THE GAMER’S EMPORIUM

We chat to Simon Kendrick about setting up Swansea’s favourite friendly local game store

Tell us a little bit about how the store got started?

The Gamers’ Emporium came into being as the result of a 3am epiphany back in 2012 whilst I was working for Cardiff Council. I realised that I hated working for other people and that I wanted to do something for myself, and ideally something that involved my hobbies as well. Luckily my then girlfriend now-wife supported my decision to give up my job just before we moved in. 6 months of research, planning and setup later and The Gamers’ Emporium was born. I was luckily enough to have the proceeds from selling my flat in Portsmouth available, so was able to pay my own way during the set-up and didn’t have to go to the bank for a start-up loan either.

What’s it like being a FLGS in your area?

Not too shabby! We’ve got a lovely selection of regular customers, a good position on High Street that sees a lot of passing trade as well. We’re not overburdened with competition in the area, and we have a good relationship with the stores in nearby towns and cities, and with the Warhammer store in Swansea too. Since we’ve started, Swansea has gained three Board Game cafes (who, again, we have good relationships with), and the next town over has gained an FLGS started (with our best wishes) by one of our customers, so the area definitely has a growing gamer community.

What do you think makes your store unique?

The main thing that people comment on is the welcoming community. We’ve been very lucky in developing a lot of welcoming and crosspollinating communities over the last 10 years, and we’ll often see people coming in to play one thing before getting adopted/converted by another community. It’s not “role-players vs war-gamers and never the twain shall meet” like it was when I was growing up, we have Magic players who run D&D games and play Warhammer and boardgames too.

The other thing we pride ourselves on is our “broad church of gaming” approach. We aren’t a specialist store, but divide our retail space fairly equally between Boardgames, Roleplaying, TCGs and Wargames.

What events do you run for the local gaming scene?

We run a lot of TCG tournaments each week. We have open access play seven days a week for our boardgame library, and theme nights for wargamers and roleplayers to arrange their own games on. From time to time we’ll run smaller tournaments for miniature games like X-Wing and Legion.

We take part in larger events like Free RPG Day and International Tabletop Day, and run launch event promos through the Asmodee Hobby Next scheme.

What’s been your favourite part of running the store so far?

I really enjoy the challenge of being my own boss. The buck stops with me, and I get to stretch my mental muscles to find solutions for a variety of different challenges every day. I also love the positive effect we have on the local community, as a safe space for people to come and enjoy their hobbies. We’ve been indirectly responsible for at least two gamer-marriages (they met in store whilst playing), and we’ve seen some of our customers grow from teeny kids to hulking adults returning from university. We’re part of people’s lives and that is special!

What are you plans for the future?

The only thing on my radar at the moment is the end of our 10 year lease for the Swansea store, which comes up in a couple of years. I’ll need to decide whether to renew here, or to look for even larger premises (sorry in advance to my staff if I do – they dread hearing the words “we need a bigger shop”). That’ll mostly depend on what rental prices do between now and then, and how reasonable our landlord is feeling.

We did open a second store (in Carmarthen) back in April 2019, but it never fully got its feet under it before Covid-19 hit, and we officially closed it in September 2020 and brought the staff back to our Swansea team. The experience has put me off opening in other locations for now, especially given how many other stores there are in the general vicinity of where I’d consider putting a second store. Swansea still has room for us to grow for now.