I'll just chime in here to say:  waitaminute, Nimrod.  While I appreciate your comments, if they're not about an experience at Dragon Port, they are nonrelevant here.  

There's a certain tone of "this small business deserves it" in Jadiaz and Nimrod's comments that bugs me.  Yes, there were some folks employed at the store who took their responsibilities less seriously than others.  That would be true at every shop in town, at one point or another, including some of the competing shops in this category.  I'm willing to forgive a bad day on their part, once in a while.  You may not be, and that's a choice I have to respect, but I think it places a high burden on a small business.  Remember, these employees are there because they care, not because this is the best job in town.  Any one of them could walk across the street to Starbucks and earn more than they do at Dragon Port.  But they don't care about coffee;  they care about the community of gaming.

At the same time, let's also be clear:  Dragon Port functions, like no other shop in the city, as a place where gamers congregate -- like a community center, instead of like a business in many ways to the store's credit and to its likely detriment.  What other business in town would let dozens of customers use its resources (its gaming tables, its wifi, its game library) for hours at a time, for days at a time, without concern for whether or not that customer bought a single thing?  Even Barnes and Noble would make you buy a coffee or ask you to leave the cafe after a certain point. Indeed, Dragon Port often let people bring in the games that the bought on the internet, the twelve-pack of soda they bought at Wal-Mart, and the food they grabbed at the Pizza Man, and so spend an entire day enjoying the shop as if it were a non-profit community center.  Management welcomes everyone because everyone is part of the community of gaming.

The problem is not customer service, at least not entirely.  That's unlikely to account for the drop in sales in the last year.  We know what accounts for some of it (see other PDD threads about unpaid workers, about slowing economies generally).  Regular customers whom I used to hang with at the shop have lost jobs, and when they do, some of them stopped coming in to chill on New Comics Wednesday.

But the amazing thing about Dragon Port is:  when some of those customers lost their jobs, or their income was slashed (or their parents' income, as many of the customers are minors), Dragon Port said:  "Don't worry about it.  C'mon in.  Play some games.  Argue about the New 52 from DC comics.  We're a community here.  We know you'll start buying again when the job comes back and the economy settles down.  Don't worry about it."  So the store remains full and active even when the sales are down.

We are a community here.  My question is, can the community sustain the shop that sustains the community?  I hope so.

Jadiaz,

Let me parse your answer.  We agree more than we disagree, but I want to clarify things for people who may not be familiar with the shops we are talking about.

1.  Barnes and Noble does not have a game library, nor does it allow you to sit in the cafe without paying for something in high volume periods.  Yes, between 8pm and 10pm, when volume is low, no one cares, but at other times, they do ask for purchase.  

In any case, arguing that other businesses don't make you buy things is an angle I don't see as productive.  Treating any business, B&N or DP ir any other, as a library is a recipe for seeing that business fade away.  

2.  As my support for their shop in multiple venues shows, I am a HUGE Collector's Connection fan.  Tim is, hands down, the best owner-manager of a hobby shop north of the Twin Cities, and they get the bulk of my hobby purchases simply because they do the most to get new and back issue comics in stock.  That said, you can't compare three card tables in a shop that closes at 8pm to the dozens of tables, large gaming library and support equipment, and extended hours of Dragon Port.  Gaming events at Dragon Port continue until there is a winner, regardless of posted hours for the shop -- a level of commitment that exceeds what is possible for Collector's Connection.

All of this is to say:  You can order a hamburger at Sara's Table, you can order a hamburger at Gronk's, they will both be awesome, but they are not the same thing.  Same here.

3.  I've only been to Dungeon's End once.  I can't speak comparatively beyond anecdotes.  They've only been open a month, in any case, so many measures are still waiting to be tested.

My point, I think, is that Duluth is or can be a gaming and comics ecology.  In fact it should be.  Dragon Port offers things Collector's cannot.  And both CC and DP offer things DE cannot.  We would love much to lose any of them.

That said, I'll agree with you here:

"It may be a community shop, but it is first and foremost a business, and with competition in both fields rising, they better figure out how to be sustainable as both."

I agree, and you are right, customer service is a huge part of that.  If I over-reacted, and I might have, it's because I have enormous sympathies for people making minimum wage or less.