We are a tabletop roleplay gaming center providing meeting space and professional services for players. We also provide low-volume retail and commissioned sales for local creators to gain greater visibility to their products. Our business model is fairly simple; Customers can either rent table space for a fixed rate per hour, or they can book a game session with one of our employees for a fixed rate per player/person. We also host events throughout the week such as boardgame nights and organized play events. A useful comparison for our business model would be the online RPG matchup tool https://startplaying.games, which allows storytellers to book game sessions with "professional" storytellers for online play for a certain cost per player. We also function somewhat like the restaurant business, in that the things we do are generally "free" with material they've already purchased at their private residence, but we provide a higher quality experience and a more convenient location that our customers seek to utilize from time to time or for special occasions.
Our customers are extremely diverse, and include all demographics and economic backgrounds. Our target customers are predominantly new players looking for ways to start gaming, or existing players who are new to the area and looking for local groups to get together with. We also try to specifically cater to neuro-divergent and other disadvantaged individuals who are often uncomfortable meeting new people or going to private residences for gaming.
The business is structured as an LLC with myself, Michael Gruver, acting as CEO/President, my wife Amanda Gruver who functions as COO/Office Manager, and a non-managing member Mr. Chad Steines who acts as Chief Creative Officer. We currently employ a total of nine 1099 independent contractors as storytellers, who have each been through a multi-stage interview and hiring process to establish their capability and suitability for running professional level gaming sessions for a diverse customer base.
None of the partners of the LLC have run a small business before; However, I have a background in intelligence, planning and operations that I gained while serving as a member of the US Army Special Forces for 20 years, along with several years in corporate management positions in my post-military years. Amanda Gruver has multiple college degrees and several years experience working as a Nuclear Medical Technologist. Chad Steines is a non-managing partner, but has spent over 20 years in development of unique rulesets and game settings for tabletop gaming, as well as running games professionally in those settings. Our storytellers each have at least 5 years experience in running tabletop games, with several having over 15 years experience. Each is also able to run game sessions for a multitude of popular rule systems including Call of Cthulhu, Dungeons and Dragons, Powered by the Apocalypse, or Vampire: the Masquerade. Every member of the LLC has been an active member of our customer community for over 20 years, and understands the wants and needs of our customers at a fundamental level. Many aspects of the store are designed around addressing core issues with the TTRPG hobby that have existed for years and are only now starting to be addressed with online
Since opening on May 22nd, we've been seeing a better than 50% week over week increase in customer traffic at the store. Much of that has been in the form of game session bookings with our storytellers, but we're also beginning to see reservations for our tables and rooms. In that time frame, we have gathered 12 recurrent customers and have served over 50 individual customers with a total gross sale of just under $2k. Our first short-term goal is to see our customer numbers continue to increase at a rate of 25-50% and to be processing 50 transactions and $2k in sales a week. This will mark our monthly net "break even" point, and we expect at the current rate to see this in 3-4 months. We're pursuing a number of avenues for increasing traffic at the store including working with local schools to host their roleplay gaming clubs over the summer, negotiating some B2B opportunities with other small businesses, and providing storytellers for local gaming conventions over the summer to increase awareness.
Our primary purpose in seeking funds is to help increase the amount of retail available at the store, as well as provide a much needed increase to our operational reserve. We had originally forecast a surplus of $30k in our budget after construction and all other costs, which we intended to use as a buffer to allow us to make payroll and lease payments for the first several months while the business was still gaining exposure. 3 months of construction cost overruns and delays drained the entirety of that reserve and we've opened with essentially no cushion. I am currently fully employed at another job, and so have been able to offset our deficits so far with that income; However, I will not be able to maintain that for much longer as I'm essentially shorting household bills in order to pay business expenses. Beyond the financial support, we'd also be interested in receiving mentorship from experienced individuals to help drive our expansion plans that may include (in the long term) construction of our own bespoke facility, eventual establishment of franchise, and conversion to an S or C Corp entity.
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