Don't do it and stop saying "e-sport."

what do you suggest to call competitive gaming when its so competitive its a sport while at the same time underscoring that it's based on computer games?

nerd madness

funny, but you're avoiding the question. or do you believe if its with the aid of a computer, it can't be a sport?

I was being serious.

Professional gaming.

You can compete as long as you focus on this particular niche. I've seen similar sites doing okay, but they are focused on just one country or very few countries. As soon as you have to sell to lots of countries and start providing support prices skyrocket considering you don't have an established infrastructure.

But yeah, this is pretty risky, without any hope of going really big and requires a sizeable initial investment. Don't do it.

Sizeable investment you say?

I've seen shops set up for hardly nothing, alot of suppliers now offer drop shipping (dispatching directly to the customer), the only thing that would require real investment would be anything I import.

You will need to have something special about your store, so people would choose you instead of somebody else. Plus, prices are important, as well as delivery to all Europe countries if you want to sell in Europe (plus you should think about that: one country's people get better pay than others. As well, delivery price shouldnt be high, 5 pounds is ok). Moreover, some special sales which are some what connected to the game you are playing (like time played, skill and etc.). And more regular sales. And dont just stop on mice, kb and mouse mats, add more gaming pc's, lcd's and over gaming stuff. Also, you should have alot of test samples so that ppl could get to your store, try it first, then buy (you know what i am talking about)

if your store wont have anything special, then it will be just another online shop. Hope I helped you a bit

Pretty much my feelings too, although try and buy is not possible.

You mean your shop will be only online, right? Get a good, cool name which would be first in "gaming shops" google's search :D

The original Dotcom bubble burst in March 2000. DON'T YOU PEOPLE EVER LEARN.

Sell a popular item for less than everywhere else. You will make a loss, however when coming to buy that product they will buy other products which are normally priced, so you make your money back. That is how you can beat amazon/play.

That's not good business, however selling them in bundles (like a package, mouse + mat) at cost would be better.

Otherwise you could end up making a mighty fine loss :)

It's just my personal experience that when buying pc hardware I will look for the cheapest price for a certain thing (for example a CPU) and then look and see other components I would like are pretty much the same as everywhere else, I would order everything else from that place, so that everything is in one order.

but you wouldn't buy a complete package of components at some unknown shop, would you? In unknown shops I rather buy only one or two components that are not too pricey ... in unknown shops, you cannot be completely sure if you will receive something for your money ... although I have to admit that as of now this has not yet happenend to me

Yep I do that too when I'm making a new system... I tend to buy mice/keyboard/mouse mats more often though and usually on their own.

dunno bro but if you can get those artisan hayate large mousepads ill buy 5

It'll be on my list..

ask here http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/30/business-finance-investing/

have you sold much of anything on ebay? yeah, i think it would be hard, not any easier than any other job, so ask yourself why you really want to do this, and don't count on commercial success in this.

I've sold a fair amount on ebay but just general stuff.

Generally sites I deal with at work tend run eBay and Amazon businesses along side their online shop, from what I'm told a good amount of business comes from their too.

It's definately hard work, especially doing it on your own.. There's a hell of a lot to manage.

yep, i would hate to personally do it. dealing with idiots/assholes is probably the hardest thing about it, but the rest is a drag too.

Easy enough to become a hardware reseller - ie, you buy through a distributor or directly from the vendor, and simply make margin on your buy price.
The investment comes not in stock, but in driving people to your site. As you say, distributors ship directly to end user, you'd simply be the sales tool in the middle taking 10-30pts of margin.

Welcome to 1999! Yes, you'll get rich with a website, make sure to sell it it next year!

Aren't e-commerce website's doing very well now-a-days? I don't ever expect to get rich from doing it... best case scenario is I make enough to pay rent (which is still very unlikely).

There are 5105915935159283 kids with this idea in 2011, what sets you apart?

Hmm:

1) I've worked in sales & customer service for 8 years and have a lot of experiance/knowhow.
2) I know what makes a good website/store.
3) I'll be doing it myself (not some off the shelf store, i.e. it will be custom)
4) I have a niche(-ish) market.
5) I have some good ideas for marketing etc.
6) Professional gaming is only getting bigger (not just QL).

Should it not work, it won't have cost me much (other than hardwork, which = experience).

7. experience with importing? :p

Not directly, but I know what it entails since the company I work for does this.

invest your time in poker while you're still young and have time to learn.. :P

I played a lot of poker a few years ago (when it was getting big), I even went and played in vegas.

I did ok, but eventually got bored.

My good friend in Lithuania was thinking about e-shop. One idea was e-sport stuff, but it's totally different in here (3rd world little country..).
So he end with sport supplements. In 3mln ppl country, he is selling ~3-5 items in day @ first 6 months of his opened e-shop. He earns average sallary, but it doesn't required a lot of time for him, so it's ok.

is he happy with it? tbh ez money is good money!

not realy, he wants atleast 3 times more money, so 3 times more sold "items". He is thinking about different online shop too, so from 2-3 shops you can live ok.

The world now is not about quality, its about advertiesment and marketing. You can sell the worst quality most overpriced shit if you able to persuade people believing its good.

Having said that if you have good connections to people in "esport" broadcasting and organizers, especially SC2, LoL and COD than go for it, otherwise i'd not invest my time in to something like that.

I think you're a bit late for that tho. Few year ago you'd have a much easier time obtaining and work with these connections (obviously back then you needed a strong belief that progaming eventually will become an industry).

