Hey ya'll -

First, a bit about me. In the first part of this decade, I owned a nerd shop - think comics, collectible card games, Warhammer - for four and a half years before selling it. Since I've moved to the west side of Nashville due to spouse getting a fantastic job here, I've been saddened that the closest nerd stores are on the east side of town, and that none of them have particularly late hours.

Without getting into the nitty gritty, I can tell you that market conditions for hobby gaming stores are grim (and even grimmer for comic stores.) I could open one again, but without a six-figure cap investment to do certain things, I firmly believe that I would not be able to operate it with an appropriate amount of profit to sustain my household's needs.

So how about an alternate model - a space that has a small retail footprint and very limited hours open to the public (10 or so), but is open to members (a'la a fraternal organization) via keycard to use for nerd purposes? Membership would also get you nerd supplies at invoice cost 10%, or at the lowest price allowed by trade agreement in price-controlled lines like Games Workshop. Having high volume at the expense of profits would also lower prices for EVERYONE, as the largest hobby distributors have a discount schedule that increases with monthly volume.

Membership would require a hefty "initiation" fee to prevent people just loading up on deep discount merchandise, but after that could be maintained with a relatively reasonable periodic fee.

What do you guys think about this model, and how much would you be willing to pay as a one-time fee and a periodic fee?

Don't get too excited about this - I have a full-time job as well as part-time volunteering so I may not be able to devote the time resources to pull it off. But if the interest is out there, I'll develop things further. This whole line of thought came from me finding a space on the West side that would be great for this, and reasonably priced too!