Jay Ribak and his wife Erika started their first hobby games store in Nashua in 2003, but they struggled to turn a profit. By 2005 it was closed. “We had decided we were done,” Jay says. However, when another local game store in Nashua went up for sale in 2008, the couple thought they had learned from their mistakes and decided to give the business another try. They purchased the store and renamed it The Relentless Dragon.
And they have lived up to the name, relentlessly growing during the past decade. After acquiring a second storefront in Londonderry in 2018, they claim to own the most square-feet of hobby gaming space in the state and employ 14 workers. “I knew we had made it when we started buying six games for the shelf instead of one” Jay says.
All of this has been possible due to an explosion in overall sales in the hobby games market. Geek culture trade magazine ICv2 reported the industry raked in $1.495 billion in sales in 2018, nearly double sales in 2013 (though it did slow slightly from 2017, the first time since 2008). Jay notes that the number of board games published each year has increased. And The Relentless Dragon has thrived, growing sales every year since 2008.
Among the challenges they’ve faced are competition from game wholesalers on Amazon, a lack of minimum pricing policies from manufacturers and a flood of new games leading to thinner margins. Jay says that these challenges are “only getting larger.”
To thwart the challenges, Jay says cultivating a sense of community is more important than ever. “We believe very much in the ‘Third Place’ theory. We try to create a space separate from work or home where people can come to feel like part of a community of like-minded people.”
Attracting customers can be difficult for gaming stores as people often have a mental image of a cramped and shabby store full of elitist players, Jay says. However, gaming stores have evolved, he says. It would seem that many of The Relentless Dragon’s customers would agree. When Jay and Erika sent out a call for help with renovations of the second store, many eager customers answered the call.
The article was written by Dan St. Cyr, a student at University of NH Manchester and a participant in Business NH Magazine’s Young Reporters Project.
Current Issue - May 2024