We talk to Robert Lindsay, MD of Scotland chain Games Centre
Congratulations on winning the 2012 MCV Award for Independent Retailer. Why do you think the industry chose you? We’ve expanded and improved year- on-year. Our willingness to listen to and learn from the industry has been a huge part of this. We take enormous pride in the recognition that the industry has shown us and hope that this award can be a stepping stone to bigger things for Games Centre. To come out on top in something that has been competitive and challenging is immensely satisfying. As well as having a solid business model, we have always worked hard to develop and maintain strong relationships with key publishers and distributors. These people are the lifeblood of our business.
Can you summarise how you’ve expanded over the past year? Well we’ve got a new store opening in Dumfries this month – our seventh – and the online side of the business is growing rapidly. In terms of in-store, we’ve managed to keep things as they are but we’ve widened the product range.
A lot of indies are diversifying and embracing products like toys. Are you doing the same? We are. Games are and will be the core of the business for the foreseeable future. But as games diminish we need to look at other products to supplement them. We’ll always be a games shop but things will evolve away from that as time goes on. So we’ll look at T-
22 May 4th 2012
MCV and Koch Media kick off our independent retail month by taking a closer look at some of the biggest current players in the online games retail space, including MCV Awards winner Games Centre
Scotland’s Games Centre picked up its first MCV Awardlast month for best Independent Retailer
shirts, posters, phones, trading cards, all the kind of smaller value items, but the volume is still there for them. And that product range is something we’re looking to increase, especially online.
And what kind of growth have you seen online?
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We’ve got our seventh store
opening in Dumfries this month and our online business is growing rapidly.
The six stores have been pretty static but the online side of things has probably increased by about 15 per cent in the past year. We’ve got quite a good customer base online now through different marketplaces. The website will be refreshed this year as well. It’ll be the third generation of that and the fresh website will incorporate the new products that we have introduced in the stores as well.
Are you going to stay in Scotland or do you have plans to open stores in England or elsewhere? In the short term, yes we’ll stay in Scotland. Dumfries is another step for us towards the South. We’ll just see what opportunities arise. Obviously the retail environment is challenging just now. It’d be unwise for us to look at that avenue of expansion which is very expensive. Our online strategy is more cost-effective and if we can
get new products online, those goods might spill into our High Street stores as well.
How has Games Centre been affected by the administration of GAME Group?
It affected things in a positive way. For the first three months of the year, store sales have been up six per cent. We can see the benefits, but obviously we don’t wish any ill whatsoever to GAME or Gamestation. The circumstances with them have been positive on the business side for Games Centre, certainly in the short term. And I think from that we should retain quite a lot of new customers.
How is independent games retail changing? What does the future hold for the sector?
I think it holds the same as what it holds for publishers as well. I think that the stronger and bigger retailers will last longer as they evolve their business model. Digital will increase.
I think we need to keep games as our core product, but we need to complement that with other goods that will offset the decrease we’ll probably experience through the evolution of digital.