Geeks And Games: A Family Focused Game Store
La Donna is the owner of OC Geeks and Games. It’s the only store located in Oregon City, Oregon, according to Wizards of the Coast’s Store & Event Locator. While not a gamer herself, her husband is and plays games such as Dungeons & Dragons. While La Donna was in the Air Force, her husband had wanted to start a game store focused on families. She feels the family concept of the store is their most unique selling point. La Donna says, “When someone comes into my store, it’s like you’re coming into my living room.”
The store opened in 2016 after La Donna’s last deployment in 2015. Early on, her husband attended courses on starting a small business. La Donna shares that she didn’t have retail experience. Her background was in the military, law enforcement, and healthcare. Currently, La Donna handles the managerial aspect of the store, learns the games, and hires the right people to help facilitate those games. Furthermore, she’ll handle work schedules and payroll. While she didn’t play board games or Magic: The Gathering previously, she learned those games to connect with her community. Furthermore, she has a free board game rental library in-store. On the flip side, her husband handles the Games Workshop and miniatures side of the business. With three current employees, La Donna emphasizes the wonderful and impactful contribution of her late best friend, Anna, made to OC Geeks and Games.
In Loving Memory of Anna
Anna helped grow the Pokemon community and embodied the family spirit that La Donna and her husband were aiming for. La Donna says that Anna was the reason people were coming to the store. Understandably, the loss of Anna is still difficult for everyone to this day. Anna was an accomplished pianist and made everyone feel good about themselves, La Donna adds. By welcoming in new kids to the store, she notes they’re carrying on Anna’s legacy.
In the spirit of what Anna brought to the store, La Donna loves that parents look to come into the store and play games with their kids. Both Dungeons & Dragons and Pokemon are huge with families at her store. The “Learn-To-Play” concept is working well to draw in new customers. The parents want to play with their kids, La Donna says, and she maintains this dedicated day free for families.
“We went today and my boys got great help putting together their Pokémon decks and learning to play the game. The employees (Raina and Anna) were amazing and the other more experienced players were so supportive and helpful. Thank you!“
Janell Cinquini, OC Geeks and Games Customer review on Facebook
While Pokemon is a top seller now, she notes that Pokemon didn’t sell well at first. Anna spearheaded fostering interest at the time. She grew the Pokemon community to 40 kids with their parents and would remember everyone’s name. In fact, La Donna added a second day resulting in an upwards of 60 people attending on Fridays.
An Owner Who Gives Back To Those With Little
La Donna is very active in the community including being a foster parent to two kids and her involvement in the Oregon City Chamber of Commerce. La Donna notes that it’s still a challenge getting people to know her store exists. Additionally, the financials involved with running a game store are a challenge, she adds. Moreover, multiple product releases within close proximity of each other can be difficult. However, she says that people do come back to play in events after learning how to play. During spring, summer, and winter break La Donna hosts a Dungeons & Dragons camp for the kids at the store. Additionally, for those families who cannot afford it, they offer free “Dungeons & Dragons Scholarships”.
La Donna grew up on a farm and her family did not have much money. However, she never lacked love from her family and friends. She parlays that richness in love to the customers in her store today and treats them as if they’re her kids. Her kindness and generosity extend beyond that as La Donna and her husband are foster parents. One of the children they’ve fostered was a customer of their store. Moreover, they like to have potlucks and invite people over their house for Christmas dinner.
Testing Methods To Promote OC Geeks and Games
From a business standpoint, La Donna has learned what works and what doesn’t work to draw more people to her store. For one, she notes that Yelp is not a place to market her business. Newspapers didn’t work either. However, Facebook Boosts on the store’s posts have done well. Participating in Facebook Groups has also been beneficial, she says. Moreover, Meetup has resulted in customers finding the store. Originally they used the platform to take sign-ups for Dungeons & Dragons. The “Naughty or Nice” event was a successful marketing venture, La Donna says. This event involved taking pictures with Darth Vader (naughty) or Santa Claus (nice) and sharing those pictures on the OC Geeks and Games Facebook page.
When La Donna is tracking sales, she understands that there are times when she will have to sit on the product before it sells. However, sometimes a product with limited availability will sell well. Either way, she doesn’t do running credit with the distributor if she doesn’t have the money on hand for the product. In order to supplemental sales, she’ll sell beer and wine and accessories during a pre-release event. Unfortunately, due to the state of the economy at the time of this writing (2024), La Donna notes that sales are currently down. Thankfully, she said she’s not losing any customers because of it.
Looking to the future, La Donna would love to open another store with more square footage. In the meantime, she shares that one of her enjoyments is painting models.
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