You can never be too cautious when opening up a business especially one with the expenses that go along with brick and mortar.
That being said the most important aspect of your business will be location and the type of environment you are willing to provide. Locally we have a company popping around called 2nd and Charles, they're buying up all of the old borders stores ( they are very similar to borders) and are seeing only growth.
Their model is of the understanding that competing with Ecommerce is nearly impossible since you can't have anywhere near the buying power of Wal-Mart or BestBuy. What they do differently is about 50% of what they sell is second hand, they'll buy a game for $15.00 when Gamestop will only pay $3-$5, and sell it for $20.00 ( when GameStop will sell it for 30 +). What this does is corner the market on used games/books while keeping their prices lower then their E-commerce competition when you start to factor in shipping. While this drives traffic and gives the customer an influx of their own cash ( from selling), and up the door to impulse buys of new products.
The stores are very comfortable to your standard 20 something gamer, which is a category that I fit into, as it has all of the fittings of a border with all of the products I'm interested in purchasing.
Hopefully that helps.
-Jeff_B
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