Yay! Business post whohoo!

Hey there!

What do you want? Biscuits cookies?

Well, you don't want any do you? :(

Anyways, there is one guy discussing about a business

Hello, fellow RMXPers.

This is a topic I thought I should start to get some input from fellow gamers, creators, designers, and just the general public within the area. I work at Maverik. For those of you who aren't within my region of Wyoming and surrounding states, Maverik is a decent sized gas station chain that sells basically a bit of everything. I currently make $8.25 an hour and I work usually from 9 PM to 5 AM. The graveyard shift.... Oooh boy. This is definitely now what I thought I'd be doing at 20 years old. I thought for sure I'd be going to college by now, and be into some great game design school, on the verge of making millions. But... as everyone knows. It's not as easy as it seems.

My friend, Rob, whom I just met a few months ago, also works with me, making the same amount of money. He's retired from the Marine Corps and is now in the National Guard, to pay his bills. Him and I started talking.... This is our idea.

You can start reading here, if you'd like to skip my "poor me" introduction.

Rob and I were talking about how ridiculous the gas station chain is and how strict and absolutely pointless some of the rules are. We then began discussing how if WE ran a store, we'd do this and that differently. That's when it struck us both in that epiphany-like moment of silence with wide eyes and held breath. We needed to open a store. A coffee shop was the first idea. And then it was quickly shot down when Rob mentioned a place for kids to keep out of trouble.

(Keep in mind paragraph)
We live in a small town called Thayne Wyoming. It's actually a valley of close towns that make up Star Valley, Wyoming. All of the kids are bussed to one community High School near the center. Within this town, there is a small grocery store, a few gas stations (Maverik is the most used.) a few little diners, and a video store where you pay $4.00 to rent a movie for one night, or $6.00 to rent a video game (only original xbox, PS, and Gamecube) for one night. (Due back at 4 the next day.... ) If you wanted to buy ANYTHING to do with electronics, entertainment, video games, etc, you had to drive 2 and a half hours to Idaho Falls, where you'd find a mall, EB Games, Toys R Us, and everything else a decent sized city has.

Anyway....

Our plan is to create a lounge kind of business where we sell a bit of food, like, candy bars, chips, maybe a few other small packaged things, and have a soda fountain, with paper cups for a simple $.75 or something. Along with this, we'd set up 4 big screen tv's (At least for now) and system link X360's, Playstations (2 and possibly 3s) and Wii's. We'd also like to put up a few decent computers for internet browsing, and possibly a few online games, such as WoW, GuildWars, and other things that might come our way. Along with these gaming systems, that anyone can walk in and sit down to play, we'd be renting used video games (That we'd buy in huge bundles on eBay and other places, obviously)

The real money maker:
We'd sell membership cards, for as cheap as $20 a month, which will add points to your card that you can trade in for things like, new games, systems, and many other things. Along with these points, the cards would get you a memory card for either X360 or PS3 with a gamer profile. (X360 is the main focus here...) This profile would allow you to sign up for tournaments and other gaming events that would end in prizes like... Controllers, games, consoles, points, free food, and a lot of other random things we'd throw in every once in a while. Along with these tournaments, we'd allow customers to suggest more things, that we'd pin to the suggestion board (a big quark board on the wall) Eventually, we'd like to get people interested in things like WoW guilds, tabletop games, and my hopes is maybe even a decent RMXP/VX team.

Even more stuff:
We'd also look into card games where you'd basically gamble points instead of money. Not being able to cash the points in for actual cash, but in this town, a LOT of people play poker and other card games.
Another extremely popular past time is Pool/Billiards. We'd throw down $700 for a pool table or two and start tournaments there.

Overall goal:
The point of the place would be to get all of these kids with NOTHING to do off of the street, out of drugs and drinking, and into a place where they could fit in, have fun, and ultimately make friends. The two of us would be able to run the place alone for a long time, until we were on the verge of emotional breakdowns, and at that point, we could always hire an employee or two. The main output of money would be on renting the building/buying depending on loans grants and other stuff, (Which is a great possibility since Rob was/is in the military (great credit)) Electricity, powering computers, game consoles, and the heater (it gets down to 30 below in the winter here) The main source of income would be game rentals (which would also be either payed upfront for $6 a week, or on the membership card, and extra $15 for unlimited access to 2 games, that can be swapped for any others at anytime. Which kind of destroys GameFly out here.) food, and the membership cards.


I don't expect to become a millionaire off of the place, and I honestly don't think it will be easy to get started, or even keep running. Keeping the druggies, drunks, and thieves out will be difficult enough. All I hope to do is make more money than I'm making at Maverik, give the younger generations in the area something to do and somewhere to go, and eventually, enjoy working my dream job as my own boss.

Any input, ideas, suggestions, concerns, criticism, critiques, punches, questions, offers, help, or anything of any kind would be greatly appreciated. I understand that without knowing the community and economy of the area, it's difficult to know if this would work. But if anyone's tried this, or seen it done, or even fail, I'd like to hear about it. It's a big investment, and I don't want to be working at Maverik AND bankrupt because of the idea by the time I'm 21. Not my plan in life.

Thanks to anyone who read this entire post. You get two points.

And here is my umm... reply ( i cut it short, you don't know what are my other blabbering )

Whoa I've never thought of this before, good job.

[useless blabber]

Ok, back to your shop idea mate.
I really like how you can get the kids of the streets ( well in my country you rarely see these, cause the kids are all either sports experts or people sitting right at their computer. ) The truth is, I would like to visit there...
Membership sounds alright, but if your asking my country to buy the membership, never you think of it ( I think our 1 dollar is like 3-4 US )
But your targeting the locals, so it's considered "cheap" to them.

I'd suggest you think about this, will your company handle in recessions?
If yours wouldn't, find a way at this moment, well, ASAP.

And I was never fimiliar with the XBOX 360, never seen it IRL, never touched it, never seen how it is played. But I'm assuming it'll be like the PS.

What about having a class where people learn about RMXP? :P
The oldies can be potential makers ( seeing how many young children says their game is the best when they have less than 1 year experience :P )

Well, that's all I have to offer, peace mate.


Is it too unclear? Tell me, I'll revise it.

Good luck.

And remember to DONATE to the poor.