Business grows through word of mouth at Avalon Kingdom

Freshman Chris Sexton heard about Avalon Kingdom from an ex-girlfriend. A gaming buddy told junior Mark Cooper. Freshman Ben Tash caught word on Facebook.\nAvalon Kingdom is a one-stop geek shop, for lack of a better description. It is a hobby shop that sells collectable card games like Magic: The Gathering and Pokemon, as well as books and dice for playing Dungeons and Dragons, comic books, action figures and even steel swords and axes forged in the likeness of the weapons in the "Lord of the Rings" movies.\nThe biggest problem hobby shops across the country face is getting their names out to the community, said Don Hendrick, president of the National Retail Hobby Stores Association. The small, privately owned businesses that are the backbone of the retail hobby industry usually do not have the money to stage major marketing campaigns or even place television ads, he said. Therefore, stores rely on word-of-mouth marketing from their faithful hobbyists to spread the news about their businesses and build a customer base.\nAnd Bloomington's Avalon Kingdom, 223 S. Pete Ellis Dr., is no exception. \n"Most of our customers heard about us through word-of-mouth from other gamers," said store co-owner Chris Mappin.\nMappin and friend Keith Pendly opened Avalon in August 2004 after seeing an open niche in the Bloomington market. The only other store in town that served the gaming market, the Game Preserve on West Kirkwood Avenue, sold mostly board games and did not offer much space to role-players and card traders, they said. Table-top role-playing games, the kind using dice, pencil and paper, and trading card games require multiple partners to play. And most gamers agree, the more the merrier. \nThe nature of Bloomington itself also helps business, Mappin said. IU, with its pooling masses of college students, fits perfectly into the teen and young adult target age group of Avalon's games. The fact that most IU customers don't stick around for more than four years could hurt business, Mappin said. But because a new crop of young gamers comes to town each August, Avalon is constantly recycling its clientele, which keeps its customer base fresh. \nAvalon's layout differs from traditional storefronts. The first half of the business features the store's stock -- racks of anime DVDs, how-to books on gaming and glass cases with valuable trading cards and action figures.\nThe doorway behind the register, however, opens to a spacious room lined with the kind of plastic tables and chairs normally reserved for outdoor weddings and large picnics. This is what makes Avalon special, many of its customers say. \nCooper, who went to the Game Preserve before he heard from a friend about Avalon, said he appreciates being able to spread out and play at Avalon. That's what keeps him coming back, and that's why he in turn recommended the store to friends.\nAnd it seems this word-of-mouth progression has served Avalon well. Mappin said he remembers being astounded if a typical weekend night in 2005 drew 30 gamers to shop and play. Friday, Mappin estimated that he saw 60 customers peruse the store's selection and participate in various card and role-playing games.\nThe store's success has surprised even its owners. \n"The store has been able to pay its own bills since the first month," Mappin said.\n"Avalon turned a profit in the first year," Mappin said. "This is something rare in the hobby industry," said Hendrick, who owns a shop in Oak Lawn, Ill.\n"It's usually two to four years before you start making money," he said. \nIU entrepreneurship professor Joe Denekamp agreed that the store's early profitability is unusual and said it bodes wells for the success of the business.\nDespite the steady growth, Hendrick said the $12,000 that Mappin estimates Avalon grosses in a month makes the store a relatively small operation. An average-sized hobby store might bring in a total of $30,000 to $40,000 a month, Hendrick said. But, he conceded that the industry does not have any solid data on the sales and profitability of hobby shops and has yet to conduct a study to that effect. The lack of data can hurt potential hobby shop owners, Hendrick said, because banks can be hesitant to loan money without definitive industry profit benchmarks for comparison.\nMappin, though, is sure his business will continue to grow for the next several years as more customers hear about Avalon.\nAs his profit grows, Mappin also hopes he will eventually be able to work less and manage more. He estimates he and his partner, Pendly, work between 60 and 70 hours in their store and have two part-time employees for the busy periods.\nBut for now, store patrons like IU student Tash see the owners' constant presence and personal touch as a definite plus. \n"The friendly staff -- that's why I keep coming back," he said.