Hello and welcome to Owning Your Business: A Hobby Game Industry Podcast from Mantle Media, and your source for the most knowledgeable and successful gaming retail professionals. We’re continuing to bring you conversations with professionals from all corners of the hobby gaming industry. In the hopes that we can deliver the best information, you need to make successful business decisions. We want to break down some of the barriers between distributors, publishers, and retailers, we want to get to the truths behind some of our industry’s biggest myths, and most importantly we want to generate positive conversations about some of the most taboo topics. Hopefully, together, we’ll be able to learn, laugh, and explore this ever-growing and always-changing world of the hobby gaming retail industry.
I’ll be your host and guide, Tony Cox, and today we’ll be talking with Nate Kozlowski from Untapped Games. I’m lucky enough to be local to Untapped Games in Providence and something caught my eye when the first time I visited the store. Not only is it a clean, open, and inviting environment for all gamers, but in several areas of the store, they have these little boxes with slips of paper, a pencil, and a sign that reads, “Make a Request. Are we missing a game, expansion, or accessory you need? Make a special request and we’ll try to get it! Just fill out a form and hand it in at the front desk!” I’ve visited countless stores up and down the East Coast and I’ve never seen this kind of special order system. I thought to myself, what a simple and effective way to invite a special order, potentially create a new customer, and secure a purchase that may have otherwise gone to another store or an online retailer. I decided it would be worth it to sit down with the owner and dive into his journey into the retail game industry in hopes there were more nuggets of wisdom to be discovered. Stay tuned for my interview with Nate and we’ll find out together.
