look into franchising with them rather than ending up in competition? Scale and supply and stuff there, again as you said. One of them in particular definitely has the personality and the contacts in the industry/community too! This is probably too much of a wall of text now so will just leave it at this.
great video. theres a nice lgs here in town. and they have zero online presence. its incredible. i would imagine they could make more buy selling product and singles online but they choose not to.
This is invaluable. Wonderful insight 👍
I cant express enough how much i appreciate your insights.
I’m actually a New Zealander so this could be interesting…
There is a question of addressable market in NZ. I can't imagine that there would be more than 1% of the population that would be interested in playing card games, let alone MTG. And they would be distributed over both north and south Islands of NZ.
It seems yugioh was the most popular
So thoughts from a NZ perspective. And a filthy socialist one, too, so I’m not the best person to listen to in regards to starting a business. But if there are “high margins” then they are high for a reason. Costs are going to be high too. For actual shop space, certainly. Successive Government policy and a lack of real taxation or regulation in the area has made property into a giant bubble here. Mainly residential, but obviously there’s a flow on effect to commercial property too. So rent on a decent sized shop in a decent location is going to be real steep. Furthermore your target demographic will likely to be renting, and rents at the moment? I make pretty good money from my work, but at the same time an absolutely insane portion of that goes straight to my landlord. Inflation has been at 8-9% for the last few years, food prices especially have gone absolutely mental. So disposable income for hobbies? Let’s just say I’m not just going to impulsively hit up a draft for FNM. Especially now that Play Boosters are a thing. Ditto for Prereleases. I could no doubt fit these into the budget but obviously that means I’m having to pull back spending from somewhere else. In my case your questioner is probably better to look at getting into doing singles online as that’s more likely to tempt me! Location is the other thing: honestly I think the bigger towns tend to be well covered for hobby stores. There’s a few smaller towns that could probably support one, or would probably support a better one if you knew what you were doing. But obviously there’s risks in smaller markets as you discussed with the Utah guy. Using Wellington as an example: 3rd largest city, and has at least a half dozen decent LGSes I could name (even with me not living there). So starting a new one there? Tricky. Especially when you consider that the students at Victoria probably pay the most in rent for the worst houses out of any University in the country. Also our “business focused” right wing government is doing the thing where they are squeezing governmental departments causing mass redundancy’s of public servants. Most of whom living in the capital city, Wellington, and speaking of target markets: a lot of people who do these sort of jobs are the people who are into TCGs, board games, etc. What else? There’s a couple of hobby store chains which are expanding fairly consistently at the moment, even in the face of the cost of living issues we have, so if they aren’t already operating where you are looking at setting up then there’s a good chance they’ve been thinking of it. Probably look into franchising with them rather than ending up in competition? Scale and supply and stuff there, again as you said. One of them in particular definitely has the personality and the contacts in the industry/community too! This is probably too much of a wall of text now so will just leave it at this.
If I lived in NZ I would do something in agriculture, not trading cards. The TCG market is too small there.