Kingslayer Games: A Three-Location Game Store

Kingslayer Games is a California-based game store with locations three locations in total. The store’s locations are in Fountain Valley, Oceanside, and Lake Forest. According to the Wizards of the Coast Store & Events Locator, Kingslayer Games is the only store in Fountain Valley and Oceanside. However, it is one of two stores in Lake Forest. The stores each average 1,400 sq. ft.
Travis Young, the owner of Kingslayer Games, started his foray into retail in 2015. Having gone to school for business, a storefront was a “front”, as Travis calls it, to enable more product purchases from distributors. Initial plans were for the store to be a comic book store. However, after one week, customers asked to play Magic: The Gathering. Three weeks later, Travis was hosting his first Magic: The Gathering Pre-Release event. During the first four years of the store’s existence, Travis worked full-time while simultaneously running Kingslayer Games. He shares that working is his preferred thing to do. It’s a source of fun, he says. Moreover, Travis has big goals and it requires a lot of work. However, he loves building his company.
The Kingslayer Games Staff & Responsibilites
With three stores to oversee, Travis employs 19 employees: an Operations Manager, three Store Managers, a Warehouse Manager, and an Organized Play Manager. Each store’s Store Manager’s responsibilities include handling organized play and receiving products. As the store’s Organized Player Manager, Anthony, supports 12-13 different games. Furthermore, Gabe handles Human Resources and scheduling and Andrew Goodwin is the Operations Manager at the flagship store in Fountain Valley. Regarding hiring, Travis’ two requirements are kindness and obsessiveness. The latter refers to an obsession with a particular game, he says. Moreover, he provides health benefits to his employees while sporting a $30,000 payroll every two weeks.
Travis’ day-to-day duties involve managing cash flow for each store, creating content on YouTube to help scale the business, and staying on top of his calendar, email, and to-do lists. He says the latter is one of the things he’s always looking to improve upon. By doing so, he can plan out his days accordingly. Travis tells us that his “specialty is running game stores not playing games.” He views himself as a problem solver so if any issues arise, he’ll hop on a phone call with one of his store managers to address the problem.
Being A Hands-On Owner For His Customers
With three stores, Travis doesn’t always get the opportunity to meet his customers. That said, he streams events twice weekly on Twitch to engage with his customers. One Piece & Lorcana are the streaming events he holds. However, he says he’s looking to venture into other games. Moreover, he’ll also make it a point to play in-person events with his customers. The engagement with his customers allows him to receive instant feedback. Moreover, playing in these events gets the customer more invested in the store when the owner is hands-on, Travis says.
To deliver the products his customers want, he leverages the onboarding process of Discord by allowing customers to select their favorite games upon joining. The customer segmentation by “roles” is based on the games they’ve chosen. Travis then market products to customers based on their “role(s)” selection. He says a successful initiative of the store was sending out a survey to see what the community wants.
“Great store, amazing people who work here, lots of events. Kingslayer Games is truly making a positive impact on the local gaming community.“
Matthew ReCasino, Kingslayer Games Customer Review on Facebook
Growing The Business & Customer Benefits
When it comes to growth, Travis feels that it’s hard to have organic growth in new locations if you outsource it. He uses Instagram and Facebook for marketing events and has previously used Yelp. Boosting posts has been effective. Furthermore, Facebook and Instagram make up the marketing spend. Uniquely, he leverages the beauty industry as a benchmark to observe how they sell and incentivize employees.
Even though Travis is running a big company, he didn’t find being a WPN Premium store worth it. There were several things to change about his store. Even though he’s not a WPN Premium store, he still offers benefits to his customers. For example, a first come first serve open play space. Performance-based prizes are another incentive. The better your results in an event, the more prizes awarded. Finally, the Kingslayer Games rewards program offers you VIP status after $1,000 spent. Travis says points earned based on your spending amount to a 4% kickback.
From a product standpoint, Travis ships singles for free to customers. He notes that sealed products for Lorcana and One Piece have good margins. However, most of the store’s profit comes from selling accessories and event entries. Additionally, Travis also enjoys helping out other stores.
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