Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University. This week, Thorne revisits the membership model for monetizing table space and follows up on Horror Week 2024.
After last week’s column, I received a few emails inquiring about the membership model of monetizing table space (see “Making Money Off Table Space“), so I took a look around for the stores that had mentioned they had used it in the past. Unfortunately, it appears that these stores have discontinued that model and have moved to offering the space for rental for parties or other events.
I did find a number of memberships offered from various locations, but none included access to play space. Common membership benefits included discounts on products, limited or promotional items and free event entry. Several places did tie access to play space to purchase of a certain amount of product in order to gain use of the space while others had upgraded the quality of or created private gaming areas, but those were also tied to per-use payments.
Memberships would be a more profitable option for stores if we could figure out how to implement it. Gyms and health clubs use memberships as their primary source of revenue and, in fact, their business model is based upon on a membership model.
Here is the way the gym membership model works:
Losing weight or getting healthier is the number one New Year’s resolution. Those resolving to do so go to a gym, test out the facilities and, if convinced to do so, purchase a membership. Front-end gym employees are trained to sell memberships, as that is the major source of revenue for the gym. Some new members use the facilities regularly for about the first month and a half to two months, then start finding reasons to skip a session, then going every other day, then missing a week, then, by about the third or fourth month, they stop going altogether. However, the membership continues as most of the members still intend to start attending regularly “sometime,” generating a revenue stream for the gym without the business having to provide any of its contracted services. “No pain, all gain” for the gym.
If stores could get customers to pay a monthly or annual fee for weekly table space, we could generate another revenue stream, especially since a good percentage of those tables would likely go unused. However, getting gamers to pay a fee for what they have gotten for free would take a good deal of re-positioning.
I missed last week’s Horror Week festivities (see “ICV2 Horror Week 2024“). Here, we see a lot of interest in Halloween-themed events such as Halloween Comic Fest and Trick or Read, as well as local events such as Trick or Treat on Main Street, Carbondale Halloween and our store hosted Haunted Carbondale walking tours. However, we have never seen much of an increase in horror or spooky-themed graphic novels or games. We always make displays up of Junji Ito, Sandman, Swamp Thing and related graphic novels as well as games like Betrayal at House on the Hill, Night Cage, Call of Cthulhu, Kids on Bikes and similarly themed products but see little increase in sales, with two exceptions. Last year we saw a definite bump in sales of BOOoop!, during October and we usually see a sales spike on Ouija boards.
Another area we stock up in September is books on local ghosts and cryptids. We stock a couple of books on a local Bigfoot variant called the Big Muddy Monster, as well as several on local hauntings and generally have to restock at least twice during the season. We keep them in stock year-round but expect sales to quadruple during October.
Comments? Thoughts on the membership model? Send them to castleperilousgames@gmail.com.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
Source: ICV2
