I own an online gaming store. I'm hoping this series of blogs (which will be updated in a very non-scheduled manner) will help give some insight into the industry...
It's really more of a hobby. I don't make a ton of money off of it, certainly not enough to quit my day job. I do it because I love gaming. It supports my own gaming habits, and I suppose that's part of the point.
Despite the fact that I own such a store, I still support my FLGS. Thanks to certain publishers' rules regarding needing to have a brick and mortar store (WotC, WizKids, I'm looking at you), there are products I can't buy. Also, I don't stock comic books. I could, but since I don't get the volume of, say, an Amazon.com, it's not cost effective.
Among the publishers, it seems that online-only stores get something of a bad rap. I don't really understand this. Yes, we can sell things at a discount because our overhead is quite a bit lower, but I fail to see where this makes a difference to either the distributors (who get the same amount of money) nor the publishers (who get the same amount of money). In fact, the only person that takes a hit is the online store owner. The argument that FLGSes "grow the hobby" is somewhat valid, however, in the modern age it's not as valid an argument as it was, say 10 years ago.
Don't get me wrong, if I had the capital, I'd start up an brick and mortar store (with a heavy online presence) in an instant. The atmosphere of a FLGS beats the cold, hardness of an online store anyday. I just don't see the argument against distributing to online-only stores. The only thing the publishers and distributors are really doing in this case is shooting themselves in the foot. Yeah, many online stores might not have the purchasing power of many of the FLGSes behind them, but even if such a store only orders, say, $1,000 worth of products a year, that's a $1,000 they're not making by refusing to sell to them.
