INTERVIEW: IAN SHEPHERD, GAME
GAME has already refit some stores with new displays and layouts
PC download business, a white-label offer run via Metaboli, but that grew 230 per cent last year and is now a ‘meaningful’ proportion of its PC game sales. Last year it also launched the GAME Home Moonbase on PS3, which sells branded content in the virtual world. GAME is the only retailer on there. “Unsurprisingly, the thing I’m excited about is mobile” says Shepherd, a former Vodafone retail director. GAME and Gamestation already have iPhone apps, downloaded 250,000 times – impressive on a numbers basis, even more impressive when, the information in them is “relatively thin”.
GAME is currently trialling how it can use WiFi hotspots in its outlets to tap into smartphones when users are in-store. When a customer accesses the web when in a GAME or Gamestation, they’ll be able to access video content and reviews. Staff will be equipped with tablets accessing the same network with demos and more.
“There is an awful lot we can do to
make many things happen with that technology,” says Shepherd.
HI-TECH RETAILING
Improving the technology in-store plays into the second part of Shepherd’s plan –making stores more appealing.
“Over the next few months you will see us be very active in trialling new technology that we can bring in stores,” he says, naming web- enabled billing, those handheld units for staff and more interactive displays. How customers perceive what can be done inside a GAME is key, especially in terms of how High Street outlets can play a part in digital content. GAME already sells points cards for Facebook and other social
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games, and recently added a range of Xbox Live Arcade download cards. “GAME can play a role in market discovery,” says Shepherd. “A lot of digital content sold today is add-ons to already existing physical content. It’s a mistake to think of them as being bought by separate customers – they are not. “And we can help people find those lost games, the ones they don’t buy otherwise.”
“
The retailer’s market forecast predicts a resurgent boxed product segment from 2013
has been built on a series of acquisitions, its lease and property portfolio is varied. The firm’s still in the throes of tidying that up. But Shepherd is optimistic. “The stores are at the heart of what we can carry into the new parts of the gaming market. 2.8m people walked into one of our stores in a single week in February. That number of opportunities does not come easy.”
What we have
planned is something our competitors will find hard to match. Ian Shepherd, GAME
His great example is black and white platformer Limbo, a critics’ favourite on XBLA. “The game has been nominated for all sorts of awards, but really, how many people have played it? Not many.” Or at least, not many of GAME’s customers. Shepherd thinks they can be easily converted onto Limbo, Trials HD, or other games, using a compelling display and sales offer in store. Plus customers can buy these XBLA games with cash or by trading in other boxed games for them. “The value is clear – we will tell the developers, tell Microsoft that we can make these games famous by promoting them in-store.” All these improvements to the in- store experience occur against a backdrop that sees GAME intent on closing more outlets – with a target to get the store count down to around 550 – but not lose any market share. Given the business
DOING SOMETHING DIFFERENT Differentiating what people see in- store doesn’t just mean high-end interactive displays and digital content. The third and fourth element to GAME’s reinvention is making the most of the ways it can be unique from the competition. Pre-owned plays a big part in that, as does encouraging other new ownership models – such as the ‘temporary trade-in’ BuyBack offer. Other areas include an emphasis on own label peripherals, with a plan to double that in the next few years. GAME also wants to score more releases with exclusive content – across retail and digital, and globally – saying its market share goes up a third when it carries them.
TALKING TO CUSTOMERS However, innovative and long- overdue changes won’t make any impact if GAME doesn’t start telling consumers about them. Hence point five: stronger customer relationships. Using its reward cards for both chains, GAME plans to ramp up direct contact with its core audience. The company will send 12m direct emails or mails to customers this year, a huge jump on the 500,000 in 2010. These could encourage £95m more spending from its customer base. One trial statement sent to
Reward Card holders last year drove
back a 25 per cent return on investment, proof that targeted messages work, says Shepherd. “We made less than £5m from encouraging customers to buy extra things last year. By 2013 that can be up to £100m. So it’s a step change, like everything else we have planned.”
THE REVOLUTION
All five points of the plan work together to help overhaul the Group, not by growing beyond games, but keeping it focused on it. While there’s a transformation ahead, GAME and Gamestation will focus on what they do best: games. “This is about using what we’ve got to generate and drive growth,” Shepherd says. “So for instance physical retail will catapult us into a leading position in digital content. “Our industry is built on our understanding of the customers we have. We could have explored lots of markets and moved beyond the games market to find other things to sell.
“But the biggest financial opportunity to us is to go with the gamer and go with our core market and take those slices of the games market that we don’t currently take.” The Group may have found itself playing catch up, but already elements to each of the above changes are being implemented. The change has already started. “Bold businesses are great at reinventing themselves. But too few strategies ever leave the PowerPoint deck. Too many say they are going to change but don’t. We will be bold about reinventing ourselves,” says Shepherd. “We’re determined to bring this to life. And what we have planned is something our competitors will find it hard to match.”
March 4th 2011 19
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