Generally i don't think there is a big enough margin on gaming peripherials (especially if you're not connected to the manufacturer), so you gotta sell large volumes to make it worth running a shop like that.
The hard part i believe is not offering competitive prices. The average costumer will not care if an item costs $45, $50 or $55. It is rather to make people know about where they can buy everything at one place, providing good costumer support etc.

Also few years ago, or even in SC2 beta you could just provide a 10% discount to get a mention from "prominent figures" that people listen to. Nowadays i imagine its more like you gotta give them a huge sum of cash in the first place.
All in all i think you are late to the party.

Generally i don't think there is a big enough margin on gaming peripherials (especially if you're not connected to the manufacturer), so you gotta sell large volumes to make it worth running a shop like that.

Probably my only real worry, I'll need to speak to distrubutors/manufacturers when I'm done with the site (since i'm doing it as a learning experiance anyway).

In the business sector i'm in, online resellers generally make about 20/30%, sometimes 100% but it really depends on the product and where they're buying from.

It's all about finding a good distributor (I know a few already).

Mind me asking how do you plan to make people know about it (and thus far selling large volumes)? I don't think the "good product doesnt need advertiesment" model is viable these days relying on satisfied customers spreading the word themselves.

Not trying to discourage you here, i'm really interested, partly because we were wanted to do a similiar thing with friends (obviously in Hungary you have a lot less perspective), but concluded it wouldnt worth it. Maybe you are ok with risking a lot of money to invest in it?

Like I said previously, I don't think it will cost much to start up.. Alot of distributors will dispatch goods direct to the customer now (known as dropshipping), on imports I'll try and keep stock low and order as and when is required (delivery is anywhere from 1-4 weeks from the fareast).

I guess when I get down to the business side of things, I'll only know if it's viable when I get pricing.

With regargs to marketing, there's plenty to do but I'd rather not get in to it...I have some ideas, but it doesn't include getting players to promote my site, it's the manufacturers job (e.g. Razer, Steelseries etc) to promote products, my job is to help them find them.

I think that really would faciliate your selling is if you get proper reviews of the products you are selling. If I want to buy a product, I usually use amazon.de to get a glimpse of some people that have bought the product and how the rate it.

However, most of the time it is idiots that have no idea of the product. So I would really like to see someone create a shop that is support by "gamers" reviews of the product your are selling.

This mice works well with this mousepad
most sold mice
what do I have to know about dpi etc. - what about my screen etc.?
500hz? etc.
how durable are the mice
mice score test etc. (you can link it then i guess)

I guess that would really add something to your store. Also maybe a free platform where people can discuss certain devices - but yeah that means a lot more work because you have to keep tabs on spammers and idiots :D

I think most people just buy a mouse or a mousepad because it looks fancy but not because of its "properties" so you have to communicate the real value of the product and that way convince your consumer.

Just from the top of my head.

I had a few similar ideas myself..

"This mice works well with this mousepad" - There would be a "Perfect Bundles" of some sort.

Also... "Recommened by ESReality" :D

(just kidding).

There isn't exactly a market for real professional-grade gaming gear, unless you intend to sell the bullshit that most people really buy - low quality flashy shit, marketed as professional-grade.

You don't think with rise of competitive games the likes of SC2, Dota2, LoL, HoN, QL, CoD, CS, more and more people will be interested in quality gaming products? Rather than cheap shit they buy first and end up finding out it sucks?

I would think even casual pc gamers would also be interested, within the smaller budget range.. Then there's always the competitive console market (e.g. the Razer 360 controller).

I think the more competitive (and popular) PC gaming gets, the requirement for decent products increases.

I could be wrong.

For most games, you don't need anything special. People mostly pay for the looks, not for the functionality. Razer sells for the same reason that Apple products do - brand recognition, and style. That's not to say that Razer doesn't make some good products, but it's not actually giving them any benefit in most games, and most people couldn't put the hardware to use in the games that they would.

Why do you think that mouse companies keep making absurdly retarded mice with crazy high DPI? If they weren't selling (even though many sell at extremely high prices), they wouldn't keep making them.

Ugh.. I highly doubt casual gamers get no functionality from better mice..

Most casual gamers play games where any mouse would be more than enough. Which competitive games did you think that a better mouse would actually produce provable gains? Out of the games you listed, the only two that might are CS and QL, and both of those do not have a future.

CS:GO? QL will be around for easily another year or so but I guess the audience is/will be smaller.

Well, if you're hoping to make a living off of sales to the QL community, I hope you aren't investing a lot of money into it. =P

As for CS:GO, it remains to be seen how popular it will be, or if it will manage to generate tournaments. Dunno if the gameplay will favor low sens, as I haven't looked into it at all yet. If not, it will be up to preference as all other games are. You're still going to be selling a majority to wannabe casuals, and they're always going to buy what the market tells them to buy.

My target audience:

Male, age 14-30, uses the internet to shop, plays online games (BF3, COD, SC2, QL, LoL, HoN, Dota2, CS) in a casual/competitive nature, possibly uses gaming forums. (/r/gaming?)

I still need to see if it's a viable business with regards to pricing, but I believe there's a large enough audience.

I'm not saying not to carry the quality gear, but put a focus on stocking the flashy overpriced shit if you want to have any sort of reach in that demographic.

Duly noted.

If you set it up, market it heavily towards the SC2 fans. In your advertising include the phrases "eSports HWAIIITING" and "like a BOSS". They'll eat that shit up.